Free web hosting with no ads - is it possible?

There are some web hosts which offer free web hosting with no ads.

The drawback is that all free hosts have to make money somehow, and since serving ads is the main way most free hosts do it, if they do not do this they will have to use other methods to make it worth their while to offer free hosting to the public.

You have to decide whether the 'other methods' are acceptable to you. If they are indeed offering free web hosting with no ads or pop ups, these other methods might include things like a requirement to get referrals from other people to a paid version of their service, a requirement to post to forums and link to the host site, with the aim of getting clicks on advertising indirectly, or making you sign up and agree to receive email offers from various sources. Another common method is not to have ads showing on your site, but to have ads displayed to you whenever you login and administer your site with their control panel or file manager.

These requirements are fairly inocuous, and would be seen by most people as acceptable if you are getting free hosting in return.

But what you may wish to avoid in return for getting free hosting with no ads are the other methods some free hosts use.

For example, you may get free hosting only if you actually pay for a domain name. The fee for this can be excessive compared with direct domain name registration services, most of which charge only about $10 a year to register a domain.

Or, the host may actually be selling your email address to spammers.

Another problem with free hosts is that they are able to offer a free service simply because they are one-man-bands with no real infrastructure or staff to ensure the server is actually up and serving pages most of the time. If your site is down a lot your visitors will not be able to see it, and worse, the search engines may assume it is gone and remove it from their listings.

For these reasons, many people who don't want ads on their site give up on this 'free' option and look for a cheap paid hosting alternative.

Since shared hosting plans are now so cheap, you could consider . Go Daddy is the host we use ourselves.