Why "Free Hosting" always comes at a price.

We are certain that at some point during your search for a suitable web hosting service provider, you came across several promising "Free Web Host" or some variation of that phrase. What we are going to say next has been said as many times as it has been ignored, nevertheless, we'll say it again.

If you are a business owner, you cannot afford to use such services. Period. They are designed to attract a different crowd than business owners. Let's explore four reasons we say that.

1. Grandma used to say "Nothing good in life is free", that held true then and still holds true today. By now, you understand that a web site uses bandwidth as well as server space. If a company is going to give those two items away, there is probably another way they are paying for that.

2. What are some of the costs associated with a webspace? Unless they have purchased their own server, someone has to pay for a dedicated server or at least a Virtual Private Server.

3. In both of the above instances, a fair amount of technical knowledge is required to run the back-end  equipment. This type of knowledge doesn't come cheaply.

4. Some companies even throw in "free domains" to sweeten the pot. Domains are never free as evidenced by the hundreds of companies happily selling them. There is money to be made in that field, so why give it away?

So how is it then that we pay? Here are five reasons.

1. Advertizing. Most companies will not disclose that they place mandatory ads on your web sites. All income generated by these ads belongs to them and in fact you never see any.

2. Viral volume. If you like their service, you'll more than likely spread the word. More volume, more ads. More ads more bandwidth use and subsequent income and so on. The old domino effect.

3. Bandwidth charges. They severely limit a free account's bandwidth usage so that a percentage of their accounts always go over the limit each month, becoming a paying customer. This is money in the bank to them.

4. Domain Name charges. Those "Free Domains" you got with your package? Quit the service and try transferring them to a new service without payinga fee. Same goes for renewals. They are only free usually for one year. Next year they'll cost about $35 to renew!

5. Victim of Magnetic Marketing. Just like McDonald's feature the dollar menu, this free service is used as a draw to entice a customer to enter the establishment where they soon realize that a $1 burger has to be accompanied with a $1.50 soft drink and $1.25 fries. The add-ons are where the enormous profits are made. Never mind Super sizing it! 

In the same way, the paid services are made much more attractive when jam packed with features and bonuses, etc, so that you soon forget why you originally came to that site.

So we did 4 Reasons why Free is not really Free. Then we showed 4 Ways the services are actually paid for by you, the customer. Now, we'll explain why a business cannot afford to use them.

Businesses need their web site online 99.9% of the time in order to be competitive. Free hosts average about a 95.0% uptime because they are normally just resellers who depend on the parent company to provide support. That, coupled with the fact that there is no priority placed on support for a free account is a major reason why.

If your company's web site was down for a weekend, you could potentially lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in sales. What does the host company lose? Some bandwidth revenue? That's easily replaced.

Secondly, if that web host provider suddenly decides to go out of business because they weren't making enough money, what happens to your web site? There is just no stability for a business to even consider using a free host. Now that we've said it, it's up to you not to forget it. Will you?

This concludes our "6 Golden Rules Of Web Hosting " series. We hope we were of some service to you and invite you to continue on with your hosting education by visiting our "Articles" page. We'll see you there.

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