The Best Free Web Hosts

Nowadays, you can find free web hosting all over the Internet. Many people who couldn't otherwise afford hosting take advantage of the many tools and services that these free hosts offer, without having to worry about the monthly fees that most paid webspace providers charge. Free hosts are able to operate freely, because they co-brand with larger, expense-charging companies, or show advertising on some part of their website, or possibly yours.

My experience with free hosting has been a hit-and-miss affair. Sometimes, I will stumble onto a site that has greater features than any other free host I've come upon before, to learn that within a week the service is down, never to be seen again. There are consistent winners to be found, though. Of course, they all have different advantages and disadvantages, depending on your tastes.

Freehostia

Freehostia might be the best free web host around. They offer a healthy 250 megabytes of webspace. Most people can easily fit ten pages in under a megabyte. They also offer 5000 megabytes of monthly traffic. Therefore, if your page is 1 megabyte in size, up to 5000 people can view it a month without any problem. They are famous for their wonderful support system, with all questions being answered in under 24 hours. In terms of negatives, the only things I have come across are occasional MySQL database problems, and the lack of alerting users when servers are down. For a free webhost, though, the options are incredible.

Awardspace

Awardspace used to be one of the better web hosts. They are one of the most popular free hosts on the Internet, because of the features they offer, including 200 megabytes of webspace, more than most people will ever need, a pretty sizable bandwidth limit at over 5,000 megabytes a month, PHP, MySQL, and the option to use your own domain. Unfortunately, they have initialized a word-filtering system in the aims of removing SPAM websites. Every time they scan your page and find that one of the keywords or phrases corresponds with their blacklist, the page is deleted. Because no one knows the words on the list, it's not worth the effort to even start a site. "Amazon.com" is supposedly one of the keywords. To me, keyword filtering is a ridiculous policy. I hope to see Awardspace using other methods of SPAM-fighting in the future

Byethost

Byethost is exactly like the two earlier web hosts, except for one crucial difference: the bandwidth. Byethost offers up to 30,000 megabytes of it. That's six times the amount the others include. That also means you can have six times the viewers. The extreme majority of websites do not use this much bandwidth. Chances are if you're anything less than an Internet superstar, this site will suit your needs.

Jumpline

Jumpline is the first webhost of it's kind. Rather than using the reseller model to give away free service, instead they offer a free trial of their premium, dedicated webspace plan. The amount of features are astounding, and include free call support. No other free service has come close. Unfortunately, they have changed their policy. They used to offer a no-strings-attached one year trial. Now, they only offer a three month one. It's a big blow to many people, and a good portion are seeking other methods.

110mb

Though the name is completely misleading, 110mbs makes Byethost's bandwidth look like closet space. They don't offer 110 megabytes of it. Rather, they offer almost 110 thousand. The exact figure is 100,000 megabytes a month. Where does the name "110 mb" come in? Nowhere, from what I've learned. They offer 2,000 mbs of webspace. That's the same as Jumpline, and Jumpline is a paid host, usually. Unfortunately, you have to do fifty posts in their forum to have access to a MySQL database. This an important component for many web designs, and most people don't believe it's worth the effort.

Conclusion

I hope you see that there is no clear-cut winner when it comes to free hosting. All have their advantages and disadvantages. There are many great hosts on this lists, and I don't believe you will go wrong with at least one of them. If so, please write a review! These hosts have enough positive feedback, already.

Source:

Most Ethical Free Web-Hosting site: http://www.free-webhosts.com

Wikipedia Entry on Free Web Hosting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_hosting