Free Hosting - A Real Bargain?

With the availability of many free hosting offers so
prevalent on the Internet, are they the bargain they
seem to be?

I must admit the offer of free hosting does have major
appeal however, rarely is something of value given away
for nothing. At first glance, free hosting sounds like a
good deal! Upon closer inspection, you'll find close to
100% of them not suitable for a business website at all.

Before getting one of the free hosting packages, the
person needs to have a specific idea what the website
is going to be used for. Is it personal or for business?

If it's a personal website that's going to be used to post
the family newsletter, photographs and so on, it's a
perfectly good use of one. On the other hand, if it's a
website built for commercial purposes, the free hosting
packages are of limited utility to a business operation.

Most of the well documented opposition to free websites
invariably mentions the use of very long URL's as one of
the main examples but there are more fundamental reasons
you shouldn't ever use a free website as your main business
website.

Most business websites will need advanced mail handling
and script hosting capabilities not offered by the free web
hosting accounts. As your business grows and you realize the
need for the above, your step onto the next business level
is severely hampered.

These are services most Internet businesses need that are
not provided by free hosting packages:

CGI Scripting
PHP Scripting
Autoresponders
MySQL Databases

On account of the lack of scripting support you'll find many
of the tools of eCommerce will not function on your free
website, such as: shopping cart software and order tracking,
javascripts, to name a few.

If at a later stage of development you decide to order some
of the above support items "a la carte," you'll find out the
outrageous cost of them...so much for a free hosting
account!

All the above shouldn't imply there are no legitimate
business uses for a free hosting account, there are!
They can be used for hosting pages that link back to your
main website, for re-directed URL's, for hosting any kind of
web page that doesn't need any of the advanced support
options of your main business website.

They can also be used for showcasing individual products
contained within your main website with a link back to your
landing page. They can increase your SE ranking if they
are well designed with tight, relevant copy that goes well
with your main website. Quality and accuracy do have their
payoff!

Another important, and often erroneous point, is that it will
help your main website have a wider appeal to many of the
SE's because of the incoming links. However, the incoming
links from free hosting accounts are not considered quality
links by the SE's.

Used with insight and vision, free hosting services can ad
value to your web operation. The main point to keep in mind
is that the same care and preparation given to your main
website should also be given to your free websites. The
quality of the writing and production should be to help your
main website, not to detract from it.

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by Francisco Aloy

(C)2004 Francisco Aloy
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