Websites are more crucial than ever in today’s digital world for establishing your online presence.
In order to build a powerful brand, a well-designed website is essential.
As a marketing tool, websites provide you with an edge over your competition.
You may get a list of firms that will host your websites for free by doing a simple Google search.
Because of a restricted budget and a lack of knowledge, free hosting may appeal to you. It might even be a benefit in disguise.
You’ll soon see, though, that the offer isn’t as fantastic as it seems. This may seem like an excellent offer, but there are several downsides to free website hosting. It is possible that you will spend more in the long term than if you started with premium hosting.
The following are 10 reasons why free hosting is not a good option:
- No Scalability
Because you didn’t pay for hosting, you’re restricted in what you can do with your website. In most cases, your website is incapable of growing in size. The problem is that as your business grows, your website will not be able to keep up.
Your website won’t be able to manage the surge of new visitors if you choose a free hosting plan because of the limited capacity of these services. As a consequence, websites load slowly and experience frequent outages. If your website isn’t up and running, you’re losing clients, readers, and other stakeholders. The loss of clients equates to a decrease in profits.
Good news: Premium hosting doesn’t have to be out of reach for most people’s budgets. When you buy hosting, you’re investing in the future of your website and your company’s growth.
With a premium hosting company, you can simply and affordably update your bandwidth limitations if you go over them. Even downtime may result in consumer loss, so you don’t have to worry about a sluggish website.
2. Poor Performance
In the end, free hosting services usually fall short when it comes to one thing: performance.
The better the user experience, the quicker your website will load. In addition, a positive user experience increases your audience’s likelihood of generating leads or making a purchase.
Visitors will quit your site if it takes too long to load, and they’ll soon stop coming back. Because you aren’t paying for their resources, free web hosting makes shortcuts.
As a whole, the servers aren’t powerful enough to host a contemporary website with a lot of dynamic features. In spite of the evident influence on site performance, you should test your site’s performance to be sure.
3. Security
Protect your website against cyber-attacks and incursion as a webmaster. An established web host, in addition to ensuring that your password is secure and your data are current, may help.
Most free web providers offer little to no security against cyberattacks. Often, they have security holes that hackers might exploit to get access to websites housed on them.
For those that need safe and secure hosting, there are various web hosting services. All of this is offered at very fair rates.
4. Poor or No Support
You’ll normally receive at least 24-hour email or live chat assistance when you pay for hosting, and some providers even include phone help as an added perk.
To put it another way, this is important since you’ll almost probably be in a scenario where you’ll need help. There is generally no assistance available when you host your site on a free WordPress platform.
If you need assistance, you may turn to a forum or another kind of community forum. For most free hosts, the best-case scenario is a bare-bones support system that relies on community forums.
There is no customer assistance for these free web hosting providers. If your website goes down, you’ll have to work it out on your own since they won’t be there to assist you.
For the most part, you’ll be on your own if you have any inquiries or problems, and you’ll have to wait for email support to answer.
5. SEO Impact
SEO may have a more significant influence on your company now that we know that a sluggish site and increasing downtime can harm your website’s ranking in search results. It takes time to build a strong internet presence, as everyone who has invested in SEO knows.
Not only will you lose all you’ve worked for, but your potential to rank top in search results will suffer as well if your free hosting provider shuts down your website.
Search engine giant Google sets rigorous criteria for websites that wish to be at the top of the search results. The negative impacts of free hosting described above make it more difficult for your website to rank because of its poor quality in accordance with Google Standards.
You won’t be able to get your business seen in search engine results. This is a huge issue for your brand. With a professional, premium web hosting service, you’ll have total control over your website and an SEO-friendly domain name.
When you choose a trustworthy web hosting firm, you contribute to the growth of your brand on Google. Your professional online presence and supporting, premium web hosting services will provide you with a higher chance of success as you continue to push yourself and realize your full potential.
6. Restriction in Connecting a Custom Domain
A lack of control over your website is evident when comparing free web hosting to commercial shared hosting. The number of options you may use to configure your site will be limited when you first start.
It’s possible that you won’t be able to link your own domain. In general, you don’t have any influence over your hosting or domain, however, this varies from provider to service. A subdomain offered by the web hosting company would be required.
7. Ads
The truth is that no one enjoys advertisements, especially ones that have nothing to do with your brand. When it comes to website hosting, it’s always better to pay for it. These adverts slow down your website and make it less user-friendly.
What about when you’re on your phone and you’re trying to close an advertisement? For some reason, pressing that small “x” button is making you want to leave half of the time. It’s difficult to influence which adverts display on your site.
Ads are the primary source of revenue for most of these free online services. You are in charge of the website’s content and design, but they are the ones who profit from the adverts. Distracting, obtrusive, and unattractive, these commercials should be avoided at all costs. What’s worse is that your savvy rivals may be able to pay these free website hosting businesses to advertise on your site. What a brilliant way to sabotage your own business!
8. Limited Resources
You’ll always be on the edge if you register your website with a free hosting provider since your resources will be restricted. Each server will have a maximum amount of storage and RAM that may be utilized. A three- or four-page website will not be supported by the restricted resources.
9. Restrictions in Website Transfer
In the terms of service of most free hosting services, there is a tendency to include some ambiguous wording.
As a result, despite the fact that you may think you do, you do not really own your website. As a result, your hosting company is likely to own all of your material, too.
That implies you can’t reprint any of your works, and you can’t sell your website or its content. Suppose you’re a photographer or artist who wants to showcase your work to potential clients by posting photographs to your website. Your “free” web hosting terms of service take effect, and you no longer possess the rights to the information you’ve just uploaded.
Because of this, it is practically hard to move your website to a new provider after you have decided that you need better services. If you can’t pay for the improvements required by your free hosting service, there’s no point in searching for a more reasonable, reputable supplier.
Because you don’t own your website, content, or domain, you can’t move to a better provider.
10. Downtimes
Web hosting is a good example of the adage “you get what you pay for.” Free web providers, in contrast to renowned paying hosts, do not often give a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee. Their servers routinely fall down for maintenance, either due to hardware failure or simply carelessness. Additionally, you will have a hard time reaching customer care.
It is probable that many individuals will be interested in the service if they can access it for free. In addition to those who desire to construct their own website, malevolent users also take use of the service. As long as they can transmit spam, distribute unauthorized software, and execute DDoS attack scripts at no cost, cybercriminals will take advantage.
A single user might easily cause the whole server to become unstable, making all of the service’s sites unavailable and perhaps resulting in protracted downtimes. Your company, project, or portfolio may suffer as a result of the outage, which might end up costing you more than you intended. As a result, you will not be entitled to any monetary compensation.
Conclusion
Free website hosting is a terrible idea for a number of reasons. It won’t save you money or time in the long run. Think about the long-term aims of your website before choosing a web hosting service. Do you need someone you can trust to help you? Is it possible to have strong SEO with fast loading times? What about a clean, uncluttered look that doesn’t include any ads?
Before committing to a web hosting plan, keep these things in mind. For a long-term investment in your website, you should begin with a solid foundation of paid hosting and a well-known domain name.
