[deelip]

I have lots of experience with free and paid hosting. I like to suggest you guys about this. If you are going to host small sites like your small organisation, personal site, blogs etc. Because free hostings are not bad . And there is no risk of problem if you go with well established sites like zeeblo and 50webs.
Then if its big sites , go for paid hosting.

[triumph]

I don't know, I would not recommend free hosting for anyone, pretty much. You can get a small hosting plan for as little as $50.00 a year and you have full control of it. Some even go $5.00 a month. If you can't afford the $5.00 a month then you might as well not bother.

What happens if your free site takes off? It is next to impossible to move succesfully off a free host. Just say no to free hosts. The benefits of a cheap reseller account are worth so much more than the $5.00 they cost.

[andreww38]

ya, my reseller accounts cost $4.95 a month and i can host a 100 sites at least.
no point to build yr PR and alexa at a free site, especially if you're serious about turning it into a business.

[Paula62]

I used a free host for a small business a couple of years ago. It was a reputable host that had been in business for a while. However, it wound up getting hacked and knocked offline, and they didn't have the staff to properly deal with it. They eventually wound up having to change their servers, but by that time I'd had to rebuild the site and move it to a paid host.

Unless you've got a personal site where downtime doesn't matter, I wouldn't do it.

[tshugo]

Originally Posted by deelip

I have lots of experience with free and paid hosting. I like to suggest you guys about this. If you are going to host small sites like your small organisation, personal site, blogs etc. Because free hostings are not bad . And there is no risk of problem if you go with well established sites like zeeblo and 50webs.
Then if its big sites , go for paid hosting.

If its not a serious site, free hosting is fine.

But if you want to have a site with more content, traffic ++ I would go for a paying host. They are so cheap nowadays anyway

[llegent]

Hi everyone,
Coming from a free host point, I notice that there are some members of mine are adopting this strategy :-
1. First they build their site using free hosting.
2. They work on to build up their traffic, probably takes about 3 to 6months time.
3. After the traffic volume gets high and their aim achieved, they will move their site to paid hosting service.
4. In most cases, they will get a reseller account to cut down the cost.

By doing this, they probably will be able to save few dollars. Although the amount looks small, but imagine if they have sites in term of 10x, 20x ?! It could work out to be considerable amount though.

People having 10x, 20x or even 30x of sites?? Yes, they do have and it does bring good traffic volume collectively!

But well, why don't they get a reseller account in the first place?? Honestly I have no idea! But most likely reason is their "experiment" for the site they are building up might not work out that well. So they are trying out with free hosting.

[deelip]

Yeah everyone first starts with the free one.
Its bit difficult if the site needs to trasfer later because of its increasing user and size . Otherwise free host rocks.

[Plumley]

To me, it just makes sense to start with paid hosting if you're building a business. First, it just looks more professional. Besides that, it's a pain to move your site later and to take whatever steps are needed to get your traffic to the new site. As others have said, hosting is inexpensive. The benefits are well worth the small cost.

[triumph]

I understand the strategy Illgent, and am not knocking your business. Unfortunately a lot of that work building traffic will be lost after 3-6 months as they will have to rebuild their reputation and ranks with the search engines from scratch.

UNLESS, you had a *PAID* service, where you would forward a domain to a new url for a small monthly charge. This would be a good way for you to make money off these free sites that grow and allow them to hang on their google page ranks and search engine users.

[Paula62]

Thsi discussion has raised a question for me: If a site starts on a free service and changes hosts later, how would it lose traffic and ratings merely from a host switch? Or are you referring to free sites that do not operate off an individual domain name?

There are free host services that let you use your own registered domain, and others that give you a subdomain. Is the traffic issue related to both?