With the availability of many free hosting offers
so prevalent on the Internet, are they the bargain
they seem to be?
I must admit the offer of free hosting does have
major appeal however, rarely is something of value
given away for nothing. At first glance, free hosting
sounds like a good deal! Upon closer inspection, you'll
find close to 100% of them not suitable for a business
website at all.
Before getting one of the free hosting packages,
the person needs to have a specific idea what the
website is going to be used for. Is it personal or
for business?
If it's a personal website that's going to be used
to post the family newsletter, photographs and so
on, it's a perfectly good use of one. On the other
hand, if it's a website built for commercial purposes,
the free hosting packages are of limited utility to
a business operation.
Most of the well documented opposition to free websites
invariably mentions the use of very long URL's as
one of the main examples but there are more fundamental
reasons you shouldn't ever use a free website as your
main business website.
Most business websites will need advanced mail handling
and script hosting capabilities not offered by the
free web hosting accounts. As your business grows
and you realize the need for the above, your step
onto the next business level is severely hampered.
These are services most Internet businesses need
that are not provided by free hosting packages:
CGI Scripting PHP Scripting Autoresponders MySQL
Databases
On account of the lack of scripting support you'll
find many of the tools of eCommerce will not function
on your free website, such as: shopping cart software
and order tracking, javascripts, to name a few.
If at a later stage of development you decide to
order some of the above support items "a la carte,"
you'll find out the outrageous cost of them...so much
for a free hosting account!
All the above shouldn't imply there are no legitimate
business uses for a free hosting account, there are!
They can be used for hosting pages that link back
to your main website, for re-directed URL's, for hosting
any kind of web page that doesn't need any of the
advanced support options of your main business website.
They can also be used for showcasing individual products
contained within your main website with a link back
to your landing page. They can increase your SE ranking
if they are well designed with tight, relevant copy
that goes well with your main website. Quality and
accuracy do have their payoff!
Another important, and often erroneous point, is
that it will help your main website have a wider appeal
to many of the SE's because of the incoming links.
However, the incoming links from free hosting accounts
are not considered quality links by the SE's.
Used with insight and vision, free hosting services
can ad value to your web operation. The main point
to keep in mind is that the same care and preparation
given to your main website should also be given to
your free websites. The quality of the writing and
production should be to help your main website, not
to detract from it.
