Free web page hosting - what's wrong with it?

Free web page hosting seems like a good idea to those who want to make their first site. You sign up, you get your free web space, you upload or create your web pages, they go live to the world - and everyone is happy, right?

Well, maybe. Your users have to look at a lot of ads that perhaps you wouldn't have on your free site if you could stop them. You have a limited amount of disk space on the server, which limits what you can do. If your site takes off and starts to get a lot of traffic, you would like to monetise it, but you can't, because affiliate or Adsense ads are against the rules of your free web page hosting provider. The bandwidth limit is also reached because of the high traffic, and your site is choked off for the remainder of the month. You are no longer happy, and neither are your visitors.

What many people who start off with a simple, free site do not realise is that the potential to reach and audience and the potential to make money and so transform your life are virtually unlimited on the web. What you want to avoid is the scenario where you actually have a viable business or information site whose potential is undermined by the limitations of the technical infrastructure behind it.

Using free web page hosting for your web pages is like handing your work over to someone with no obligations to you whatsoever, and saying 'Look after this for me, please. I'm not paying you, so I'm not expecting much.'

On the other hand, when you use a commercial host, they will make certain guarantees, because they are in business to keep you, the customer happy - they will provide support, they will guarantee the site is up 99.5% of the time, they will backup your files, they will give you stats, and someone will answer the phone 24/7 if you call with a problem. In addition, you can do what you like with your site, because it's yours. You're not depending on goodwill, you have a legal relationship with your commercial host.

With the competition among web hosting services driving down monthly costs to their lowest ever levels, think before you select free instead of paid web page hosting - you may regret the wrong decision later.