The advent of blogging and free blog space has brought
about a revolution in web publishing that pushes the
boundaries of terms like “webmaster” and
“website.” In today’s brave new
world of Internet publishing for the masses, the traditional
means of building and hosting a personal website has
fallen out of favor for many new webmasters.
If you count yourself among the many bloggers who
use a free subdomain blog account, you’ll have
to think about web hosting sooner or later. Unfortunately,
most don’t consider the ramifications until
it’s too late. In the beginning, a free blog
account or ad-supported web hosting seems like the
obvious choice for a personal site. Unfortunately,
this decision – or lack thereof - can cause
problems down the road. Issues with free hosting and
subdomain hosting range from SEO complications to
ownership and control issues. Both free and paid hosting
have their own merits and drawbacks, of course, so
the ultimate decision is yours to make. But understanding
these pros and cons is the first step in making a
good decision for your site.
Free Hosting
Pros:
• It’s free. This is obviously the single
most important advantage of free web hosting.
• It’s easy. Anyone can open an account
on Blogger or any number of other free services and
instantly get a free website requiring no more effort
to publish than writing an email.
• No experience necessary. Anyone can create
a site using one of these free services, with no programming,
technical, or even HTML knowledge required.
Cons:
• Branding. As your blog or website grows,
a subdomain hosting account offers little in the way
of branding, and may adversely affect your credibility.
• SEO. If you move away from a subdomain account
to your own domain, you will have to start over building
links to your new domain.
• No control over ad content. With free hosting,
you are at the mercy of your hosting company’s
discretion as to what type of ads will be displayed
on your site. Pop-ups and ads for adult sites are
not uncommon.
• Limited or no accountability for site outages
and other problems. When you’re getting something
for nothing, it’s all too easy to become the
victim of corporate apathy.
Paid Hosting
Pros:
• You can host your own domain. With paid hosting,
you can brand your site with your own domain name
(e.g. MySite.com) and add legitimacy to your content.
• Control. With paid hosting, you control every
aspect of your site, including design and advertising
content.
• SEO advantages. With a paid hosting account
and domain name, you can build links to your site
safely without worrying about whether or not you’ll
be changing domain names. In addition, a hosting account
allows you programmatic and scripting abilities not
usually found in free, pre-built websites.
• Custom site development. Unlike free blogs,
a hosted website can typically run a variety of CGI
and scripting applications, and can be built any way
you choose.
• Accountability and Portability: When you
pay for hosting, you hold more leverage over your
hosting company in the event of problems. Additionally,
by retaining control of your source code and data,
you can easily move your site to a new host.
Cons:
• Expense. Though you can get hosting plans
as cheap as $2-$3 per month, it’s still a cost
that free hosting does not incur.
• Some assembly required. Though many paid
hosts offer site builders and blog software as part
of the package, it still requires more technical work
than signing up for a Blogger account.
• Maintenance. When you create a site yourself,
you become responsible for the upkeep of your own
code. In fact, you become responsible for just about
everything involved with the site except for the server
and connectivity.
So in summary, making the right choice between free
or blog site hosting and paid hosting is heavily dependent
on both you and your site. Though I’ve focused
heavily on hosting for blog sites, much of the same
information applies to free hosting vs. paid hosting
for other types of sites as well. The important thing
is to take a good hard look at what you want your
site to eventually be, how much effort you’re
willing to put into it, and then make your decision.
If you do decide on paid hosting, make sure you look
at all options available. Use a web hosting review
website such as www.inetpublication.com to compare
available options. Not all web hosting is alike, and
many hosting companies offer free tools to ease the
pain of migration as well as other perks you may not
have realized you were missing
