Free Web Hosting

Why would somebody provide free web hosting service? What do they gain? Actually there are a lot of companies who offer free limited web hosting in exchange of displaying advertisement on the website. Although it looks very enticing, free hosting has a lot of drawbacks and it is not recommended for any serious website.

Pros:

• It has the magic word associated with it --- FREE

Cons:

•  It may not be totally free. The hosting provider may have hidden catch in its terms and conditions.
• It may be free for an year or a few months. After that the provider may charge higher than standard fee.
• Even though the service it totally free and there is no catch, still it may not be enough for you due to the limited nature of the service. Suppose you want to work with a particular development package, but it may not have support for it.
• The hosting providers aggressively insert advertisement in the websites they host. You have no control on the quality of the advertisement. That may drive away traffic from your site.
• Typically their servers have poor up-time.
• Support / help is non-existing

Recommended to:

Free web hosting is not recommended to anybody, even beginners. Only if you plan to run a personal website for a few months without any intention of extending it in future, then you can consider a free web host.