Why you should
avoid FREE Website Hosting
There are many free website
hosting offers, in fact when we began developing pageBuzz.com we
offered free hosting in an effort to get thousands of customers
to test our system at no cost to us. But over time, the free
customers became a headache doing illegal stuff and jepordizing
the network so we terminated the program completely.
I have to assume other
companies having free hosting will incur the same problems and I
would like to explain why free website hosting is just a plain
bad idea.
No Credibility
Ad based
income for the host
Host has no
responsibility to you
Loads of
hackers
Unreliable
bandwidth and infrastructure
No support
Nobody cares
Poor Network
Reputation
Damage domain
forever being on a spammy network
No Credibility
The first and foremost reason
not to use a free website hosting plan is because it take away
any credibility your website has. I see ads constantly for
website design and they lead to free website hosting.
Who is going to pay a
webmaster to build a website when that webmaster will not even
pay for their own website?
If you are a contractor and
have a website that website is to get you customers. If the see
that it is free and they will notice that first, they assume you
are not reliable at all and can't even afford a few dollars a
month for a website.
Instead of getting you
customers, the free website is going to cost you customers.
Ad Based Income for
the Website Host
Website host don't offer free
website out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it for one
of 2 reasons, to upsell you to a paid customer or to make money
by advertising on your pages.
If they are running ads,
anyone you get to your website will see your competitors ads on
your pages.
How long do you think they
will look at your website when your competitors are advertising
for a fraction of what you charge right on your website?
The ads will often be
obtrusive, obnoxious and even offensive.
Imagine running your church
website and having ads from abortion clinics and gay marriage
groups. Or running a website to support gay marriage and having
anti gay groups run ads on your pages.
Since you have no control of
the ads, you can really back yourself into a corner with what
they put on your website.
Host has no
Responsibility to You
The host does not owe you
anything, they don't have to promise you anything or deliver
anything. If you server goes offline for 5 days while they do
maintenance, they don't care. They never lose money, they could
not care if you move.
In fact many free hosts will
tell you, if you need better reliability, upgrade to a paid plan.
There is absolutely no
incentive for the host to provide any level of service of any
kind. So when a server is slow or offline, there is really no
incentive to fix it.
After all, what do expect them
to do for free? Just right on it and help you?
The fact is, you get what you
pay for and free is free and you get no consideration as you
would if they risked losing a paying customer, so they just don't
care about you.
Loads of Hackers
The fact is, free website
hosting offers draw ever hacker online. They can get a free
account, run some programs and usually compromise the server and
use it for anything they want.
Since they don't have to pay
for an account it is the perfect platform for hackers to test
programs, run attacks or just browse other users data.
They can do almost anything
anonymously and if they get caught, they just open a new account.
So you can't get rid of them and you can't stop them. You just
have to live with them if you use free website hosting.
That means poor server
performance, no security and loads of down time.
The same is rue of spammers.
Since the sites are free, they are a great place to set up their
scams and lure people into their traps with anonymity.
Unreliable
Bandwidth and Infrastructure
These networks because of all
the issues typically have a very unreliable network. Poor uptime,
low bandwidth limits overall and just not enough resources to
handle all of the crap going on their network.
Without being paid, there is
no way to monitor who is using what and no resources to have
system admins watching for breaches or illegal activities on
websites.
No Support
It goes unsaid that you don't
get support, so when you website is down, you can't do anything
about it. Nobody to call, email or complain to. So you either
move or just wait and see if it comes back online.
With real people to consult
the website is just about as useless as you can get. Of course
you wont realize that until it is down and you have no way of
resolving the issue.
The server could just be
hacked, the network might be down, or you domain could just be
expired. Who knows? You certainly don't.
If you depend on your website
for new customers or to represent your businesss having a
reliable host is critical.
When someone tries to get to
your website and can't who do they blame? They blame you for not
having a good website, they count it against you. It is just
human nature.
Nobody Cares
You get a fee host and nobody
cares and I mean nobody. You are on your own with everything and
when you have a problem, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
There is no one to complain to,
no one to call, no one to get help from. Nobody could care less
about you, your business or your website.
When you pay nothing you get
nothing and nobody.
Poor Network
Reputation
The worst part about being on
a FREE Website Host is the network reputation.
Because it is mostly hackers
and spammers your website is seen as spam. It is seen as a danger
to users and search engines will avoid sending anyone to it.
Companies block email from
such networks so your email is useless.
Companies will not peer with
spammers so some people will never even get accesss to your
website even though it is online, networks block it to protect
their customers.
Domain Name Damage
Once the searches and networks
decide your domain name is spam related you can never get it back
into the searches even if you move it to a new network. Any value
you built with your domain and brand have been destroyed.
You can just let the domain
expire and get a new one, because that is not coming back. The
domain is now worthless and what did you get out of it? Nothing
at all.
Free Website
Hosting Offers
So while the allure of hosting
your website for free may seem very attractive it is in fact a
waste of resources, time and effort. Any customer base you build
will be lost, you will lose money, credibility and spend time
doing it.
The value of spending
$20 a month for a reliable, supported and trusteed website host
like pageBuzz.com may ultimately be priceless.
If it is free, it is probably
worth every single penny.
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