Free Host Providers

There are many considerations and more and more things to look for when choosing a free host provider. You MUST carefully find and read their Terms of Service (hidden or not accessible until you sign up at times) and find out exactly what is expected of you in return for this free service. It's getting more and more difficult to find a decent free host provider. Some things to look for follow:

• What type of advertising do you have to display?
  Some providers require your displaying search boxes which detract users from your site contact. Check other pages to see what will be displayed on your site.

• How is the advertising included on your page? (i.e. popups or are you able to embed them on your pages)

• What type of banners will be displayed on your site. What is the size of their advertisements.

• Are you trapped within their framed pages?
  Xoom who used to be an excellent free host provider decided earlier this year to have all the sites displayed within their frames :( Their method of using "base target=" made it impossible for people to break out of the frames even after leaving their site. Users totally lost the ability to have their sites spidered by search engines . . . nevermind loosing those visitors who hate frames or are unable to view framed pages.

• Do they host domain names?
  Another warning! I have noticed that a few of the free host providers state that they will hold the rights to your domain if they register and host that domain on their servers. This is a big warning! You are paying for a domain name that they are staking claim to .. be aware of this! (Read Warning regarding domain name registration)

• Do they allow CGI?
  Some allow CGI but you must only use the scripts that they provide and are not able to use your own.

• Do they allow FTP access to your web space?
  More and more of these free host providers only have a site management tool to create your web site. This can become very time consuming to create pages. It also doesn't give you the ability to save a copy to your hard drive in case of server failure. Everyone knows the importance of backups. Not much flexibility in web site creation. You may also be limited to their graphics.

• How much space is provided?

• What type of support do they provide?

If you can't find the answers on their site which is generally the case, explore their member directory and look at some examples of the pages created on their servers. It's amazing how many do not have directories so that you can explore member sites.

At this time after much research to find a free host provider for personal pages I have yet to find one to recommend.

For business sites I highly recommend Christian Web Host. This is not free hosting, but their service and support is excellent!

FreeWebspace.Net

This is a searchable directory of free web hosting companies. You can search by various options to find a host offering what you are looking for. Read reviews of others users to hear about their experiences.

PLEASE NOTE: From my experience reading posts in newsgroups it is a well-known fact that many who are creating web sites do not take the time to learn what they are doing. It is very easy to blame a host provider for poor service or not having things running correctly, and for most the problems claimed are due to the lack of knowledge by the webmaster and not the host provider. Take into consideration the source of the reviews and read enough to gain a good overview before making a decision.

I read a few bad reviews that complained about their pages not showing up correctly and when viewing the source code of their site I found they had many HTML errors which I can see causing problems with their pages. One for example was </body</center></html> ... can you see the big error! It wouldn't hurt to view the sites of those with complaints to know if their review is worth relying on.

[ Back to Top | Home ]

Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

       

Copy & Copyright (c) 1998 - 2006   Creative Computing

Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

Please Click To Visit Our Friends At: