Why a Paid Web Host?

You cannot be blamed if you are looking for a free web host, because the internet is littered with free stuff. The key is to know what to look for. There may be a lot of good and free stuff out there, but if it is not what you want, it simply is worth nothing to you. That aside; even if it is free, you would be better off without it if it is of poor quality.

Whether you opt for a free web host or a paid web host, there are of course limitations to what is provided to you. In other words, you need to know the features that are covered by the host. Most of the time, it would not make sense to simply go for the choice with the lowest cost. If it were so, there would not be people buying and selling hosting packages.

The biggest pitfall in a free web host is its false promises. As a potential customer (whether paid or not), you should at least know for sure how much disk space and bandwidth are provided. And you can be quite certain that you would not be provided with support. In fact, this may already be stated to you up front, before you sign up.

You should be wary of the term 'unlimited'. This applies to both free and paid web host. If you have done any research before reading this article, you should know there is no such thing as say, unlimited bandwidth. That term is simply a marketing gimmick to lure the inexperienced.

The electricity that you consume comes at a cost, and so does bandwidth. If you have a website with lots of traffic or that people are constantly downloading files (especially other than documents), bandwidth is being consumed. In fact, it is being consumed each time your web-page loads, multiply that with the number of visitors.

Even with a paid web host, if you opt for a shared hosting environment, you are of course aware that this means you are sharing with other webmasters who have their own visitors. If you were taking up too much space, you would be given a recommendation to upgrade your plan, failing which, your site will experience problems. There are some hosts that simply stop hosting sites that take up too many resources, without warning.

Generally, if your site is not a commercial one, it may be alright for you to choose a free or a low cost plan. There are many sites out there that serve the owners' personal interests, which may be called hobby sites and these may be fine on free hosting.

If yours has commercial value, it is best to go for a paid web host, rather than be at the mercy of a free one. The only question is which plan to go for. So, you must be able to find a comparison of the different plans side by side, for your convenience.