A common question:
Hello Pals, right now I’m a volunteer in a poor comunity at Bolivia. As part of my job here I would like to make a small web site for them. So, I am trying to find a nice free web hosting site on the web. I don’t need complicated staff. I’m looking for free space with not so much advertising and good operation. Thanks for your help.
Answer: This is quite a popular question. Free hosting will most probably never be the best hosting for aspiring website owner. Web hosting is the heart of your online presence and can mean the life or death to your business.
To answer your query, here are 7 factors to look for in a good web hosting. An excellent hosting:
- lets you try their service for free or at very low price,
- gives unlimited storage,
- offers unlimited bandwidth,
- gives unlimited add-on domains,
- has easy Site Builder,
- has Fantastico and QuickInstall to quickly install apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OSCommerce, ZenCart and more
- can be easily upgraded to VPS or one of their best dedicated server plans if and when your business require.
To answer your question, many experienced web developers suggest to try Hostgator. If you need an “unlimited” hosting plan, experts usually highly recommend going with Hostgator because they are the best cheap cpanel hosting around.
What if you find out that Hostgator sucks after you signed up with them? HG has 45 days, longer-than-industry-average money back guarantee so you have ample time to test them out. They are rated A+ by Better Business Bureau which shows their commitment to customer satisfaction. You also do not have to pay for the first month. You can just try their fully functional hosting service – you pay only $0.01 (you need to use the special coupon code). Do you know any other hosting company that can give you that kind of assurance? Anybody can grab an account from Hostgator for almost FREE.
How to Get an Unlimited Hosting Plan for Only 1 Cent
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Who Should Not Try Hostgator
To be honest, no web hosting service is perfect. Drawback of Hostgator includes:
- No free domain name – but you can easily get a domain name from the best domain registrar such as Godaddy or Namecheap for $10 or less. Would you agree that a website is not complete without a domain name?
- You need to pay full price after your first invoice – well, they need to make money too and all the support and great service do come with a cost
If you are still not sure if HG is right for you, or you have specific query about anything at all, try the Live Chat at HG. They are fast and knowledgeable. Just shoot them some questions before you decide.
Pasted below is an answer I gave previously to a similar question, the links to the free hosting sites should be of use to you.
A lot of the emphasis is on the fact that free sites aren’t all that good and even though yours is a charitable organisation I’d still be inclined to go for a paid-for site.
——————
There’s several places you can get a free website including from Yahoo (their service is called Geocities).
If you’re serious about creating a website and want one that looks professional then I wouldn’t consider a free site, there are many paid for sites that need only cost you a few dollars a month.
Here’s some of the things to consider about free sites…
— 1 —
You’re often restricted in the type of files you can have, some sites don’t allow MP3’s or video files for example.
— 2 —
There’s usually a bandwidth limit (this is the amount of data that’s downloaded). It normally doesn’t take long to reach the bandwidth limit and when this happens the site becomes unavailable – you’ve probably come across such sites yourself. The bandwidth limit is often hourly and also monthly. If you hit your hourly limit your site will be down for about an hour but if you hit your monthly limit if could be down for days or even weeks.
— 3 —
Most free sites have a limit to the amount of space you have to store your site. Large files such as music and video will very quickly fill the space. Simple text pages don’t use much space but when you start adding a few graphics this can soon add up.
— 4 —
There’s rarely any technical support with free sites other than user forums. If something goes wrong it’s up to you to sort it out.
— 5 —
Some copmpanies that provide free sites are ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ – just what you need if you’ve spent ages designing a nice site. Others are initially free but then state you have to pay or your site will be deleted. To avoid this stick with the well known and established names such as Tripod/Lycos and Yahoo/Geocities.
— 6 —
Free sites are often limited in what you can do, a lot won’t support PSP or MySql, some don’t even support Java. Could mean that features such as forums, blogs, guestbooks etc aren’t possible on your site.
— 7 —
A free site has to pay for itself somehow, no company is going to give away webspace without getting something in return. One common practice is to place adverts on your site. Sometimes these ads are themed and related to your site but other times they’re completely unrelated.
— 8 —
Often the site isn’t transferable except to a paid for service provided by the same company. This can be a serious problem if your site becomes popular and you need to move it somewhere that can accomodate your growing needs.
— 9 —
Often any extras are hugely expensive, if for example you want to buy more data transfer (bandwidth) you could easily be paying $1 per GB. It might not sound a lot but if you’re also paying for more web storage space and access to certain tools it will work out far more expensive than having a paid-for site.
— 10 —
You won’t get your own domain name so instead of having xyzcompany.com you’ll have something like freewebhostingcompany/xyzcompany.com.
— FREE SITES —
If you still want a free website then this page here… http://www.free-webhosts.com/search-webhosts.php is an excellent resource as it compares no less than 545 different free webhosts complete with reviews and user comments for each one.
Here’s some links to the 4 most popular free webhosts…
Lycos Tripod (CNet rating 9 out of 10)
http://www.tripod.lycos.com/
Lycos Angelfire (CNet rating 6 out of 10)
http://angelfire.lycos.com/
Yahoo Geocities (CNet rating 8 out of 10)
http://geocities.yahoo.com/home/
Express Page (CNet rating 4 out of 10)
http://www.expage.com/
— PERSONAL RECOMENDATION —
If you want a decent site with a wide range of tools and virtually no restirictions then go for a paid one. They’re not expensive and you’ll have infinitely more flexibility to design and expand your site.
1 and 1 is the world’s number one webhosting company where you can get a site for as little as £1.99 a month (they’re UK based so it’s about $3.50 a month)
http://order.1and1.co.uk/
Yahoo is the largest US and Canadian webhost and their starter package is $8.96 a month.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/?p=PASSPORT&AID=10294260&PID=1453263
Personally I’d go with Yahoo – I have lots of sites with them and have never had any major problems.
Hope this helps and good luck in designing your site.
Give this a try,
http://www.no-ip.com/
Try this http://www.freeservers.com !
It is very cool. I tried it
Regards, Tom Clark
http://freehostia.com/free_hosting.html
I have used this host for almost a year now and have never had any problems with it going down. It has lots of great features and the best thing about this host is that it doesn’t put any ads on your website.
Hope this helped!