Free! This word catches more eyeballs than Paid. It is a human nature to get attracted towards free things. Take an example of Buy 1 and Get 1 free offer. You will buy two same color and design T-shirts if one is free on the other, isn’t it? Later, you may think shall I use it for myself, or give it to my sibling or my best friend. That means you buy the product first without any idea of how you will deal with it later on. What else the company has thought of while giving you such offers? Bingo, their idea worked.
On the other hand, there are companies that do not give such “free” offers instead they may give discounts which tells us the company trusts its product and the quality is never a compromisable parameter here.
Free and Paid concept is applicable to any business from every sector. No matter if it’s an IT industry or textile industry it works everywhere. In this article, we will go through the web hosting point of view. Now you may be thinking is this scenario present here too? And as I said before, yes it is!
Free hosting:
Free hosting is a type of internet service where an individual and an organization make their website visible on World Wide Web.That means you can host your website without paying any cost.
Paid hosting:
Paid hosting is a type of internet service provided by web hosting company where you have to pay for the space and other resources needed to host your website.
This may confuse many of you that if I can do my work without spending any penny than why should I pay for it?
Read the below points to understand what makes the difference:
1) Try:
If you are a small company or a web developer in the learning stage and have a blueprint of your website then you can give free hosting a try. In free hosting also you get good plans where you can learn the basic process and steadily move towards complexity. But make sure this you are using for the practice purpose i.e.for your temporary website. After all, you cannot afford to compromise your online presence, as free web hosting services always mention their name in your site’s unique name.
2) Speed:
Speed is one of the important parameters to gain internet users’ attention to your site. Visitors expect your site to load within a few seconds of their click. In free hosting, the chances of your site getting down are high, as your websites’ performance depends on the proper infrastructure of your server. Imagine a scenario where you are giving a presentation to your client through a website and your website gets down. It will directly hamper your business deal. This may not be your fault but absolutely the hosting provider’s. So, for any professional website, you should always look for the paid hosting services where you get the assurance of at least 99% uptime for your site.
3) Unwanted Advertisements:
In free hosting, you have no control over the unwanted pop-ups and banners that gets displayed on your website. This may distract and irritate your relevant audience. If your website is about technology and your visitor sees baby products pop-ups on it, he will shut the website without going further. You may observe the free hosting providers cover almost half of the space on your website with such irrelevant pop-ups and banners. Such factors will be considered by search engines and affect your SEO ranking in a negative way. This is not a case in the paid hosting. Your hosting provider takes the responsibility to restrict such advertisements from coming to your website.
4) Resources:
Free web hosts give you lower bandwidth, storage space, CPU memory, RAM for usage. But the images and videos on your website may require additional space which you can demand as per your usage from the paid hosts. Plus you get unlimited email accounts, free domain names from them.
5) Security:
In web hosting, security comes with SSL certificate. Free web hosts also provide SSL certificates making you feel a low budget security investment. But this is actually a risky investment as any hacker can easily access your private data (Transaction id, credit/ debit card number, contact information) even if you have free SSL certificate. In fact, this has happened in 2015 when 13 million passwords were stolen. So, it is wise to choose a web host provider that provides high-level security, in order to make a standard place in the market.
6) Backup:
Your data may get lost due to some natural calamities or mishappening without you being aware of it. With free host, it is impossible to retrieve your lost data, now even if you pay them they won’t be able to recover your lost data. On the other hand, the paid host takes the automatic backup for you on your server at least once in a 24hours. So that you don’t have to worry and no need to remind yourself to take the backup, it gets done automatically.
7) Uniqueness:
Who will like the domain name with other companies name included in that? I think any decent company cannot tolerate this. This is what free host providers do, they will give you a domain name including their company name in your URL. This won’t give a professional image to your business as clients can easily find out that you are using a free host that means even they are dealing with the non-secure providers. Whereas, paid web hosts provide you unique domain names which give your brand a unique identity.
8) Time Span:
When you develop a website you consider the past, present and future impact of it on your visitors. That means you think that your website will be available on the internet until you want it, isn’t it? Suppose, one fine day you wake up and find out that your website doesn’t exist on the World Wide Web, what will you do? This is a risk involved when you host a website with the free provider as no one knows how long the free hosting company will survive. Afterall they need to make money to survive. This is not a case with a paid hosting company as it won’t ever shut down. Even if it does by any reason then still you have your private account from where you can download your whole website whenever you want and can host the same website elsewhere.
9) Customer support:
There is no customer support from the free hosting company. So if you get stuck anywhere during installation or want any technical guidance where will you find the solution? To overcome from such situation paid hosting company gives you 24/7 support. You will never feel helpless or left out as the technical team will guide and fix your problem.
10) Business strategy:
Some free hosting companies host your site for free up to some duration. After that, they start asking for charges to provide you any facility and if you don’t pay your website might get lost. The free fake promise is made just to attract the customers and once you make the deal they know the tactics to take out money from your pockets. On the other hand, the paid hosting company informs you about the charges before you buy any product/service from them.
Conclusion:
According to a survey, it is found that there are over 1.5 billion websites on the World Wide Web but out of these less than 200 million websites are active today. i.e. about 75% websites are inactive. Service from the free hosting provider is a major reason behind this. So, if you want your website to be secure, up all time and unique than you should always choose a paid web hosting option.
