Deciding between a free or paid hosting service is not an easy task. It depends on the type of website you are running, the goals you are trying to achieve and how much work you will be putting in to make your website a success. Find the best web hosting services with the help of the following tips.
1. Bandwidth and Storage Space
When you talk about bandwidth and storage space with respect to hosting, it simply refers to storing the file on the server and delivering them to your website when in need. Hosting bandwidth is the total data that will be transferred to the user when requested, from the server to your website when it’s requested. Storage space is the total space that a server has, to store all this data.
Paid hosting doesn’t have any restrictions when it comes to storage and bandwidth, while free hosts will throttle resources so they can get more websites on their servers. This means you won’t be able to reach the goals that you have envisioned for your website. The scope of reaching the desired audience will also decrease a lot.
2. Features and Upgrades
Most of the times, if you are getting free hosting, these providers are hoping that eventually, you will upgrade to a better plan that’ll be paid. Free hosting doesn’t give you the option to create a kind of website that you have envisioned. This is because of the limitations of the features they offer.
You will not get things like cPanel that is helpful when it comes to configuring things like backups, SSL certificates, email accounts etc.
3. Domain Name and Branding
Both the free and paid services provide you with a domain name, but with one important difference. The companies who provide you with free hosting will have their name in the domain URL. This can reduce the credibility and professionalism of your brand. Paid hosting plans, on the other hand, will let you create a custom domain name that will have validity for a year.
4. Privacy and Security
This is one of the most important aspects of having a hosting. If you are getting lax security features then there’s a high chance of information leaks or theft of sensitive information of the users and visitors like personal information, financial information etc.
5. Technical Support and Assistance
Another important part of hosting service is technical support. Every good hosting service needs a great support team so that users don’t go through any issues. Free hosting providers don’t give you the best technical support. If this is what you require on top of the requirement list with your hosting then you have to go for a paid hosting service to get the best support and assistance.
6. Performance and Reliability
When it comes to performance, only the paid hosting services will have the best one out there. This is because free hosting providers don’t use enough resources that can limit your website’s performance in multiple situations. These providers regularly get overloaded and have to go through regular server maintenance to balance out the load on the servers. This is where you could actually lose some potential customers, which is always bad for the business. Meanwhile, best web hosting companies who provide paid hosts don’t have these issues as they use modern technologies to stay ahead of the curve. A lot of these hosting providers have upgraded their own systems such as storages now have SSDs instead of HDD, which are faster.
