Personal websites and blogs can do well with free web hosting. There’s no denying that free website hosting is a good option for simple, straightforward websites with minimal traffic. May require paid add-ons or upgrades to be fully usable (domain, etc.) No technical skills or expertise required Others recoup profit losses by adding advertisements to your website, which you cannot control, or including their own branding on your website (for example, in the domain name or at the bottom of pages). Some providers offer free hosting that is the trial period of a paid plan, charged automatically once the trial period expires. Other hosts have such limited bandwidth that including media such as videos, songs or lots of pictures can drastically slow down your website’s loading times.įinally, it’s important to read the fine print of any free website hosting offer.

Paid hosting plans will typically include one or two free domain names, but free hosting plans rarely do. Domain names, for example, are essential if you want your site to be accessible online. Similarly, most free web hosting plans do not come with several standard and necessary add-ons, forcing you to purchase them separately and incurring extra costs. This means your free website might only be allowed to have a certain number of pages or cannot include certain plug-ins, widgets or add-ons. Limited resources, bandwidth and customization options can prevent your site from appearing the way you want it, especially since you will likely have a cap on the amount of content and storage your host can support. Unfortunately, free web hosting plans only come with the most basic features. Long answer: whether or not your web hosting is really “free” depends on what kind of website you are trying to build and what features come included in your free hosting plan.

Short answer: yes, if all you need are the most basic features and you don’t mind some inconvenience, you can host your website for free (or close to it).

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