Compare Free Web Hosting Services

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Here are links to a few of the better hosting services:

Low Cost Web Hosting Services                          Free Web Hosting Services
www.GoDaddy.com                                   x10 Hosting Webhostingpad                                         HelioHost
POW Web Hosting                                     HostCrypt
Host Gator                                               Google Sites

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The advantage of a free web hosting service is that it cost you nothing to create and host your website on the internet. However, there are some limitations and disadvantages as compared to a paid hosting service. They may include less user friendly website building capabilities, limited support, and reduced reliability. Many of these services don’t stay in business for a long time. Still a free service may be adequate and the most cost effective for your website, if you compare and select the best for your application.

There are several important things to consider before choosing a free web hosting service. Fortunately, the sites listed above have already compared most of these factors for you. The relative importance of these factors in selecting the best free hosting service depends upon the type of website that you plan to create and future growth potential.

A free hosting service may include free domain name(s) or it may require you to have your own domain name. To get a domain name registered costs an annual fee. If the free hosting service provides free domain names, they may actually be sub-domain names and not a top level domain name. A sub-domain URL is longer since it includes part of the top level URL. This may not be of concern unless you think it would make your site appear to be less serious.

Free hosting services make money through upgrades. Limiting the amount of disk space is one way of getting to sell you an upgrade. If the limit on the free hosting service is less than 1 G (i.e. Gigabyte), you will need to carefully consider the size of your planned site and potential growth. Obviously, the more disk space the service provides the better, since it will reduce your chances for needing an upgrade.

Bandwidth has to do with the amount of data that can be transferred during a unit of time. If the limit imposed on bandwidth is less than 1 G per month, you definitely need to consider how much you will need to support your estimated traffic, uploading of files, use of email, etc. The limit varies a lot among free hosting services; some have a limit of less than1 G while others allow 100 G or more. If your site is a business, you don’t want the bandwidth limit to prevent visitors from getting access to your website.

Databases are needed to support the running of some programs and website tools, e.g. Wikipedia. MySQL is a multi-user database management system often used for web applications. A few free hosting services provide free MySQL database support with limits on the number of databases and their size. If MySQL support is provided, it will allow you to run some applications that you would not be able to use without an upgrade.

The number of domains or sub-domains that you can have for free is important, if you have plans to create additional sites. Keeping them all with the same hosting service makes managing them easier and prevents you from having to learn additional software and procedures. Keep in mind that free hosting of domains and free registering of domain names are two different things. If you are allowed multiple top level domains, you will most likely have to pay an annual fee to keep them registered to you. If you are provided sub-domain names, they most likely will be free.

Scripts are automated ways of getting information to and from computers relating to HTML(HyperText Markup Language - the predominant markup language for Web pages) code, forms, etc. They include FrontPage Extensions, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor – used to process data passed from HTML forms), Java (a programming language allowing for interactive communications) and SSI(Server Side Includes - allows a user's request to be fulfilled by running a script directly on the web server). PHP and Java scripts are common in website HTML code. Some affiliate ads contain Java script.

In exchange for free hosting; some hosting services require their ads be posted on your site. Often it is in the form of a header or a footer banner. However, there are some that do not require any of their ads be posted on your free site.

Depending on the nature of your site, a web hosting service ad may detract from the site theme and, therefore, be undesirable.

Being allowed to post ads on your site is important, if you are creating a business website. Some free hosting services don’t allow business sites or posting of ads. You need this capability if you are planning to make money with your site by participating with affiliate programs and AdSense.

Another way hosting services can receive benefits from providing free hosting is to require you to promote their service by posting ads on forums. This requirement may not be so easily detected until you read the agreement statement or user reviews. If you honestly think their service is great and have the time, this may be acceptable but I’m not sure how you can know that they have great service until you have used it for a while.

Some of the free hosting services provide a control panel (e.g. cPanel) where you have access to many capabilities and features. It could include a getting started wizard, a website building software package, a file manager, an auto-installer, ability to setup email accounts, ability to make backup files, traffic analyzing tools, etc. Even though the capabilities included may be less than with a paid service, those that are provided can be very useful.

11. Dedicated vs Shared IP

Tutorials are helpful when doing something for the first time. Sometimes video tutorials are provided and available from the control panel. They show you how to use the website building software, setup an email account. etc. They can make a procedure much easier to understand.

It is always a good idea to backup your work in case the server containing your website crashes. A backup capability sometimes comes with the ePanel.

A reliable hosting service is important, especially if your site is a business and you want high page rank. Often, the free hosting service will state their uptime as a percentage, usually better than 95%. Also, user reviews will talk to uptime.

Many of the free hosting services provide some free support to their users; the more the better. There will most likely be times when you will need a little assistance to accomplish some task.