Many times small businesses wishing to gain exposure online have a limited budget. They seek out services that offer free hosting services to ease their expenses. This is usually true for companies wanting to try an online business for the first time. This type of web hosting is offered by various companies to help small business get started. The whole idea behind free web host services is simple: the web host allows for free service for a small business in order to put a website online. In order to do this the host company puts ads on the client's website so that they can get some return for the space given. This type of free service is supported entirely by the web host's advertisements and comes with some limitations.



The free website hosts are making money with the application of such services as client's can be easily lured by such a zero-price offer. These web hosts display popup, put banners, or advertisements on WebPages of the client's website thus earning enough from free web hosting. There are several web hosting companies that provide free services to their clients against the condition that clients would click on banners that are their in their control panel or simply display banners in file manager with the expectations that client's will click on them.

With the advent of several cheap hosting services the requirements for free web hosting is diminishing at a faster rate. People are now able to access shared and dedicated web hosting services at a much lesser rate that is also hosting their sites faster. However, the emergence of blog has boosted the growth of free hosting services. Since blogs are easy to set up and manage, people often feel that they can opt for such an easy going service rather that hiring and spending on companies for website hosting. With Free web hosting services companies are trying to impart the benefits of individual websites that has several other advantages over blogs.

How reliable are free web hosts?

While they make money off of the advertisements on the client's sites which gives them incentive to stay in business, many free web hosts have stability issues. It occasionally turns out that someone or another company will declare their web host service complaining of spam, or hacking. That can occur if the host company automatically installs utilities like CGI, or PHP. These things reduce the performance of the server drastically. Professional web hosts are rarely affected by such things. However, it would be a good idea to beware of the startup web host as they are more apt to be subjected to downtime and crashes on account of these things.

The upside of free web hosts:

1. The free web hosting environments are great for students practicing web design, and their own hosting along with development. It allows them to store their projects, test them, and create them for free with no stress. They can expand their knowledge bank, and even share the information between each other. It is a valuable testing tool so they can see if their concepts are applicable and functional. It is a wonderful environment for creativity. Some web hosts cater specifically to that crowd such as boinc.ch who allows free accounts on their server for developers and students. People interested in creating a personal homepage can make great use of the features from these sites as well as it gives them the ability and freedom to share their personal life for free.

2. There are several voluntary organizations and non profit institutes who want to send their messages to public via internet. Since internet is the best possible way to reach out to the world, such organization would definitely find it useful and would like to utilize them. There may be several web hosts who would serve them free of cost due to emotional reasons. But apart form this, general free web hosting services, utilized by small businesses and students, can be equally fruitful to these organizations. They usually have a dearth of capital but an urgency to communicate with the world. They can use these services and create a basic website where information and news on their activities can be published.

3. Another great use of the free web host service is for groups and communities who need to share their information between each other. They can share their ideals, and feelings on many issues great and small for free. The free web hosts are great for groups with limited financial resources but a lot to share with the world, and other like-minded communities. They can share data and mutual links to their websites and allow more people to find them through these services. From a purely SEO standpoint these free services offer great benefits to this type of organization.

4. Free web hosts are a great idea for family websites too. Members of a family can share the special moments with the world in the form of pictures and diaries. Free web hosts have limitations on how much space is allowed to host such things but most can be done in a small amount.

Cons of free web hosting

Though webs hosting services are best from monetary aspect, there are several disadvantages which compel the users to think twice before going for such a service.

1. Free hosts provide subdomain and not a second-level domain contrary to the paid services.

2. Bandwidth on free services is extremely low and subject to downtimes unlike the paid services.

3. Free space is also very low meaning you have very limited disk space on the server for holding your files and data.

4. The greatest disadvantage most people find with free websites are the banners and other ad like pop ups and pop unders that are placed all over their websites. It takes away perceived value when visitors click on their site and gives off a negative feeling on the usefulness of the company. Some of the ads can be compulsory in nature.

5. There is usually no guarantee of uptime.

6. Media and other big files types are not allowed as a rule. Most free sites restrict such files as MP3, MPEG, and ZIP to cut down on space used.

7. There is generally no, or very little technical support for customers of the free web hosts since it is not their priority. At most they may offer a month or two of support.