You probably know that you
have a choice of either paying to have your web site hosted,
or of choosing a free web hosting service.
Whilst free web hosting looks an attractive proposition
to begin with, it is not generally something I could recommend,
if you are looking to establish a serious business presence
on the web. Having said that, I do run a couple of sites
with free Web hosts!
The first thing to do, is to establish what you are giving
the web host in return for them offering you a free site
(even on the Internet, despite what some people claim, there
is no such thing as a free lunch!).
The two sites I get hosted for free are in the UK with
Service Providers who make a charge for the phone calls
whenever I am connected to the net via them - and I can
only upload to the sites through their connection. So that
is what they are getting in return - the income from the
cost of the phone call.
In their cases, there are no annoying pop-up windows, and
no obtrusive advertising, so visitors to the sites do not
know that they are hosted for free. The downside from my
point of view, is that there are none of the features that
I have available from my main site - e.g. email redirect,
autoresponders, visitor information etc.
Most free web hosts rely on attracting advertising revenue
and therefore they will either place a banner at the top
of your page, use a small frame for their advertising on
your site or your visitors will encounter an irritating
pop-up widow every time they access your site. Also, you
may find yourself with a long, unwieldy url - is this how
you want your business to be seen?
What I would say, is ask yourself if you would deal with
someone offering a similar service/ product as you are promoting,
who was obviously using a free site. If you would, then
fine, but if not, don't expect anyone else to deal with
you!
The other important question to ask yourself is how successful
are these companies going to be in attracting advertising
revenue - at the moment even Yahoo and Alta Vista are reporting
large falls in their advertising revenues. If your free
hosts are not making any money, they will soon be out of
business, as many people hosting with HotYellow have recently
discovered.
If a company is taking its revenue from people who are
hosting their sites with them, they are going to make every
effort to provide a top class service at competitive, but
profitable, prices.
If having read the above, you still have a good reason
for deciding to use a free web host (and at the end of the
day it can only be your decision based on the information
you have) try, the following two, both of whom seem to have
viable, but different, business plans.
Coolebiz
http://www.coolebiz.net/default.asp?page=/free/refer&id=22826
or Terrashare
http://www.terrashare.com/join/homewebbusiness
For "paid for" web hosting, especially if you
are a beginner, I do not think that Ken Evoy's Site Build
It can be beaten. For one payment you get Domain Registration,
Web Hosting for one year under your own domain name and
more features than you could shake a stick at! You require
no knowledge of HTML, Java, Perl or FTP.
Yet you can build and get hosted a fully functional, search
engine and visitor friendly web site with a whole host of
features from Search Engine optimisation and submission,
link counter analysis, keyword analysis, and so much more.
I know I have said so before, but you really must get the
free email course and visit the site. Even if you do not
use the service, you will just learn so much - please believe
me! For the email course mailto:tamsaardvark1@sitesell.net
and to visit the site,
http://buildit.sitesell.com/aardvark1.html
I host my main site, with Global Space Solutions and have
always found their customer support very good and for $19.95
US per month, I get a full back up service and lots, of
features that you do not get on free sites. http://www.globalspacesolutions.com
For more information on web site hosting, visit my site
at http://DevelopYourWebSiteAndYouself.com/webhost.htm
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