Web Site Hosting For Your Business - Free or Paid
It’s time to choose! Should you spend some money to get a web hosting solution for your business or get one for free?
Yes, the big moment has finally arrived. Your business is now on the verge of taking the next step forward. It will establish a web presence. This is an important step as from now on your business is able to reach more customers, is able to get more exposure, and hopefully enjoy online recognition.
Space, bandwidth and domain name all come with a cost, but there is a possibility to get them all for free. Resource management principles will probably tell you to choose the free solution.
Nowadays the cost for web hosting services has a very reasonable reason partially because of the technological progress, partially because of the stiff competition on the web hosting market.
Still why pay for it when you can get it for free?
Free web hosting
Dozens, even hundreds of free web hosting providers offer their services on the Internet. Could there be one that meets the needs for your business? Hardly, if any.
Please let me state clearly that this article is not intended to attack or discredit hosts or advertisers. It’s only purpose is to assess and understand how can be best met the hosting needs of a business. Any business. And yes, in spite of everything stated here, even the author of this article has resorted at some point in time to the services of free web hosts!
You probably learned too, and at a very small age, that in life everything comes with a price. However, there it is allover the Internet: Free Web Hosting.
Nothing in this world is free. So how comes there even is free web hosting?
The definition of the term “free” according to The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary, states gives the following definition for the term free:
1. adj. not subject to external restraints or domination; not captive, at liberty; not having to be paid for; unhampered; open to all without restrictions; etc.
2. adv. without expense; without penalty
3. v.t. to release from constraint, set free
Therefore a literally free hosting service would mean no restraints, no expenses and no restrictions for the user. Webmasters would design with only limited by their imagination and skills. All the space and the bandwidth you would possibly ask for at no cost whatsoever. Real-life scenario? Could anyone really think so?
Indeed nothing in this world comes without price. Even it is not apparent. And the price you must pay for free web hosting comes in many forms, as free web hosting providers must pay too for bandwidth, not to mention other costs.
While some free web hosts require you to have one on their banners on your web site, others place pop up adds, or flashing advertising messages. So it’s free for you as long as you fulfill their set of requirements and meet their conditions. In addition to this, you should consider that host’s service is free with let’s say 25 Megs of space; more space means different conditions and you could have to pay for it.
Paid web hosting
If you are billed, it means you own something. There is now a contractual bind between you and your web-hosting provider, which in turn must offer you his services. Ownership gives you more control of your online presence. Important as ownership is, it is neither the only nor the biggest advantage of paying for your hosting solution.
The identity of your business would be clear from your URL down to your web content without banners confusing your customers. Imagine that you deal with What I would say, is ask yourself if you would deal with someone offering a similar service/ product as you are promoting, who was obviously using a free site. If you would, then fine, but if not, don’t expect anyone else to deal with you!
You will have usually sufficient e-mail addresses to accommodate the needs of your business. How serious would you take someone who hands you a business card with e-mail like john.doe@afreewebhostingprovider.com. And more important: would you do business with him?
It’s almost a standard for paid web hosting providers to offer features like PHP and MySQL, features that allow your site to grow along with your business needs. With such features you can easily have an online store, offer your customers the possibility to track their orders etc.
Often the web hosting provider offers guarantees for the uptime of the server, and this avoids unnecessary frustration for your customers. To complement this, support services of higher quality allow your business to overcome possible technical problems easier and faster.
Let’s review the main points of each option.
Free web hosting:
(+) It’s free. No money for space, bandwidth and domain name
(-) Your URL will contain the mark of the free web-hosting provider and thus would not reflect the identity of your business. Changing providers might result in loosing some or all the traffic to your online business
(-) Required advertising items such as banners, frames etc have a detrimental effect on your content in terms of accessibility and look, making it very unprofessional
(-) If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn’t allow it
(-) You will probably have lower bandwidth then a paid host provides and space could also be restricted
(-) Features like PHP and MySQL are rather rare for a free web-hosting provider. Some don’t offer FTP access to your website
(-) It’s common that free hosting providers change their Terms and conditions at some point in time. Consider that no adds today could mean a banner or a popup tomorrow. Such changes could mean that the free hosting service is canceled and only paid web hosting services are offered. At this moment either you pay, either you loose your web site
Paid web hosting:
(-) You will have to pay for it. Usually you have to pay for hosting (space and bandwidth) and for the domain name
(+) You can host your own domain. With your unique domain name changing web hosting providers don’t cause loosing your traffic
(+) Support is offered by most paid web hosting providers. This usually means 24/7 support via email or live chat and, in some cases, toll-free phone support is available
(+) The uptime of the server(s) hosting your web site is better then on free host and more and more frequently the web hosting provider offers uptime guarantee
(+) The amount of enough disk space and bandwidth available is very likely to cover the needs of your business
(+) Features like PHP and MySQL are almost standard for a paid hosting plan. Also you will have FTP access to your website.
It could be tempting to embrace the idea that a free web hosting is good point to start from, but it’s not something you would want to consider if you are looking to establish your business as a serious web presence.
In the end it all comes down to this one question: How big ambitions do you have with your website?
If you look to make some savings while getting your business online, save time instead and register a domain name. The small amount of money saved on web hosting might cost your business customers, and a loss of image. The cost of a paid web hosting solution is small compared with freedom it gives to your online presence. Yes, freedom of your image, of the way you treat your online presence.
If your online business is important to you, better make that if you care for it at all, when coming to the decision of opting over free or paid web hosting choose (http://www.hostpinpin.com).
Keep in mind that the success of your online presence will play a significant role in the future growth of your business.
About The Author
Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (http://www.hostpinpin.com
), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory. HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting articles, tips, web hosting reviews.
This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact.
Tags: cheap web hosting directory, low cost web hosting, web hosting reviews, web site hosting resourceHow You Pay More for Unused Web Space and Traffic
“2GB web space with 50GB traffic for $5.95 per month!”
A luring addefinitely. In fact this ad makes many small
business owners feel cheated by their present web hosts.
This is how the small business owners, who have taken small
amount of space (say, 5, 10 or 25mb) calculate and feel that
they are paying more :
“If 2000MB (2GB) costs $5.95 per month, then 5MB should cost
(5.95 x 5 / 2000) = $0.15 only! But my web host charges me
$1! A 700% profit!! Oh…I am losing so much money!!”
So, if a small business site shifts to the advertised web
host, he should get better value for his money. Right?
Wrong.
Let me explain how:
As a small business owner, how many HTML pages
do you have in your web site? 5, 10, 15, 25?
Experts say that you should not have a page of more than
100K including images. Normally the file size of a
starndard HTML page is around 10-15K.
Remember that, many of the images linked to your pages
are common. If you have a 400×300 pixel image, the file
size of that image should not be more than 30K. Buttons
are normally between 3-5K.
So, let’s take an example of 25 page web site, which has
(a) 25 HTML pages, (b) each page has one big image of
400×300 pixel and (c) have 25 buttons.
So, the total space usage is:
25 HTMLs x 15K = 375K
25 400×300 pixel images x 30K = 750K
25 buttons x 5K = 125K
Total : 1250K = 1.25MB
You need space for mail. How many email accounts do you
need? 5, 10, 25? How much space you want to allocate for
each mail box? Do you get large attachments? Your can set
your email software to delete mails from the server
(immediately or after few days) after you download them to
your computer. So, if you check your mails every hour and
keep your mail space clean for receiving further mails, you may
safely allocate 1mb for each email accounts. If you are using
only one email account, you can use the entire free space for
your email.
So, with the above example, if you go for a 5MB space, it’s
enough for you in the given circumstances.
But, if you go for a 2GB space and use only 5MB of it, you
are actually paying $5.99 for using 5MB space. A loss of $4.99
every month$59.88 every year!
You got it now, right?
You may ask, ‘What about Traffic? 50GB!! It’s huge man!’
Yes, it’s huge. But, do you need it?
With the above example, if one person visits all the pages,
your site generates 1.25MB traffic. If you get say 100 such
visitors every day, you generate only 3750MB or 3.5GB
(approx) traffic for the entire month!
So, here again you pay more for the unused traffic.
Check from your control panel, how much space and traffic you are
you consuming currently. Are you paying for unused space /
traffic? If yes, then browse the web for reliable hosts and find
out a plan which fits with your requiremnts. Compare the
prices and features. Check the reliability of the host and
go for the one you find the best.
And, Save Money!
Subhendu Sen is the owner and webmaster of http://www.IndHosts.Net/hosting.html
a low-cost web hosting service provider and in
the business of web hosting since 1998.
How to Choose a Web Host - Frequently Asked Questions
In this article you’ll be provided with helpful information about how to choose a web host. There are several things to look for when choosing a reliable web host. Below, you will be provided with frequently asked questions and the answers to common questions.
Q. How reliable is the service of a web host?
Most surveys indicate that reliability is an e-businesses main concern. You should look for at least a 95 percent guarantee uptime, to ensure that the service is indeed reliable.
Q. What kind of performance can I expect?
A great hosting company has one or more T3 lines that are always connected to the Internet, not going through someone else’s network operations center. The servers should be fast, ideally Pentium Pro or Linux. You should also let your host know if you plan to use bandwidth killers such as streaming audio or video.
Q. How good is phone support?
When it comes to phone support, you should look for 24/7 phone support that’s always available with a live operator. Once you have found out, you should always check it. Call or email the technical support line at 10 o clock on Sunday night then expect it to be answered.
Q. How much will it cost me?
The entry level hosting service with a single domain name, 20 - 30 MB (Mega Bytes) of hard drive space, email services, and up to a 1 GB (Giga Bytes) of monthly bandwidth should cost you no more than 50 dollars.
Q. How is security handled?
The passwords to your website or domain should be required to control the host as well as manage the web site. Every file on your server should also be backed up on a daily basis. You should always look for a host that offers you secure transactions as well.
Q. How much bandwidth will I need for data transfer?
Roughly estimating, 2GB of bandwidth should be perfect for a very small personal site. If you’re going to running a medium site with text and images but no large files, 5 GB would be ideal. Larger sites on the other hand, require 30 GB of bandwidth. Good hosting company’s will send you an email if you’re about to run out of bandwidth, letting you know that your site may go offline if you exceed the quota. This way, you can upgrade your plan if you choose to do so.
Q. What about a control panel?
Almost all hosting packages come with some type of control panel, enabling you to configure your hosting packages as well as your settings without having to learn the entire operating system that powers the site. Control panels can be accessed through a secure webpage, and then they will appear in your web browser. The most popular control panels are Helm, Cpanel, Hsphere, Plesk, and Ensim. The most common is Cpanel, which only runs on Linux. Most beginners and other users would be more suited to Cpanel, as it runs on the cheaper platform of Linux.
Q. What about a POP3 account?
When sending and receiving email, POP3 counts are very important. These types of accounts you can assign to individual users as their own email addresses. You’ll need enough POP3 accounts for the amount of email addresses that you wish to assign to other people. Often times this number will be quoted as being unlimited, although there are only so many email addresses that you can actually create.
Q. What about spam and viruses?
These features are classified in a separate category, and can include autoresponders, spam filters, even anti virus protection. They may be important to you, but they will actually vary from host to host. Basically, these are all free things that the host will give to you when you sign up for an account. If you’re plan doesn’t quite offer what you want, your host may be flexible when setting up your account.
Q. What about running my own online store?
If you are planning on running your own store on the internet, there will be a few factors that will be involved with that decision. First of all, you’ll need an SSL certificate for your website, so that you can process credit card transactions. Basically, these are 3rd parties that will take care of each and every transaction, for a small percent fee, eliminating the need for extra security on your server. You’ll also need to ensure that the server as well as the software is capable of running the script you have for your shopping cart.
Q. I need help making that final decision.
If you plan on having a website that you’ll be relying on for income or storing important data, you’ll need to make sure that you go with a host that will offer you a high level of customer support. A lot of hosting companies will offer forums as well as their contact numbers; however the forums can be excellent when you are dealing very small problems.
In Conclusion
By taking your time and checking to see what each host has to offer, you’ll find which service best fits your needs. There are many hosts and many different packages out there to choose from, which mean you shouldn’t go with the first one you see. Take the time to compare plans, costs, and customer service and you shouldn’t have any problems choosing a web host.
About the Author
Martin Smith is a successful freelance writer providing advice for consumers on purchasing a variety of
Web Hosting Service which includes
ASP Hosting Service,
Low Cost Web Hosting, and more! His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information.