Free hosting vs. Cheap Virtual Hosting

[Anonymous]

Free hosting vs. Cheap Virtual Hosting
Please help me deside what is the best for my site.
- Free Hosting
- Cheap banner-free hosting

[athmane]

Hi Fiodora,

There is no comparison to be made between the two IMO. Banner-free Paid hosting wins hands-down for the following reasons:

1- It is cheap: Virtual (or shared) hosting and domain name registration are very cheap. You can have a quality shared hosting package, with plenty of space and bandwidth, for no more than $5 per month. Domain names cost as low as $8 for a full year.

2- It is reliable: Free hosting suffers from frequent outages, leaving your site visitors stranded with 404 pages a lot of the time. By contrast, reputable paid hosts can boast an uptime of 99% all the time. Their servers are hardly off, ensuring your site is up and running most of the time.

3- You have more control over your website: Free hosts do not give you all the tools you need to manage your webiste. You have to make do with Front Page and a web-based FTP (if any). Paid Hosts, by contrast, offered a sophisticated Control Panel where you can update your website, check your email, your stats, and a host of other services from one single place.

4- You project a professional image to your visitors: Free hosts are usually associatd with personal or amateurish websites, not serious business professionals. What's more, the various pop-ups, pop-exits and what have you make for an extremely annoying browsing experience for your site visitors. With paid hosting, none of these inconveniences occur. A good webdesign is enough to project a professional image to your audience.

I am sure other forumistas can think of more reasons why you should go with a paid host. It's really that cheap to get your website up and running, you should try it for yourself and see the difference. :wink:

[arpan911]

Well I have used a handful of hosting services in the past 7 yrs, but if you want to talk about free hosting then one service provider comes to mind http://www.freewebhostingarea.com/ , no doubt they are the best free hosting provider out there, they give you-

- 200 MB Web space
- Unmetered Traffic
- free phpBB hosting - One click Autoinstaller
- Full FTP Access with FXP Support
- PHP 4.4 or PHP 5.0 at your choice
- MySQL Support, One Database Per Account - 4.0 or 4.1 at your choice.
- SSI Support (Server Side Includes)
- Zend Optimizer
- ioncube loader
- Fast & Reliable Servers
- Instant Activation
- Technical Support
- preinstalled phpMyAdmin to Administer Your Database
- Web-Based File Manager
- Free Website Tools
- Custom error page - all errors are redirected to account index
- Free Subdomain: yourchoice.orgfree.com or or yourchoice.ueuo.com or yourchoice.6te.net


And much much more, though they do put ads in your site, but u get to choose where the ad gets to be displayed , they have 4 options, and all ads are non-adult and very decent to the eyes (like no irritating bright banners) .

This hosting service is better then any really cheap ad free service as far as I think. Give it a try. I am sure you will love it.
:lol:

[netgal06]

If it just for a personal site then free hosting is fine, if it is for e-commerce go for paid hosting. If you must use free hosting atleast buy a domain name and redirect it. But honestly you wont be taken seriously if it is a business unless its paid hosting.