Comparing No-cost versus Low-cost web hosting

What is the Job of a Hosting Service?
Every web site on the internet must be stored on a computer server somewhere. That server is called a host. The host not only stores all the data for your website, but must provide 24-hour a day access so visitors can access your site at any time. Obviously it costs the host something to make all that happen, which is why web hosts generally charge a set-up fee, possibly a design fee if they do the work, and then charge a monthly service fee based on the space and services they provide.These fees can range from a few dollars to thousands of dollars a month.

If your traffic is extensive you might need a dedicated server, which means you essentially have your own computer server, although it is managed by your host. this is the most expensive route and falls beyond the scope of this website. What we're talking about here is how to get the services your business needs, without the set-up charges and huge monthly fees.

How Free Hosting Services Get Paid.
In the early days of the internet a concept called "free hosting" began to catch on. It went wild for a time, but over the past two years the free hosts started droppig like flies. Today there are still a few free hosts but not as many, and there are more restrictions. To understand why, let's take a look at what the Free hosts have to face.

Free hosts still have the same overhead costs as paid hosts, but take different approaches to generating their income. The most common way is by either placing banner ads on your web pages or other types of forced ads. Various advertisers then pay the host for each banner they serve in the hopes that you or your site visitors will find their message appealing. It works something like television commercials. Since we've all grown accustomed to seeing banners on most every web site, it's not too bad. When they add pop-up ads, it gets a little uglier, but still tolerable in light of the cost.

Everyone gets what they want -- the advertiser gets his message out, the host gets paid, and you get a free web site. One caution: While there are a few bannerless free services out there, you should examine them carefully. They might suck you in with no banners, but switch unexpectedly to banners a few months down the road, or worse, go out of business leaving you high and dry. At the very least their hope is to upgrade you to a paid plan with more bells and whistles later.

What about Ad Banners?
So what happens if you want to put your own banner ads on your pages, or sell them yourself to a third party whose products might interest your site visitors? In this case you might be better off going for a paid host, or paying for a bannerless upgrade which is an option offered by almost all free hosts. Bear in mind too, that a few free hosts specifically prohibit you from placing ad banners other than their's on your pages.

Four Key Areas to Carefully Compare.
Four key areas to look at when choosing paid versus free web hosting, are: (1) web space offered, (2) extras such as email and FTP, (3) customer support, and (4) server reliability. Most free hosts strive hard to offer the best service they can provide, because they want to keep you as a customer. However the hard reality is that since you aren't paying them, they aren't too enthusiastic about helping you beyond the very basic services.

Free Hosting's biggest areas of weakness are in customer support, and placing severe restrictions on disk space offered and monthly traffic allowed. If your needs are small, you can survive without tons of web space and bandwidth, but support is where you will run into trouble. There is nothing more frustrating than operating a business and losing sales because your site is down -- or worse, not being able to reach a human being to complain about it. If your business is critical you better choose a paid host with a great track record. They have a much greater desire to make you happy since they want your money. It's a simple fact of business.

Making The Final Choice.
So which option is best for you? While free web hosting might be just the ticket for many personal or organization websites, it is probably not the best choice for most business sites. Our goal with this website is to provide you with as much data as we can, to help you decide for yourself which host works best for you. Read over all the material here, including the reviews, then check out each site for yourself. Hopefully you can find the web hosting provider that fits the bill for your business.

<Back - home - next>

1. Comparing "no-cost" versus "low-cost" web hosting
Free hosting works fine, but make sure you know what you're getting.

2. Do you want your business site to "show" or to "sell?"
Pinpoint the mission of your business web site before you build it.

3. Three key ingredients of every successful business web site
The concept is simple, but you must include all three elements.

4. Reviews of 25 low-cost and no-cost business web hosts
We compare and rate some of the most popular web hosting services.

5. How We Did it - Our Story
If we can do it, anybody can do it.

Additional Reading:
Finding a Niche Target Market
Attracting and Keeping New Website Customers
Increasing Your Website Traffic