Free Web Hosting Vs. Paid Web Hosting: You Get What You Pay For

Do you have a story to tell? A product to sell? Something to share or a service to provide the world (or a select number of people)? One way to go public and get noticed is via the Internet--namely, with a website. A website is your presence on the Internet. It can be something small like a personal homepage you put up to share with close friends and family, or something on a larger scale, like a business or a service you provide. It can also be an idea you'd like to relate to the world, more suited for a blog. Then again, you might want to show off your talents; for instance, if you're a photographer, you can have a site that exhibits your work. The same can be said of people who produce movies, or music. Everyone has some kind of talent, a story to tell, a service to provide, or goods to sell, and what better way to get noticed in this day and age than a website?

Once you've determined what type of website you want to build, you have to decide how you want to host your site. There are various types of web hosting services available to the public these days, and since anyone can have a website now, the choices can be rather mind-boggling, to say the least. But, for all practical purposes, I'll divide them into two simple categories: Free web hosting and paid web hosting.

Who Should Use Free Web Hosting
Free web hosting is a great way to host a personal homepage. A personal homepage can either be all about you, such as your interests, hobbies, rants and raves, personal anecdotes, friends and family, work, school, and other things of that nature. It can be a combination of several topics, or you can dedicate each homepage to one specific topic, such as your wedding, your sweet 16 party, your pregnancy, or your baby. It can be something plain and straight forward, like a single page of text and some images, or you can divide it up into categories, where each category has its own landing page, hence the multipage website. On a multipage website, you would link each category to your site. On a single page website, whereas you might have some links pointing to (related) external sites, the basic formatting would be a single scrolling page, a hierarchy, if you will. Either way, if you decide to go with a personal homepage, and it's for personal use, for instance, something you'd only share with close friends and family, then I suggest you not throw your money away on paid web hosting. You put enough money into your other hobbies--you needn't have to spend a pile of cash to display them on the web!

Free web hosting pros:
* It's free!
* It's a start
* It's great if you're just testing out the waters
* You can play around with your website before launching it on a paid web host
* And some of the better free web hosts are reliable (enough), so you won't experience too much downtime, if at all

Free web hosting cons:
* Space is limited
* Bandwidth is limited
* Forced advertising
* Your script might conflict with theirs, some effects might be lost
* No support for PHP, FTP, MySQL, etc.
* Interruptions is service, downtime
* Not professional
* And with such sites as Geocities, they might stop offering their services for free after a while

Who Should Use Paid Web Hosting
As the name implies, it should come as no surprise that paid web hosting costs money. I can't say that all paid web hosting plans are expensive; in fact, I know some that are as cheap as a few dollars a month, and very reliable, but still, in the end, it will cost you money, so please make absolute certain it's something you really want (and need) before choosing a plan. That said, who SHOULD, after all, choose to host their website on a paid service? Simply put, any website that must portray a professional presence--namely, a business, a charity, an organization, a school, a magazine, a portal, and so on. Moreover, a site that generates money. If you're going to sell a product, or you want to pitch your ideas or projects to the higher-ups, then you must, MUST, go with a paid hosting plan. People are funny--they get (easily) turned off by free-hosted sites, especially those who intend to sell something, like a product or a service. It tells the public, basically, that you don't have enough money to afford a paid subscription, and that makes it appear as though your goods or services are not in demand, otherwise you could easily afford the five bucks a month to pay for web hosting. From personal experience, I can tell you, I never shop at websites that 1) don't have their own domain name, 2) don't have a paid host, and 3) use Yahoo! shopping cart or Paypal shopping cart as their sole source of payment acceptance. It gives me the willies; makes me wonder why such people don't just use eBay or Amazon Marketplace to sell their products. (Perhaps because they're not "reliable," shall we say?) I won't speculate as to why they choose to have a free host (anymore than I already have), but you get the picture!

Now, I'm going to give you the name of the one free hosting service I've had experience using, so I know for a fact it's reliable (and not to worry, it's been on the web for long enough, and doesn't seem to be going anyplace soon) and that is: Webs.com (formerly FreeWebs.com). You can either upload your very own custom website from scratch or choose from their extensive selection of premade templates. They also offer free scripts such as site search, forums for your website, comment boxes for your website, personal blogs, and much more. Basically, everything you need to build and run your very own personal homepage. It's also great for those of you who don't know HTML, or don't want to spend a heap of money on web development software--it's one of those all-in-one packages. And, you can pick what type of advertising they display on your website--something as small as a text link or a constant bar across the bottom of your browser window.

If you decide a website isn't for you, after all, then you have a multitude of choices here, too. You can choose to start a blog, which is a free service provided by websites such as Google's Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad (among others). If you just want to upload your work to the web, such as art, photos, and other such images, you can host them free of charge on such sites as Flickr or Photobucket. Got videos to show off? Have you ever heard of a nifty little site called *gasp* YouTube? I thought you might have. You need not feel pressured to have your own domain and website provided you don't have a business that can't easily be done from eBay. And don't feel embarrassed to host your work/projects at such sites as YouTube or Flickr, because more and more, these sites are becoming an accepted (and acceptable) place to exhibit your talent(s).

Ultimately, the choice is yours, and it's not a hard one to make, if you think about it. Personal homepage = free web host; business/professional website = paid web host. The best of luck to you, whatever you decide!