Free Website Hosting - Not So Fast!
by Annika Quaid

Most people get lured by free website hosting. Of course, anytime you mention the word "free", it invokes possibilities of bucking the system and actually getting what you want for nothing. Really?

Too many of us still get pulled into this marketing genius of the century without really seeing what we are getting into. You see the word free and our brain reacts to the possibilities. Basically you are getting a pretty much zilch, but hey, that's free.

Most sites that we have reviewed will offer such treasures as free website builder and free hosting but when you look at the print, you are in for a shock. Most of these companies will offer you this prize but for people who don't understand the nuts and bolts of what you get with this great package, they are in shock when they can't do anything with their site because they are lacking everything you need to succeed.

Most of the free website hosting we looked at offered you basically a free website builder but unless you upgrade to their lowest per month hosting package, you are stuck with very limited disk space, very limited bandwidth, absolutely zero customer service or technical help. If you are lucky, you might get a few email accounts.

Most of them however, don't even give you an email account period. On top of that, you will be happy to know that you will have ads all over your site unless of course, you move up to their paying plan. Most excellent!

Limited databases, limited sub domains, limited scripts and limited platforms to work with are part of the plan with your free site and you guessed it again, hardly any disk space. So to pose the question to you nicely, "Does this sound appropriate for your new site?"

You could just use one of the great shared hosting plans that are out there right now and have all the unlimited disk space and bandwidth you want along with incredible customer service. And all with no ads or banners floating across your site. What you don't realize is that if you were to upgrade from your free website hosting on their server, they usually will charge you more in the long run.

It's a simple situation where all you have to do is your homework. Remember back when you were taking your final exam and you did homework so you wouldn't fail the test. Well now you are in hosting school and all you have to do is compare plans and see what you want. There are great options, but always remember that almost in every case, nothing is for free.