Should you use free website hosting?
There are many companies internationally that provide free website hosting, but care should be taken when using them for the following reasons.
• Performance issues– many free website hosting providers have an extremely large pool of clients, which may effect the performance of their servers.
• Reliability of services – what are their uptime Vs downtime stats?
• Support – can you get hold of them by phone or email if needed?
• Band width and volume – be sure you will get enough bandwidth and storage volume. Know what they are offering and what the costs are.
• Backup and redundancy – do the providers of free website hosting backup their web servers and databases regularly, and then can they RESTORE it if needed?
• Location – where exactly are there servers? You should host your website in the country of your target market if possible. Google checks this.
• Their advertising – do the providers of free website hosting require you to feature their advertising on your website anywhere?
• Redirects – be sure that the free website host doesn’t use any redirects as part of their services that might prevent Google finding or indexing your website
• Bad neighbourhoods – avoid any hosting company that hosts spammers or link farm websites. If their servers get blocked, you are in trouble.
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