Free Web Hosting
From Website Hosting Wiki
A web hosting service is a service that hosts your website on the Internet so that it is accessible to everyone. These services can range from being offered for free or they can be set up on a monthly payment plan. The more money you pay a month, the more services and options you get with your website. Many people host their personal websites with a free web hosting service, one that does not charge a monthly fee but is supported by advertisements instead. This means that you will see advertisements somewhere on your website or as a pop up. Free web hosting provides you with either a sub domain URL or a directory URL or if you own a domain name that you purchased separately, the free web hosting provider will allow you to use it.
If you can find a basic web hosting package that is truly free – and they are out there – consider yourself lucky. Most web hosting companies will offer a basic package for a free trial period or with very limited options before requiring you to upgrade to a monthly pay service. Free hosting sites are usually limited in the following areas: size of each hosted file; small bandwidth allotment; disabled hot linking; file type restrictions; compulsory placements of ads on all pages; no uptime guarantee; and no custom URLs even if you own your own domain.
Free web hosting companies may offer the following extra features but there is no guarantee that you will get all of these: web based control panel; free e-mail accounts for the domain or sub domain; file transfer via FTP; scripting languages; relational databases; scheduled processes; other items like guest books; forum and community resources not typical of paid hosts; reward systems for extra services; and no data limitations and unlimited space.
Web hosting companies are able to offer free web hosting as a way to introduce their services to the world. They recoup their money on these websites by selling advertising space to other companies. High traffic websites are expensive to host but the more traffic the site has, the more the ads are seen the cost is covered, especially if the advertisements are high quality and not competitive. Referrals are another way free web hosting companies recoup money on their free websites. They track the number of free accounts as compared to paid accounts and rely on the free website owners to tell their friends and family about the web hosting company. More often than not, someone signs up for a paid account. Finally there is resell hosting. Someone starts a web hosting company, gets numerous clients and then sells the company to someone else, using the profits to start up other ventures and repeating the process. Many free web hosting companies use a mixture of these three approaches to make their money.
Free web hosting can be given out in a few different ways. Instant activation allows the owner of the account to immediately start setting up their websites. Unfortunately spammers and hackers like these site and host illegal, inappropriate, and abusive websites. This causes the free web hosting company to offer very little storage space and monthly bandwidth in addition to other restrictions. These sites require banner ads that are placed on the sites. Posting in a forum type of free web hosting requires website owners to join a community forum and post up a certain amount of posts to earn their free web hosting account. This type of free web hosting awards points for each post and once the owner earns so many points they can apply the points to their free website. Finally, free web hosting companies can require owners to go through an application process that they use to approve or deny the website.
