8+ Drawbacks to Free Web Hosting

Being that I am partners in a web hosting company, I frequently surf through online forums replying to people’s hosting questions. Of all the questions I answer, I see one that appears over and over again:

What are the drawbacks of free web hosting?

1. Bottlenecks

Free hosting accounts typically are packed onto 1 server with lots of other free hosting accounts. This clog of websites severely slows down the server with each one fighting for CPU time. Results: Your site may work slow and go offline from time to time.

2. Low Bandwidth and Limited Disk Space

You usually get 1-3GB of bandwidth with free hosting accounts. This translates to a site designed for very little traffic coming to it. If there is a lot of traffic coming to it (or another on your sever) your site may go down. Also, disk space is usually measured in megabytes (50-100mb). That’s basically enough space for a few pics and some text.

3. Lack Of Tools

Free hosting accounts are limited with the tools you are provided with and can use. Many don’t even allow FTP capabilities (which I could not live without). You usually won’t have the ability to run PHP scripts or have a database which translates to no blog, no forum, no good “contact me” form, etc. on your site.

4. Ads

You usually have to display banner ads on your site. Nothing is better than creating a nice website for yourself and flashing annoying banner ads at your visitors!

5. Little Support

You usually have to wait extended periods of time for any customer service help. Paid customers get first help.

6. No Personalized Domain Name

Usually you are not able to obtain your own domain name (e.g. no www.my-site.com). You are forced to use either a subdomain of your host or a directory (e.g. www.geocities.com/my-site). This translates to bad SEO (search engine optimization) because it’s geocities that’s getting indexed, not your own personal site.

7. Bad SEO (search engine optimization)

You may have a hard time getting search engines to index your site well.

8. No Personalized Email

Many free hosting accounts don’t give you an email account. So no “[email protected]”

*Bonus Tip #1 (Lost Contacts) – Imagine you decided to save less than $100 a year to go with free web hosting. Then one day a year later you realize that you have outgrown your free account and now it’s time to upgrade to a normal hosting account.

Oops . . . guess what?

For that entire year you spent attracting visitors, customers, and friends who have all bookmarked your website, it’s all lost. 80-90% of them will lose contact with you once you change domain names.

*Bonus Tip #2 (Undoing Your SEO) – For those of you who try to build a site that gets indexed well by Yahoo and Google, one of the most important things you can do is attract incoming links to your website.

Imagine you spend a year or so networking online and people link to you. This will help search engines find your website better.

The day you decide to switch to a real hosting account, you’ll lose all those incoming links to your website you spent a year attracting.

You have to start all over again.

Does free web hosting still feel attractive?