Paid vs free hosting

Hi everyone maybe someone asked this question. How was wondering what are the main differences between a paid or a free hosting plan? What are the advantages of free hosting provider?

I am planning to open a forum on the phpbb platform, will i be able to install it on a free hosting plan?

Thank you

 

The main difference is that you get what you pay for. If you don't mind downtime, your files occassionally being deleted, slow, overloaded servers, then free hosting is the best bet.

Do you really think somebody is going to pay hundreds of dollars per month in server and bandwidth costs so that you (and others) can host their websites for free? There has to be a catch somewhere. The catch is usually that they try making the money back with ads, forum posts, etc., and/or the servers are underpowered and ridiculously slow and overloaded.

To answer your second question, yes, most free hosts allow phpBB. Make plenty of backups.

 

I wouldn't even think about host a phpBB forum on free hosting. Or any other site for that matter, if your serious about your site at least. Paid hosting is worth it and its cheap anyways you get reliable hosting for about $2 a month.

 

Thank you everyone yes i think i will go for the paid hosting. Do you have any suggestion for a cheap hosting solution? i am planning to sign up for one year

 

My personal favorite is Hostgator. They have no downtime I have ever seen and their customer service is out of this world. You can also find coupons to get your first month of hosting for $0.01

 

Thank you yes i was already suggested Hostgator but if i subscribe for one year i have to pay $5.56. Anything cheaper that compares to hostgator?

 

I would suggest Hostgator, too. Or if you want a cheaper web host, you can also try ASmallOrange.com.

 

Have a look at the advertising section. I am sure you will find a lot of good providers around.

 

Free hosting can be a disaster if you are trying to build a business. As WSWD mentioned you usually get what you paid for. If you are paying the monthly bill, you are less likely to have downtime and you are more likely to get good customer service and help if you need it along the way. Hosting is not horribly expensive - I would go with someone reliable.

 

if you want to have a professional website with a view to earn a profit or to increase your sales, free web hosting would be the worst option for you.Free host can be an option if you are experimenting online. If you are serious for quality and planning for business website, you should choose cheap web hosting instead of free services.

 

Chances are no you won't be able to install it, if they let you then youll have ads. Plus it's harder to move to paid once at free

 

Well the big drawback is quality in free hosting, the servers would be slow, there would be no support, they can close your account without any notification as it is free they would not care about you, so simply go for paid hosting, choose any reliable one.

 

My personal advise is not to go for Free Hosting. I have first started my internet career and hosted my first website in free hosting company. At first the hosting looks good for my site, but sudden couple of months later the day came for me. The entire server is taken down and my entire site was down, after the worse hit I have moved to paid hosting that you will get as cheap as $1 to $3.5 in market

 

You certainly get what you pay for,if you just have a very small personal blog it may be all right but if you run a website/s as a business then going down the payed option is the only way to go.My websites are the shop window on my products or services and if i was to use free hosting which has limits like loading speeds then customers will go and search for better sites.Free hosting is not a option in my mind as i have to run it on a serious business model.

 

I believe Free Web Hosting Service providers provide very little space and they do not care about service if is it ok with you then i think that is useful. If you looking for paid hosting then i would like to suggest you hostome.com. They are well known for there support and cheap web hosting.

 

Social media like Face Book will not help your SEO in the traditional way - ie, a Facebook page with your website on it is not going to help your website rank higher in the search engines.

 

Paid = Usually a company, depending on who you choose can be very good or very bad. But at least because you paid you are entitled to support, backups and reclaim for downtime and other features in the service.

Free = Usually a 15 year kid that has some free space in his server or VPS and decides to give hosting for free, in a couple of months when he realizes hardware has limits, and the sever is crashing he deletes all free account or vanishes just like they appeared. Unless its a popular free hosting which will put serious limits on your account regarding database, files types, etc, plus ads.

 

Paid is usually more reliable and is more feature filled. Free on the other hand, is limited and usually injected with advertisements. Remember there's really no true "free lunch", everything always has a cost associated with it.

 

There are many companies that offer free hosting but the main drawback is that they will only have few MBs of space allocated and moreover we will have lot of advertisements.

 

I have to say that most of these opinions are based on some sort of bias with no empirical evidence to back up their statement. It's like asking a single person what their favourite sweet is and then extrapolating the answer to say it is the most popular sweet in the world. Or, coming accross one free host run by a 15 year old and then using this anecdotal evidence to suggest that ALL free hosts are run by 15 year olds, or run on slow servers, or injected with advertisements, or are unreliable, or only offer small amounts of space, or that they don't care.

The difference between free and paid advertising, as WSWD suggests, is that you don't pay for free hosting and you pay for paid hosting. Maybe not the answer you were wanting, but the answer to the question you asked. As for the only distinct advantage, it's that you don't pay for your hosting. Whether you could run a forum depends entirely on what services the hosting provider offers.

As for all the other warnings, well these could apply to any hosting company - free or paid. Will a paid host have more at stake or be more reliable since you are paying them money? Not necessarily if the free host is relying upon customer numbers and page views for advertising revenue. Slow servers, unreliable servers, or small numbers of customers affects their income more than it will affect some paid hosts. After all, you don't dis YouTube, Facebook, or Google for providing free services and financing their multi-billion dollar business on the back of those who pay for advertising on their sites.

Are there disadvantages to using a free host - most probably - but these will apply to any host you choose. It's best to work with a host who has a good reputation, and if a host is recommended by someone you trust that is running similar programmes/web sites, then that is all the better.

Would I use a free host for an important web site? Probably not, but I'm burdened by the same prejudices as many other people, so I'm not necessarily a good example to follow.