Free or Paid Website Hosting – Which is the Right Choice?

For some reason, when a business or individual starts shopping for website hosting, they want to go as cheap as possible. Some will pinch the pennies and even choose a free hosting company. This may not be the wisest choice. There are several cheap website hosting companies offering shared hosting ranging from free to about $20 per month. Many offer packages between $3 and $8 per month, which is about the going rate for a good shared hosting package.

Should you choose a free hosting company and save around $36 per year or should you go with a paid hosting company? The question is really not that hard to answer when you look at the facts of the matter.

Is Free Hosting Really Free?

Even though the price tag for free hosting says it’s free doesn’t mean it’s really free. When you decide to use a free hosting company, you will most likely pay for it in other ways.

One of the common ways you pay for free hosting is with the domain name. Instead of using a domain, such as yourcompany.com, you end up with a domain, such as yourcompany.freehostingcompany.com. This is actually a subdomain and it means you don’t really own your website.

Another way you may pay for your so-called free hosting is through ads. Sometimes, free hosting companies force you to place ads for their advertisers on your site. This is the tradeoff for free website hosting.

You may be thinking that placing an ad on your site and getting your hosting free of charge isn’t a bad idea. However, if that ad distracts one customer a month and you lose one sale a month just to save $36 per year, was it really worth it?

Often, ads will cost you conversions, which could have been lifetime customers. In this case, the so-called free hosting has now cost you money today, next month and next year. It’s not worth it if you want to run a profitable business.

Why Paid Hosting is Far Better

Paid website hosting doesn’t have to be expensive. You don’t have to shell out $20 or more a month to use a good hosting company and a good package. For just $3 to $5 per month, you can save the headaches that come along with free hosting and use paid hosting.

Even with the cheapest website hosting you can find, you’re better off compared to free hosting. Paid hosting will give you more resources, more security, more control, more uptime and more support.

With paid hosting, you know what you are paying for and what you get for the dollars you spend. If you buy a package with 50GB of disk space, you know you can use up to 50GB of disk space.

This isn’t the case with free hosting. Often, free hosting provides you with plenty of space for about a month or two, and then you will outgrow it, especially if you are using a blog.

Paid hosting will also provide faster load times, it’s better for search engine optimization and you will be able to use tools, such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla for your website design. Overall, paid hosting is simply better and well worth the few dollars you will spend every month.

When choosing a hosting company, you don’t want to just go with the cheapest option or the free option. Make sure you are getting value for the money spent. Free hosting is a mistake, but cheap website hosting isn’t.