Free Hosting - A Real Bargain?
With the availability of many free hosting offers so prevalent
on the Internet, are they the bargain they seem to be?
I must admit the offer of free hosting does have major appeal
however, rarely is something of value given away for nothing. At
first glance, free hosting sounds like a good deal! Upon closer
inspection, you'll find close to 100% of them not suitable for a
business website at all.
Before getting one of the free hosting packages, the person
needs to have a specific idea what the website is going to be
used for. Is it personal or for business?
If it's a personal website that's going to be used to post the
family newsletter, photographs and so on, it's a perfectly good
use of one. On the other hand, if it's a website built for
commercial purposes, the free hosting packages are of limited
utility to a business operation.
Most of the well documented opposition to free websites
invariably mentions the use of very long URL's as one of the
main examples but there are more fundamental reasons you
shouldn't ever use a free website as your main business website.
Most business websites will need advanced mail handling and
script hosting capabilities not offered by the free web hosting
accounts. As your business grows and you realize the need for
the above, your step onto the next business level is severely
hampered.
These are services most Internet businesses need that are not
provided by free hosting packages:
CGI Scripting PHP Scripting Autoresponders MySQL Databases
On account of the lack of scripting support you'll find many of
the tools of eCommerce will not function on your free website,
such as: shopping cart software and order tracking, javascripts,
to name a few.
If at a later stage of development you decide to order some of
the above support items "a la carte," you'll find out the
outrageous cost of them...so much for a free hosting account!
All the above shouldn't imply there are no legitimate business
uses for a free hosting account, there are! They can be used for
hosting pages that link back to your main website, for
re-directed URL's, for hosting any kind of web page that doesn't
need any of the advanced support options of your main business
website.
They can also be used for showcasing individual products
contained within your main website with a link back to your
landing page. They can increase your SE ranking if they are well
designed with tight, relevant copy that goes well with your main
website. Quality and accuracy do have their payoff!
Another important, and often erroneous point, is that it will
help your main website have a wider appeal to many of the SE's
because of the incoming links. However, the incoming links from
free hosting accounts are not considered quality links by the
SE's.
Used with insight and vision, free hosting services can ad value
to your web operation. The main point to keep in mind is that
the same care and preparation given to your main website should
also be given to your free websites. The quality of the writing
and production should be to help your main website, not to
detract from it.
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by Francisco Aloy
(C)2004 Francisco Aloy
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