Free Web Hosting Costs You Too Much

Author: Ian McAllister

Free web hosting discourages search engines

Your host should offer what you need, not only now but for when your business grows.

Why do you want free web hosting? If you are just planning to have some fun putting up a website then your ISP probably offers you a free website

If you want to make money from your website, then choosing free web hosting is the worst thing you can do. This is mostly for non-technical reasons

You want people to see your site.Most people find sites by using search engines. So you want a site that the search engines will find.

Search engines ignore free hosts, or give them negative marks so that you have to get many good marks from a good site before you can overcome the handicap of free hosts. Don't go into online business if you can't afford the best host.

If you are determined to use a free host, you will have to pay for advertising, banners, links, inclusion in newsletters etc, none of which are as effective as the free search engine facilities.

Why not use your ISP

You can ask your Internet Service Provider to host your domain. However your ISP is likely to charge you just as much for host facilities as the best hosts, without offering half as many facilities. Many ISPs even refuse to host commercial sites. They say the facilities are for personal sites only.

Important things to consider

Space - 300 Megabytes. It's true, you won't use all this space at once, but as your site grows into a large site, you don't want to be restricted for space.
Secure Site - if you collect money from your site. This is mostly to keep the customer happy. Hackers aren't really queued up waiting to intercept your messages, as the media like to imply.
Password protected pages. You might want to sell an electronic book for instance. Once you receive the money, you send the customer his password to download the book.
CGI script facilities - You don't need these as a beginner, but you won't always be a beginner.
Autoresponders - to follow up enquiries. Of course, you could answer all emails personally by cutting and pasting into say ten different documents before sending them by e-mail. But it's easier to get the host computer to handle it all for you.
Traffic Analysis - You are working with a blindfold without at least some traffic analysis.
Log Files to help you work out the success of your marketing campaign.
Catchall e-mail - anything@yourdomain.com will reach you.
Newsletters - a great idea if you are capable of producing regular newsletters
Pretty Good Privacy - encryption only available in the USA
Shopping Carts
FTP - (File Transfer Protocol) used to transfer your files to your host computer.
Anonymous FTP - for visitors to download software etc.
Online Support manual - particularly important if you work when the support team is asleep.