Renee Shupe, the Redhead Virtual Assistant, recently ranted about the dangers of using free web hosting sites for a business website. Of particular note are these:
- Your site is a sub-domain at the hosting site. So instead of MyGreatSite.com, you become MySite.FreeWebHosting.com. That’s a killer for SEO.
- Most of these require advertising on your pages. That’s likely to either be ads for stuff that’s totally irrelevant to you business or (worse yet!) ads for competitors.
- You have little control over the look & feel of your site — you’re forced to use their templates (some are just horrible-looking).
- You lose rights to your site — if they shut down their service or go out of business, you don’t have a copy of your site that you can put up elsewhere.
Never skimp on your web hosting. Select a reputable hosting provider who will protect your interests in your web site and provide full value. Ask us to recommend some.
very usefull info for me. i will bookmark it 🙂
I must admit that it does sound appealing to sign up for free or very low cost hosting, but count the costs before signing up.