Free Or Paid Webhosting: Make Your Choice

Looking for a company to host your website can be a daunting task simply because you have to take into account a lot of information. Google the term 'webhosting' and you're bound to get bombarded by countless results showcasing a plethora of companies. Worse, each company boasts a variety of options and benefits that will confuse you even more. The anxiety is made even more palpable by the knowledge that the webhosting company you choose can make or break your business. You get overwhelmed that you become afraid to take that important first step.

All that worrying won't help you kick start your online business. To make life easier, a simple breakdown of the different types of webhosting services will be helpful. So here we go.

Free webhosting is the most widely used webhosting service because, as the term implies, it's all free! Most of those who are just starting out don't have the financial means to go for the premium plans. Luckily for them, free webhosting is sufficient enough to accommodate the needs of a new online business. Up to a point, at least.

As expected, choosing free webhosting comes with a price. You get limited control over your website, not to mention limited bandwidth and disk space. Usually, your website will be registered under a subdomain. For example, if you are selling slot cars online, your website's name will appear beside the domain name of the web hosting company you signed up with. Instead of "www.slotcars.com", your site's url might be presented as www.freehost.com/slotcars. This is a drawback since it doesn't have good recall and your website appears unprofessional. As a result, visitors will think less of your products and services.

You also don't have a choice in the matter if third party ads get posted on your website. These ads can be distracting to your visitors and cause them to look somewhere else.

As mentioned earlier, these disadvantages won't matter much if you're just starting out. Once your business starts to gain momentum and you're able to gain ROI (returns on investment), you can always choose to upgrade your plan when the need arises.

Paid webhosting services, on the other hand, give you better control and flexibility over your website. These types of services offer different kinds of plans, with each one having its own set of options. As a rule of thumb, you only choose the cheapest plan that can support your website's needs. As your business grows, you can always upgrade to a premium plan in order to enjoy other perks such as additional bandwidth, bigger disk space, better security and additional servers.

Better yet, you can enjoy the convenience of getting better support from the webhosting company. That's why I highly recommend that you choose the one that provides quality support to its customers. Web hosting is no simple task. Imagine the frustration it will bring if you encounter server problems and the webhosting company isn't capable of providing you the help you need.

The trick is to recognize the type of service that will suit the needs of your website and have the awareness about the upgrades that you can make according to the growing demands of your business.