Difference between free hosting and paid hosting services

[bennie]

What is the Difference between free hosting and paid hosting services?

[kinah1]

what is it ?

[John23]

Re :

Hello,

As name suggested free hosting provides service in free. Where for paid hosting, We have to pay for hosting. Paid or cheap hosting is better then free hosting. Because free hosting providers will not provide 24/7 support.

[stivelowell]

You require hosting, if you desire your website under the domain. If you have a few bucks a month you may afford a web hosting plan.

[Rastet123]

Website owners are often faced with a difficult decision right from the beginning of their online venture. This decision is to choose a web hosting service for their website. Not only are there hundreds of web hosting companies offer their services at affordable prices, but there are also some that offer free hosting to their customers. Here we look in detail at the major differences between having a free hosting service versus a paid hosting service and the impact it can have on your website.

Price

The first difference is the price. Free webhosting allows website owners to host the website completely free of charge. There are no fees involved in uploading files to their server. There are no fees involved for keeping the website hosted on the server over time. Paid webhosting services on the other hand charge a small fee for website owners to have their website hosted. Payment to web hosting services is usually prescription based on a monthly interval. You may choose to sign up for 12 or 24 months and receive huge discounts or you can stick to a month by month plan to make sure you are happy with the service.

Speed

One important aspect of webhosting you need to look is bandwidth. This determines the speed that data is transferred from the hosting server to the Internet user visiting your site The greater the bandwidth, the faster your site will load and the faster users can see videos, pictures and download files from. Free web hosting services usually restrict the amount of bandwidth to your website and as a result this will affect your website's loading time as well as speed when visitors are trying to browse your site. If you have a relatively new site without many visitors yet or your site does not consist of many pictures and videos then the restriction on bandwidth have little or no effect on you. Conversely, if you are planning to grow your website or have a large website with lots of graphics then a paid web hosting option with unlimited bandwidth is your best solution

Space:

The amount of web space you need for your website is also important if you are planning to grow your website, or at least have the flexibility to be able to expand it at a later date. Free web hosting services usually limit the amount of web space allowed by you web site, the number of pages your website can have or both. It is therefore important that if you have a website that can grow to being quite large and significant you are going to need server space from a web hosting company that provides you with plenty. Many paid web hosting services also provide unlimited space for your website, which helps put your mind at ease.

Functionality:

Functionality and control of your website is probably one of the most important aspects when considering a web hosting solution. You want to be in control of your own website and have be able to do whatever you want with it. Most free web hosting accounts do not allow you to use your own domain name. As an alternative, you must use a subdomain or internal domain of their own website. This can be seen as a drawback since you will then have poor branding of your products and services. In addition, many free hosting options place their own ads on your website. You cannot remove these ads and they may be annoying and distracting to your potential online visitors.

In conclusion, pricing would be the only advantage a free webhosting service would have compared to a paid webhosting service. It is also a known fact that it may also be costing you more and causing you to sacrifice more if you do not have an adequate and reliable web hosting service for your website. If you have taken the initiative to start your own website then your next step is to find an affordable webhosting solution with no restrictions.

[aqinm78]

There are advantages and disadvantages for both paid and free web hosting. But it actually depends on what ones requirements are and what one is trying to achieve.


Advantages of Free Web Hosting


- As it is free it is the one of the most obvious advantage.


- Free web space can be used to practice programming. Some free web hosting plans support a programming language such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Cold fusion or JSP but several do not support all the languages.


- For creating a small personal website free web hosting plan is great.


Disadvantages of Free Web Hosting


- The majority of free web hosts cannot afford to offer 24/7 or any support as they are offering free hosting.


- Many free web hosts do not allow FTP access, which is an obstacle if one has many files to upload this one of the major flaws with free web hosts.


- Many free web hosts place their banner and text ads on the website.


- Very few free web hosts with their plans offer control panel.


- Ones website is placed in a sub-domain or a folder with a large number of free hosts, which results in poor search engine rankings most of the time.


- Much disk space or data transfer is not offered by free web hosting plans. This can be a problem if one have a lot of large files or if ones website generates a lot of traffic.


Advantages of Paid Web Hosting


- Most paid web hosts offer 24/7 supports.


- One will not have any unwanted text or banner ads placed on ones website with paid hosting.


- Control panel such as cPanel, Vdeck, Plesk or Ensim which offer features like web stats, the ability to password protect directories, and the ability to create web based email accounts are being offered by a lot of paid web hosting plans.


- One will have ones own domain name (consumerswebsite.com) which will not only result in better search engine rankings, but will also look more professional. Thus ones website will not be placed in a sub-domain or folder.


- As with paid web hosting one gets more disk space and data transfer, one can add more files to ones website and it can also handle more traffic.


- Most paid web hosts are offering FTP access.


- Couple programming languages such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, the majority of paid web hosting plans is supporting Cold fusion and JSP.


Disadvantage of Paid Web Hosting


- It’s not free this is the only major disadvantage of paid web hosting.