Free website hosting vs paid hosting

Hey guys, im new and I have a question. What other sources are out there other than webs(dot)com and weebly(dot)com that offers free website hosting? I'm not very good with computers so I thought I should go ask the pros here. I need a website made for my school sophomore class. What would you guys do? Thanks

Steve

I don't want to come off as "that guy" who goes and tells you to just Google it, but..

http://www.bing.com/search?setmkt=en-US ... eb+hosting

As for recommendations, I'm afraid I can't be of much help there as I haven't used any free hosting services in years.

Thanks, i've tried searching and wasn't sure what I came up with were good. I came up with webs and weebly. I wanted to know if there were any good recommendations. How much is web hosting and whats the pros and cons of free vs not free? Thanks again

With free hosting, you'll almost always have to put up with advertisements (and you don't get to choose where they go), no uptime guarantees, and severely limited space and bandwidth.

With paid hosting, you generally get what you pay for. Is this website you're making going to be a long term thing, or is it just a school project?

this will be the official website for our class. I've been lucky enough to be elected as class president and I wanted to give my classmates the best website ever. this website will carry on to senior year and maybe past that.


whats an uptime guarantee?

You'll probably want to look into some paid hosting then.

You can get some pretty decent hosting for fairly cheap now a days. If you can spare $60 a year you'll be able to find something.

Uptime guarantee is the % of time out of the year your host guarantees that there service will be running.

so free services will shut down often?

Thanks guys, I'm learning so much here

We are always attracted to things that are free. But remember, you only get what you pay for and there is no such thing as a free lunch.

With so many people using the free server, there will be lots of competition. This means when someone tries to access your web page, it could take a long time. Most people tend to leave your site if your web page takes too long to load.

Free hosting does not really give you that much space on the server. At first it may seem lik a lot but once you start building your site, you will quickly see that you have no more room to add any new information.

With free hosting you do not get very many web tools to help you with your website. I had a free hosting where they did not allow me to FTP to my site. FTP is how you upload files to your web directories. I had to use their so called tools which took forever to upload, download or even make small changes to my web page. Also, you may not be allowed to use other script languages such as PHP or CGI scripts which help make your website more easy to navigate.

With free hosting they force you to have all these banners and advertisments and pop up windows which get very annoying to visitors. You have no control over this. Also, since it is free they will always try make you upgrade by paying for new hosting. They can even delete your account if they feel you are costing them money. I had a site on geocities. They closed this down but fortunately they gave some warning so I was able to download my web pages before they got deleted.

You get no help, or very little help, if you have problems with your site. Customer support is almost non-existent.

You cannot choose your own domain name. You have to follow a format they give you which often is not very related to what you really want. You are getting what is called a sub-domain which believe me, you will end up regretting.

Free hosting sites are very popular hacker targets. Hackers can deface your site, put porno on it, and even bring it down. In other words, with free hosting, you have no website protection and security. They can even cause you to be blacklisted by the major search engines.

As mentioned in many replies to your, free hosting is not reliable. Right after you spend months creating your site, they could go out of business. You are then, as they say, SOL.

Web hosting is really not that expensive, anywhere from $6 to $10 per month depending on the server space you need.

Before you dive into free hosting, really think about it. How are your class mates going to feel about you, if after all the hard work to make a website, your web hoster goes out of business, your site gets hacked, you have no more server space to add new information or your site gets crashed.

Remember, if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Okay, lots to think about here. Thanks so much for the tips.I tried webs(dot)com and it seems easier than I thought to start the website. How would it be with a paid server? With more freedom, would it get more complicating to put in the basics that I want which are calendars, announcements, pictures, and maybe a forum?

What paid host server do you guys recommend. I would prefer it to be very cheap as our class account doesn't have much room to spend these days.

The only advice I can give you is some standard advise. If you want to experiment with a website or maybe try learning everything there is to know before spending money, free hosting services are an acceptable option. On the other hand, if you are serious about having your own site and want a truly stable experience and robust solution, paid hosting is the only sensible alternative.

Paid hosting is becoming more affordable. With the increase in server capabilities and drop in hardware prices, nowadays there are basic hosting packages obtainable for a few dollars. These hosting providers will also offer additional services like, email accounts, user control panels, site builders, site statistics and many other useful tools that will make building a site significantly easier.

You need to do your own research. You seem to know what you want so just research the internet for hosters who can give you want you want at an affordable cost.

The webmaster for this forum also has web hosting.

I don't know what he charges but why not email him.

Just a suggestion

Do you guys know any free services that will allow me to transfer to a paid host sometime in the future? Thanks.

You mean through the same company?

same or different.

right now, i'm thinking of using 50webs(dot)com for free hosting. Do they usually have a free domain name i can use? because i can't seem to get one from 50webs

Thanks for everything guys.