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Reliability
Reliability is one of the most striking points that differentiate free web hosting from paid web hosting. Generally, the free web hosting platforms do not provide the same uptime like the one provided by the paid web hosting companies. This is because a proper server infrastructure is required to provide good uptime and speed to websites. So if you opt for a free web hosting platform, you might experience downtime to your website at some instances or it may also happen that a free web hosting platform might not be completely capable of handling the traffic spikes on your website. After all your business is made from the convenience of your customers and visitors. Slightest incontinence because of a slow website or because of a website that is down at random times could mean loss of customers. Most of the professional paid web hosting platforms guarantee 99% uptime which is a necessity for your business website.
Search Engine Rankings
Every business wants to achieve a higher search engine ranking, but it is important to understand every factor that affects the search engine rankings of your website. At times, free web hosting providers display irrelevant ads or unprofessional links on your website that affect the stature of your website. Moreover, the free hosting platforms are also known to be used by the spammers for creating dummy websites. All these factors are noticed by the search engines, and this has an adverse effect on your search engine rankings. The businesses that opt for professional paid web hosting services will never encounter these issues; they will have better search engine rankings and also a reputed online visibility.
Bandwidth And Storage Space
Professional web hosting providers like XYZ provide a wide array of web hosting packages that have different variations of bandwidth and storage space. You can make an appropriate selection according to your website requirements. But when it comes to free web hosting companies, very limited bandwidth and storage space is provided.
If you opt for a free web hosting package, everything might look good in the beginning but as your website grows and when you need to unload or transfer video files, photos or other media files, things will start getting difficult for you. With limited hosting resources and with limited amount of support for growth from the web hosting company, your website will often encounter issues like slowing down and downtime.
Support and Assistance
It is a fact that the free hosting providers do not offer immediate support for technical issues. It is not mandatory that every website owner has complete technical knowledge, therefore in the absence of a timely web hosting support, you might have to deal with many technical and customer issues instead of focusing on business growth. Lack of technical support is especially a significant issue for the websites that work with MySQL databases, PHP and Pearl scripts. With paid hosting services, every business has access to 24/7 technical support, thus making their work easier and hassle free.
Customized Error Pages
With a free web hosting platform, you won’t be able to create customized error pages. Error pages are utilized by the web server to let the visitor know that there has been an error, this might happen if the visitor types the wrong URL of a page or tries to access a page that is not present in the website. With a free hosting account, the web hosting company’s stock error page will be displayed to the visitor, and this page will not give them any directions to find what they are looking for. The result – the visitor will be confused and he/she will leave your website.
This is not the case with a paid web hosting account! A paid hosting account provides you complete control over your website and your hosting account. You can design customized error pages for your customers/visitors and display them when a visitor tries to access a wrong page or page URL. With a customized error page and directions to navigate to some other page, the visitor will not feel lost and will try to explore your website further. The result – you won’t lose a visitor who got on your website by typing a wrong URL.
Free Is Not Really Free!
A free web hosting company also needs to earn right? After all they also need money to run the company! What do you think how will a company that offers free web hosting packages earn? The answer is – through advertising!
If a free web hosting provider is not charging you for the hosting account, then the provider will surely place ads on your website to earn from them. You have very little or almost no control over the ads shown on your website pages. What if a competitor’s ad or any other inappropriate ad is shown on your website? Can you take the risk?
Along with increasing customers, you are also building the reputation of your website and you surely don’t want to put it at stake with the display of irrelevant ads on your website. This will never happen in a paid hosting platform as you are in complete control of your website and you can display only what you want on your website.
Free Web Hosting Won’t Last Forever
While using a free web hosting service, you do not have any guarantee that the web hosting company will be there for a long period of time. At some point, even a large free web hosting provider might think to pack up. It is not that a paid web hosting companies don’t shut down, a paid web hosting company might shut down as well. But with a paid web hosting service, you will have a web hosting account through which you can download your complete website so that it can be hosted elsewhere, you are completely covered in a paid hosting service. You can easily take the backup of your website so that it can be uploaded to the new hosting account and your website will be up and running soon.
Website Speed
Website speed is one of the most important aspects for retaining customers today! No one likes to wait for a slow website as there are many other alternatives. If your website is hosted on a free web hosting account that does not provide enough resources to your website functions, then your website will load very slowly and if a customer or visitor tries to access something on your website, it will take a lot of time for them to get there. What will happen here is that you will lose your customers or visitors to a competitor who is hosted on a professional shared server, VPS or a dedicated server. Investing in a paid web hosting platform will ensure good page load speed for your website.
Website Building
You can build your website on both – on a free web hosting platform and on a paid web hosting platform as well. However, in case of a free web hosting platform, you will have to restrict yourself to the basic attributes for creating your website and there will be limitations on the way in which you can create the functionalities of your website. On the other hand, a professional paid web hosting package comes with a website builder or a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Magento etc. with which, you can easily design your website like you want to and the complete process of designing your website is simplified for you as there are no limitations.
Website Security
We are living in an era when the hacking attempts are also improvising along with the improvisation in the security technologies; therefore, whether your website is small or big, website security is of paramount importance. If you opt for a free web hosting account, there are chances that the web hosting company won’t be responsible for your website security. What if your website gets compromised? are you willing to lose your data and your customers because of bad website security? In order to safeguard your website against hacking attempts, it is important to opt for a web hosting provider who takes complete responsibility of your website security.
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