Free vs paid web hosting options

Everyone likes to get something for free. But as the existence of spam shows, free isn''t always good. Sometimes, it''s downright harmful. Deciding whether it''s worth the cost to pay for hosting involves a number of complex considerations.

Hosting companies that offer free services obviously can''t stay in business from the money they make from you, since there isn't any. So why do they offer free hosting and how do they make money? Why should you care, so long as you get yours? Because, in reality, there''s a price of some kind for everything, even something that''s free.

Free hosting may come from a company doing a promotion to attract business. They expect to demonstrate their value, then charge an existing customer base fees to make up for what they lost by the (short term) offer. It''s in essence a form of advertising.

But free hosting is offered by lots of companies that are not dedicated to managing servers for websites. Google, Yahoo and thousands of others provide a modest amount of disk space and a domain name on a server for free. Users are free to do anything they like with it, though if the load becomes excessive you can be shut down.

That introduces one of the more obvious drawbacks to free hosting: resource limitations.

Typically free hosting offers a relatively small amount of space. That''s often enough to host a few dozen pages. But an active site can quickly run out of room.

A more serious limitation is load.

Free hosting often places strict limitations on the allowed amount of bandwidth consumed. If you become a well-visited site, when users start banging away on the server, you can be asked to leave or simply be blocked for the rest of the month. Or, you may be permitted a certain quantity of total bandwidth use per month. Once it''s reached, no one else can reach your site until the beginning of a new month.

At the same time, you will certainly be sharing equipment with thousands of other sites. Their load can affect your performance, prompting you to move. Migrating an established site brings with it a number of thorny issues that might be better avoided in the first place.

Free hosting has another potential downside: lack of support. When you pay for hosting you typically get, at least in theory, a certain level of support. Backups in case of disaster recovery from a hack or server failure, assistance in analyzing connection problems... the variety is endless. With free hosting you usually get none of that.

A company or site that offers free hosting will usually recover a disk or server that fails completely and you''ll be back up when they do. But if only selected portions of the drive fail, or you lose a few files through a virus attack or accidental deletion, you have to rely on backups to recover. A free service will usually come with no such option.

That may not be a problem if you have a small site. You can make copies of everything at another location and simply recover the site yourself - if you have the discipline to keep it current and the skills to make and restore the copy.

Free hosting will typically come with a few email addresses, intended to be used for administration and other tasks. But if your needs grow beyond that, you''ll need to seek another option. The email service also comes with minimal oversight. The server may be protected against spam attacks and provide virus scanning. But few free services will provide even minimal help with any issues that arise.

But the most serious limitation may have nothing to do with any technical issues. Free hosting services often require that your site''s pages carry some form of advertising that pays the host, not you. That may be fine for you, or it may not. Individual circumstances vary.

On the other hand, if you''re just starting out, a free hosting option can be a great way to learn needed skills and a few of the potential pitfalls. You can set up a site, learn how to maintain and improve it, and not care too much if it gets hacked. Freely hosted sites can be a great platform for learning the ropes.

Free services don''t usually offer any of the features that an active, commercial site will need sooner or later. So if you plan to grow, it may be reasonable to get the free service for a while, knowing you''ll have to migrate when you become popular. But in the long run, you get what you pay for and you may need to pay for what you want.