Free Hosting Vs Paid Hosting

By Ashish Monga

A very common question, many people ask is, “Why is there a need to go for paid hosting, when there are millions of companies providing free website hosting?” This question is asked especially by those who are in early stages of development as a Webmaster or are thinking about launching a new website. This is indeed a sensible question and hence one, which ought to be answered before someone actually takes out money to pay a web host.

There are two very important questions; you need to ask yourself before you decide whether you need to go with a free hosting provider or rather pay for your hosting. The first thing to ask is, what do you want out of your site, i.e. what is the root cause of your site’s existence? Is it just a personal web page which you intend to make, to let your friends and family members from around the world know about you or is it a commercial website where you wish to attract traffic and then convert that traffic into money by some means, for e.g. by selling a product, by building a community and selling advertising space, etc. The second thing to ask is, whoever your target audience is, how do you want them to perceive your website? Do you want them to think it is a professional website managed by a reputable business/person or do you want them to think it is just another one of those thousands websites online, trying to sell something, without even having the budget to set-up a professional website (More relevant if your site is selling something).

Before we go into the nitty-gritty of the above two questions it is important to know why do free hosting providers provide free hosting? Free web hosting companies provide free hosting so that they can sell ad-space on the websites their members build, and hence you will notice most free hosting companies flood websites with advertisements that are out of the web site owner’s control.

Going back to the above questions, if your primary reason for setting up a website is just having a personal web page with information about you, your pictures, and other things related to your life, free web hosting might suffice, but if you are looking to set-up a website providing information about your business, or intend to make money online with the help of your website, it is imperative to go for a paid host so that you can have control over your website and your traffic.

Paid hosting offers a wide range of facilities such as, detailed web statistics, which allow you to understand your traffic, and run your advertising campaigns accordingly, cgi-bin for running your own scripts, php, mySQL databases, and the ability to support your own domain name. Having an own domain name is indispensable if you intend to portray a professional image on the web, and for that reason alone, it can be said that paid hosting is a must.

Copyright © 2005 WebHostAuditor.com
More Webmaster Articles