Normally a serious blogger would never choose a free web host. Free web hosts are limited in just so many ways. If you are hosting on a free web host, either you are not very serious about your site or you are planning to move to a better web host when your site grows big. Free web hosts always restrict you in one way or another in order to make you purchase their premium plans. With my experience with free web hosts, there are few things you should always look for in a free web host before starting to build your site especially wordpress blogs and other php based websites.
Free-Hosting
Webspace and Bandwidth
Check your web space and monthly bandwidth requirements. Hopefully most of the free webhosts will meet your web space and bandwidth requirements as your site is new and don’t have lots of visitors.
.htaccess Configuration
Free web host must support unrestricted .htaccess configuration file editing which is crucial for search engine optimization. Most of the free web hosts will put restriction on .htaccess modification.
Php Mail Function
Double check that your chosen free web host allows php mail function which is must if you are starting a forum or a site where registration is required. Without php mail function, automated user registration will be impossible. For example, freehostia doesn’t allow php-sendmail.
XMl-rpc Pinging Service
Check that your free web host allows xml-rpc pinging services in your wordpress so that when you write a wordpress blog post, search engine bots are automatically notified. However if your web host doesn’t allow pinging, you can compensate for it by using pingoat, feedping, pingshot and other pinging services.
Read reviews
Even if you get all the above features, you’ll encounter ‘connection timed out’, ‘error establishing database connection’ on a regular basis. Check user reviews and try to choose one with less such problems.
Its highly unlikely you’ll get all the above features in a free web host. Even if you get one, you’ll face frequent problems. So, I think I should have rather kept the title of this post ‘reasons to avoid free web hosts’.
This is a guest post by Amit Sharma, Who writes at AmitSharma.co.in. If you like to Write for Shoutmeloud, do read : Shoutmeloud Revenue sharing program.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Good customer care also important points because i had suffered a lot because of that problem
Yes. Thank you for adding this important point which I missed.
Hey why not have a post on reliable free web hosts when you are looking for some small niche sites ??
But free hosting doesn’t always comes with customer support. If you are looking into paid hosting also, I will say hostgator is the best and their customer support is just incredible.
I have tried 110mb for a long time and I rely on them, please include name of some free webhosts too.
I have tried x10hosting.com for some time but they deleted my account without any reason… 110mb.com is good.
I have heard they delete your account if it goes above 100 unique visitors per day.
hai ,
can you suggest me some good webhost because i’m using blogger for now and i have an idea to move it to some good host after my exams. please help me out.
Free hosting services are not worth it, Incase of a trial and error purpose we can go for Free hosting, but actually none of the free webhosting plans are really worth to be chosen.
Nice post.
Even though I agree with what you’ve said, I have been using a free webhost for awhile now. Around 5years back, I happened to meet(online ofcourse) a Canadian guy who runs an online resource company called arnit. He offered me a free hosting plan that somehow managed to be better than any thing available on the net.
I have complete access to it and have stuck to it for a pretty long time.
If one wants to make his career in blogging and he takes blogging seriously then these free web hosts sud be avoided at all. Better to invest some money and start with a good hosting company as Hostgator. As a starter, one can also go for blogspot. but then also today or laterone has to definitely switch to some gud host. so better go for it from strt itself.
Atul
@mad geek @far sid No free web host is recommendable. Your best bet is to share a reseller hosting with your blogger friends. Though, I use x10hosting for new blogs.
I disagree. I’ve been using ismywebsite. Its the best free hosting I’ve ever seen. They reqire ads, but you get to pace them, and they can be adsense. The specs are awsome
But You can Consider 000webhost.com …
My friend used it and rarely faced these problems!
My blog was one week old running on a free host when I submitted this post on shoutmeloud. I got 30+ visitors in the first hour on my blog through this post and after that my free host sql database server got hardware failure. I switched to a paid host immediately though my pocket doesn’t allow putting Rs3000/year for hosting as I don’t earn anything. I lost potential traffic because of sql server failure and later dns propagation delay. If one wants to continue blogging seriously, he/she must avoid free hosting.
I used freehostia for my blog .. It was a headache , daily I used to get 20 to 30 mins downtime . I can’t use Akismet , install plugin through dashboard etc . So I changed to Dreamhost .
For another blog , I’m using byethost which is relatively better than other free host .