Paid vs. Free Web Hosting

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Find out if you need free or paid web hosting. It really depends o­n what your needs are and what you are trying to accomplish. There are advantages and disadvantages for both paid and free web hosting. Free Web Hosting - Advantages: - The most obvious benefit is that it's free. - You can use your free web space to practice programming. Not many, but some free web hosting plans support a programming language such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Coldfusion or JSP. - A free web hosting plan is great for creating a small personal website. Disadvantages: - A bunch of free web hosts place their banner and text ads o­n your website. - With a large number of free hosts, your website is placed in a sub-domain or a folder (www.yourwebsite.freehosting.com or www.freehosting.com/yourwebsite) which sometimes results in poor search engine rankings. - Because they are offering free hosting, the majority of free web hosts can not afford to offer 24/7 or any support. - Very few free web hosts offer a control panel with their plans. - Another flaw with free web hosts is many don't allow FTP access which is an obstacle if you have many files to upload. - Free web hosting plans don't offer much disk space or data transfer. This could be a problem if you have a lot of large files or if your website generates a lot of traffic. Paid Web Hosting - Advantages: - With paid hosting, you will now have any unwanted text or banner ads placed o­n your website. - Your website will not be placed in a sub-domain or folder. You will have your own domain name (yourwebsite.com) which will not o­nly result in better search engine rankings, it also looks more professional. - Most paid web hosts offer 24/7 support. - A lot of paid web hosting plans offer a control panel such as cPanel, Vdeck, Plesk or Ensim which offer features like web stats, the ability to password protect directories, and the ability to create web based email accounts. - Most paid web hosts offer FTP access. - The majority of paid web hosting plans support a couple programming languages such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Coldfusion and JSP. - With the more disk space and data transfer you get with paid hosting, you can add more files to your website and it can handle more traffic. Disadvantages: - The o­nly disadvantage here is that it's not free. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Brian Shoemaker is the owner of the web hosting directory Find-A-Web-Host.com offering affordable web hosting.