Free Vs Paid (Shared Website Hosting)

Your website or blog establishes the brand presence on the internet so that the target audience worldwide can know everything about the business, brand, product line or services offered. The quality of hosting services plays a crucial role in how the website or blog performs after the site goes live on the World Wide Web. If you research a bit, there are several web hosting companies offering paid packages at different slabs depending on your needs. There are also various reputed platforms offering totally free web hosting services. Following are some important considerations before you subscribe to any hosting package.

Free Hosting Comes with a Series of Limitations

1. Mandatory to use the Sub Domain

Your website or blog address will come with an extension or sub domain name. Follow the example below-

Paid Hosting Domain- domain name

Free Hosting Domain- sub domain name

The extension name does not have the brand appeal and the credibility necessary to create an impression on the audiences.

2. Limited Options to Customize or Enhance the Website/Blog

If you intend to monetize your blog, want to place banner ads, affiliate links and Google ads, your website or blog must have supportive plugins and technical configurations to support the link navigation. The majority of free basic website themes do not support the plug-ins and offering only limited web builder tools to achieve a customized look.

3. Problems with SEO Rankings

While Google does not differentiate between paid and free-hosted websites/blogs directly, yet you will have problems with SEO rankings using a free hosting. There is great load of free hosting websites or blogs using a shared space on a single server. This slows down the website performance. If your website is slow, Google will give it poor ratings on grounds of possessing inadequate user-friendly interface. With paid hosting, the same website can reach page one SERP rankings.

What to Expect from Paid Hosting Services

Using paid hosting means you will have to leverage a monthly or yearly investment to run your website. However, if you compare the prices to the bundle of packages, it is worth getting started with a basic package at least costing less than $10/month.

• Faster site performance with greater bandwidth, disk space, etc.
• Personalized domain name allows recognition to the brand name with the website address
• Dedicated control panel to regulate and update website as and when required (you will have more choices in using premier themes, plugins and other changes)
• Install plugins and tools as per need and suitability to your website theme to monetize your blog or website
• Periodical site data backup so that you can set up the website instantly again in case of technical failure or site crash
• 99% uptime guarantee
• Customer support access 24×7

The Bottom Line:

Majority of the bloggers and business owners create their websites or blogs to make money online. At the end of the day, it is very simple to understand. If you are passionate to spread your word online as a beginner, the free hosting is the convenient way to get started. However, if you want to earn money online with your website or blog, it is essential to choose a paid hosting package (at least a shared hosting to start).