You might like to put up a website but don't want to go to the expense of forking out cash every month for a server hosting account. The good news is that there is the option of getting free hosting services as these website hosting providers tend to make money from advertising. The downside to having a free hosting account is that it's very limited on pretty much every level. You can expect to have adverts on the top, bottom and sides of the pages you have your content on which may not be a good option for many people but if this is your first time building a website it's a good way to practice.
If you have a good understanding of building websites and driving traffic then you definitely want to look into getting a paid account because you'll be far better off in the long run.
Another big difference between having a hosting account of your own and having a free web hosting account is that you will have your own domain versus having a sub domain. For those that don't know what a sub domain is the best way to describe it is by showing you visually so a domain would look like this (www.domain.com) where as a sub domain would look like this - (www.sub-domain.domain.com) So in effect when you have a sub domain it's a little like partitioning the hard drive. Some companies use sub domains to separate the site into different departments such as support.domain.com and goods.domain.com.
If you plan to use WordPress for your site you won't be able to use a free web hosting account because they don't offer databases which are vital for content management systems. In fact a lot of sites need databases for dynamic pages which are used on websites that sell lots of products. To give an example a visitor comes to the website and uses the navigation bar to find the category they want, then a list of products appear and the visitor then adds an item to a the shopping cart and proceeds to finish the purchase.
Apart from not having any databases there aren't any sophisticated shopping cart programs either so an E-commerce site on a free web server hosting platform is basically impossible. You also don't get many of the free software installations offered on even the most basic of paid server hosting accounts.
Another downside is the lack of email accounts as most free web hosting services only allow one email per account which may be all you need but other options such as email forwarding and auto responders aren't available.
Going off all the downsides to having a free server hosting account why would anyone use a free web hosting service you might ask but it does have it's advantages. The main advantage to this type of account is obviously cost. You can't beat free especially when you are just starting out on-line. If you plan on running any kind of tests using a free account will again save you money because you'll be able to see whether a website idea is viable before you spend any money buying a domain and paid server hosting. I can't count the number of ideas I've had for websites and have hastily gone out and bought a domain only to end up dropping the idea as a failed project after a certain length of time.
In recent times it's not only free server hosting websites that offer web space for nothing as site building websites have also taken it upon themselves to adopt a similar model except for the monetization. The site building websites make their money when you decide to use their site builder on your own domain and some offer paid hosting services as well.
If I was to personally choose a free hosting plan today I would probably opt for the site builder as they do offer a lot more options and some even offer revenue schemes through Google AdSense which is nice. The other advantage to using one of these builders is that you can always choose to host your website on your own domain at a later date which is a distinct advantage.
There is also one other choice and that is to build a site on a web 2.0 platform like Hubpages or Squidoo which seem to be some of the most popular sites. You can add all sorts of modules including video, music, written content, revenue modules and a whole range of other modules you can add to your pages.
This is all well and good but the downside to building your online business with this platform is the fact that you are limited again to what is available. You can't just upload various software programs or use anything that needs a database to function. The other drawback is that you put your whole future in the hands of the web 2.0 owner. They may decide to change an aspect of the site which affects you and there is nothing you can do about it. They may close down altogether for whatever reason leaving you high and dry with all the content lost.
These issues in many ways highlight the reasons why choosing a site building platform like Blinkweb is the best option because you can at least progress on to using your own domain and hosting seamlessly.
I'm not a great advocate of setting up a site on anything but your own domain and hosting but if I was to choose an alternative my best advice is to use a website that offers free hosting, site building facilities and an option to buy your own domain and hosting further down the road. That's my opinion but at the end of the day the choice is yours.
For those of you looking to get on board with paying for server hosting there are plenty to choose from but I like Serverspace.co.uk as the rates are pretty competitive and they offer a range of scaleable packages.
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