Comparison between Free web hosting and Paid Web Hosting

Free web hosting Facilities
It's for free. You don't need to pay for domain name.

Free web hosting Limitations
Your URL will be something like http://merchant.50webs.com or http://www.50webs.com/merchant. As I noticed above, the advantage is that you don't need to pay for domain. But note that if you move your website to another provider in the future you can loose some or all your traffic.
Your provider will probably include ads to your pages - usually 1 or 2 banners, sometimes popup windows. If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn't allow it.
Free hosts usually allow lower bandwith then paid hosts and a lot of them don't offer futures like PHP and MySQL.
A lot of free hosts change their Terms and conditions during some time. If your free host offers hosting without ads now, don't be surprised when banner or popup appears on your site in the future.

Paid web hosting Facilities
You can host your own domain. If you decide to change the web hosting provider in the future, you easily transfer the domain to the new provider and don't loose your traffic.
Most paid hosts offer 24/7 support via email or live chat and some of them provide toll-free phone support.
You can expect better uptime then on free host. Some paid hosts offer uptime guarantee.
Paid hosts usually offer enough disk space and bandwith. Futures like PHP and MySQL are standard. Even if you are not programmer you can download plenty of free PHP scripts from internet.
Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting
Merchant Account, Find Merchant Account

not really ... i've seen some free hosts which allows alot of b/w but they are not reliable and i've seen some free hosts which are more reliable then paid hosts ...

so it depends on a person's opinion

I have never seen a free host which is better than a paid host. But as smub says, it depends on a person's opinion.

I like hosting only when paid. I normally dont prefer free hosts except during emergencies.

Nothing beats paid hosting, but some free hosting comes very close, like zeeblo.com, there you can have YOUR OWN DOMAIN, and you dont need to have one of those crazy urls that they give you, i might be switching to paid hosting if i find the right plan that suits my needs

Well, i dont think there is much difference between some great free hosts and other paid hosts other than the fact that free hosts arnt reliable and you can get deleted anyday. But in paid hosting you are getting what you paid for, so as you know there is no such thing as free lunch, free hosting has strings attached

__________________
WebsPassage Directory - PR5 - $2 per listing

Paid hosting can't be compared with free hosting. Almost each free hosting puts ads and other links on your site and they offer very small disk space & bandwidth.
Paid hosting offers a lot of other features and server speed is really good.

Your right. I haven't come across a single free host that doesn't supply a no-ads service. And I've never seen a paid host with ads.

The only problem I have with free hosting is that there is nothing you can do if it goes down. They can just shut you down for no reason and there is just about nothing you can do except move on.

I have had many free hosts just go down on me after a month or so of using them. I've switch to paid hosting ever since, it is much more reliable than free hosting.

I'd also have to agree. Not just that but they seem to be overrun by support emails and what not so it's quite hard to get them to fix something that's gone horribly wrong with your hosting account.