How to Choose a Free Web Hosting Service

Want to create a free website? Then you will need a web hosting provider that offers free web hosting. Some free web hosts require ads while other free web hosting providers offer free web hosting with no ads. This article offers tips on how to choose a free web hosting service.

If you are choosing to host your website with a free web host provider, then we assume you are creating a small personal site or fun site just to get familiar with  free web hosting. As a general rule, if you are looking to create a serious site that you are going to be using long-term or using as a business website to make money online, you will want to use paid web hosting. We recommend this simply because there are so many cheap web hosting services available that offer so many additional features and benefits that the gain far outweighs the very minimal cost.

If you aren't too sure about what type of site you want or what you really want to do with your website, then free web hosting may be a good way to start. There are a number of things that you will want to consider when thinking about how to choose a free web hosting service. First of all keep in mind that free web hosts have to make money somehow or they wouldn't exist. Do a little research about the host you are considering. Do they also offer paid web hosting? Do they display ads on your site? While having their ads on your site may seem intrusive and make your site less attractive, it is a way for them to make money, meaning they will be more likely to stay in business longer.

If the web host offers free web hosting with no ads, but also offers paid web hosting as well, look into how many sites they are hosting. If they have a good solid number of sites and have been around for a few years, you can probably count on them being around for a while. We recommend you look into these things because many free web hosts start providing free web hosting just because they are tired of the web hosts they have been hosting with and decide they could do a better job. If they don't have a solid business plan they may soon discover their operating costs are too high and they can't continue. In such cases your site may just simply be gone one day.

If you don't have any web hosting experience, choosing a free web hosting service will depend on which host offers the best website building tools. Many free web hosts provide free website building tools and templates that will allow you to create a website without learning html or other scripting languages. If the web host you are considering doesn't have any website building tools and you don't have any experience, you are going to have to spend a lot of time researching and learning about scripting languages and building a website from scratch. This can be very time consuming and labor intensive.

Keep in mind that your domain name is a very important part of your site and the only way people are going to find it. Most fee web hosting will provide you with only a free subdomain, meaning your site name will be something like: mysite.freewebhost.com, where "mysite" is the name you choose and "freewebhost" is the domain that the free web host is using. This makes your site name much longer and harder to remember than if you choose to register your own domain. If you plan to keep your site for a long time and want it to be easy to remember, you will want to simply register a domain name on your own. Once you register your domain it is yours forever, as long as you pay the yearly free. Registering a domain allows you to pick a domain that is simple like mysite.com. By registering your domain you are in charge of it and can move it or do whatever you want with it regardless of what happens with your web host provider.

Another thing we can't emphasize enough if you are using free web hosting is backing up your files. Having a copy of all your site files on your own computer or hard drive is essential. Free web hosting is not known for its reliability or stability. It is very likely that at some point their severs will crash and you will lose information. If your host and site simply disappear one day, you don't want to have to rebuild your site from scratch. Always keep a backup of your site!

There are so many free web hosting options out there, read some of our free web hosting reviews and visit their sites to see which is best for you. Find out which hosts offer online tutorials or help so that if you get lost along the way, you know there is some help available. 

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