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Why Should I Pay for Web Hosting?
The advent of blogging and free blog space has brought about a
revolution in web publishing that pushes the boundaries of terms like
"webmaster" and "website." In todays brave new world of Internet
publishing for the masses, the traditional means of building and
hosting a personal website has fallen out of favor for many new
webmasters.
If you count yourself among the many bloggers who use a free subdomain
blog account, you'll have to think about web hosting sooner or later.
Unfortunately, most don't consider the ramifications until it's too
late. In the beginning, a free blog account or ad-supported web hosting
seems like the obvious choice for a personal site. Unfortunately, this
decision - or lack thereof - can cause problems down the
road. Issues with free hosting and subdomain hosting range from SEO
complications to ownership and control issues. Both free and paid
hosting have their own merits and drawbacks, of course, so the ultimate
decision is yours to make. But understanding these pros and cons is the
first step in making a good decision for your site.
Free Hosting
Pros
- It's free
- This is obviously the single most important
advantage of free web hosting.
- It's easy
- Anyone can open an account on Blogger or any
number of other free services and instantly get a free website
requiring no more effort to publish than writing an email.
- No experience necessary
- Anyone can create a site using one
of these free services, with no programming, technical, or even HTML
knowledge required.
Cons
- Branding
- As your blog or website grows, a subdomain hosting
account offers little in the way of branding, and may adversely affect
your credibility
- SEO
- If you move away from a subdomain account to your own
domain, you will have to start over building links to your new domain.
- No control over ad content
- With free hosting, you are at
the mercy of your hosting company's discretion as to what type of ads
will be displayed on your site. Pop-ups and ads for adult sites are not
uncommon.
- Limited or no accountability for site outages and other
problems
- When you're getting something for nothing, it's all too
easy
to become the victim of corporate apathy.
Paid Hosting
Pros
- You can host your own domain
- With paid hosting, you can
brand your site with your own domain name (e.g. MySite.com) and add
legitimacy to your content.
- Control
- With paid hosting, you control every aspect of your
site, including design and advertising content.
- SEO advantages
- With a paid hosting account and domain name,
you can build links to your site safely without worrying about whether
or not you'll be changing domain names. In addition, a hosting account
allows you programmatic and scripting abilities not usually found in
free, pre-built websites.
- Custom site development
- Unlike free blogs, a hosted website
can typically run a variety of CGI and scripting applications, and can
be built any way you choose.
- Accountability and Portability
- When you pay for hosting,
you hold more leverage over your hosting company in the event of
problems. Additionally, by retaining control of your source code and
data, you can easily move your site to a new host.
Cons
- Expense
- Though you can get hosting plans as cheap as $2-$3 per
month,
it's still a cost that free hosting does not incur.
- Some assembly required
- Though many paid hosts offer site
builders and blog software as part of the package, it still requires
more technical work than signing up for a Blogger account.
- Maintenance
- When you create a site yourself, you become
responsible for the upkeep of your own code. In fact, you become
responsible for just about everything involved with the site except for
the server and connectivity.
So in summary, making the right choice between free or blog
site
hosting and paid hosting is heavily dependent on both you and your
site. Though I've focused heavily on hosting for blog sites, much of
the same information applies to free hosting vs. paid hosting for other
types of sites as well. The important thing is to take a good hard look
at what you want your site to eventually be, how much effort you're
willing to put into it, and then make your decision.
Tags:
Web Design, Web Development, Website Development, Website Marketing
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