Advantages and Disadvantages of free web hosting plans
Free Web Hosting
Many web hosting plans are available which offer us a variety of features at a wide range of prices. There are web hosting plans for dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, VPN or free hosting plans. Each of them has its own advantages or disadvantages. High costs involved in most of such hosting plans become a deterrent for most of the new comers. Thus to help such individuals who cannot afford spending on a domain name tend to go for free hosting plans. Although such plans can serve their purpose in case of individual use, they are not advised for commercial purposes.
For example, Google has launched a similar service named Google Sites. Using this service, existing users of Google can get a website of their own. The name of such websites is in the form sites.google.com/user_name. This can be used only for personal purposes and the users can choose from a set of available templates and features. The users can not add effects of their choice and cannot take part in various business activities using such website. Further, users can get such personal websites at Blogger.com or WordPress.com which are popular blogging platforms.
However, due to a variety of reasons, it is always advised to go for a paid hosting. The most important reason behind that is you don’t get a completely unique name. Thus, your client or a prospective buyer would not get much impressed by that. Moreover, such plans are accompanied by lots of advertisements as these are sponsored plans. You might get put off by such website. You cannot take part in various business activities. For example Google requires you to have a unique website of your own in the form of xyz.com to take advantage of Google AdWords.
You cannot add various features of your choice in such websites. There are some limited options available regarding designing of such website. Moreover, you get a limited space and bandwidth in such case. There are chances that you would not get around the clock technical support. Even if such support is existent, the response time would be slow and you may need to wait for even hours to get your problem resolved. However, Google Sites has a vibrant forum with lots of active users to help you out. Moreover, the support generally turns up quite quickly.
Some scripts require an automated service known as cron jobs to run regularly. This is not supported by the free websites and these do not provide a database or script programming such as PHP. Further, these websites don’t have efficient security mechanism in place. Thus, such a site can become a hunting ground for viruses, Trojan Horses etc which may steal your personal information like credit card and bank account information.
Unsolicited mails known as spam are another major problem with such hosting plans. You email inbox tends to get flooded with such emails. These mails may even contain links to malicious content such as pornographic material and viruses which may hack your computer and cause loss of critical information such as passwords, credit card details etc.
