What are the differences between free and paid web hosting?

Both free and paid web hosting services offer web hosting so besides the paying part what are the differences?

Basically free web hosting services provides web hosting with limited features for example,

1) Limited bandwidth whereas with paid web hosting you are guaranteed a certain amount of bandwidth every month. With paid hosting usually you will not be faced with a slow loading website or down time which could impact the number of visits and popularity of your website.

2) Limited web space is also another problem with free web hosting services for the serious webmaster. Most free web hosting services only provide the webmaster with a limited disk space, once you have exceed the disk space you are given the option to upgrade to their paid plans with offer more features such as more bandwidth and disk space etc.

3) With free web hosting services you are also only able to set a limited number of email accounts for example, only 5 email accounts are allowed to be created unlike paid web hosting services. The service that I use allows me to create unlimited number of email accounts.

4) Most paid web hosting provides security and privacy information whereas free web hosting services may not have such features to securely guard transfer of information, payment etc.

5) Advertisements usually are placed on your websites hosted on free services. This hurts the visitor value especially when you know that some of these visitors that click on those ads will be distract and leave your website for the page that is advertised. Oh yes most of the time you will not earn any commissions for these advertisement. Again there are free advertisement, free web hosting services but the features are very limited.

6) With free web hosting services you cannot add more than 1 domain or create more than 1 subdomains. Sometimes you are not able to create subdomains at all!

7) If you are like me who loves PHP, Joomla, WordPress etc with free web hosting you can’t create or install these fantastic tools, and that totally kills my enthusiasm for webmastering or designing for any website.

There are virtually no or if any little technical support for free web hosting. Trust me I have tried a variety of free web hosting services (please do not forget I review web hosting services ^_^) and the support is not as good as paid services especially when you really need help sometimes you need to wait for days for a reply. I do not blame free web hosting services as there are tons of users and timely support could be tough.

9) Credibility is a big part of the equation if you are setting up a business or a personal website that you would like people to know. A free website with tons of unsolicited advertisement with limited features just does not present a good image. If you would like to create your own personal or business website and project a professional image and web presence paid hosting is the way to go.

10) Lastly just for your information free web hosting services can take your website down anytime. Yes, you hear me right. This is because they own the services, if you breach or break their terms or policy or if they feel you have done so they can take your whole website down. And I have seen this happen to many webmasters that use free web services. For example, blogger, look at the top and you see a flag, if viewers or visitors do not like your content or website, people can either flag you or report your website and trust me your website could go down.

This post seems to be more inclined towards paid web hosting because it is written for the serious webmaster, blogger or web designer in mind. If you really are serious about your web presence, longevity of your presence online, paid web hosting is the way to go.

And just for your information it doesn’t really cost much. For example, Hostmonster allows you to host unlimited domains on one account with unlimited email accounts and how much does this cost you? Does $5.95 (promo price see below) sound to you? For less than a Happy Meal I am sure most will pay for their freedom online to create even for personal interest or hobby. Well for me I definitely will it is a very small price to pay for freedom to create and express myself and I personally feel it is within reach of most people. For businesses, this is a no brainer! For $5.95 (promo price see below) I can create my own web presence and web store. In the physical brick and mortar world setting up a shop could cost you hundreds and thousands of dollars.

Just shop around, take a look at the reviews posted on this site and you be the best judge.