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What is Free Hosting?
Free Hosting is a service provided
by several hosting providers, which allows users to create
a basic personal web site for free. This site will offer some
of the features of a commercial website, but also be hampered
by more limitations. Contrary to virtual hosting, which allows
users to use their own, individual domain name, ie. www.yourname.com,
Free Hosting provides users with a domain name based on the
name of the host, ie. http://yourname.freehost.com, or www.freehost.com/yourname.
What are the Advantages of Free Hosting?
The most significant advantage
Free Hosting possesses over Virtual Hosting, is that it is
available at the best price of all - absolutely free! In addition,
the Free Hosting provider assumes responsibility for web administration
and server maintenance, which means that the hosting beginner
can create a functional site despite having no technical expertise
whatsoever. In addition, the setup process for Free Hosting
accounts is generally very simple, and often complemented
by a setup tutorial. Free Hosting accounts are not barren
of options either, and typically offer FTP capability, as
well as a range of pre-installed CGI scripts. These options
allow you to give your free website the look and feel of a
professional, commercial site, without taking a penny out
of your pocket.
What are the Disadvantages of Free Hosting?
In a perfect world, Free Hosting
would offer a full range of added value options, unlimited
file transfer, and the broadest bandwidth available on the
web, only we don't live in a perfect world. Despite numerous
advantages, or perhaps as a result of them, Free Hosting does
have several flaws which will make more serious webmasters
reach for their checkbooks or credit cards to pay the extra
money for a Virtual Hosting package. Free Hosting packages
do now offer the same options, or support services provided
by Virtual Hosting packages, which means that your website
will not contain features like a database, shopping cart,
or 24 hour phone support. In addition, Free Hosting does come
at a price, which is typically paid for by advertising promoting
the hosting provider. Nevertheless, it is a small price to
pay for the beginner looking to create a small personal homepage,
and for this reason alone, the overwhelming majority of personal
web pages on the web today are served by Free Hosting providers.
So if you are looking to test
the waters of the Web Hosting industry, and are either unable
or unwilling to put up the cash for a Virtual Hosting account,
Free Hosting is the perfect solution. Despite a number of
limitations, Free Hosting still allows you to make your presence
on the web for absolutely nothing, and is a great place for
beginner webmasters to get valuable experience with absolutely
no risk involved. For information on Free Hosting providers,
search our HostSearch listings at http://www.hostsearch.com/free_zone.asp
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