Services Offered by Free Web Hosting Companies
So what can you expect to get from a free web host?
- You will be in a shared web hosting environment (not an issue for the vast majority of small websites)
- Limited diskspace - quite typically less than 25Mb
- Small bandwidth allocation - not umcommon to see 2 to 3 GB
- Limited email capabilities - you can sometimes receive messages,
but quite often will not be able to send email through your hosting
account
- Subdomain - Some free web hosting companies
will offer you a subdomain off of their main domain name (or one of
several domains they may maintain). Something like
[yourdomain].[theirdomain].com.
It is quite rare to find any of the following mainstream services at a free web hosting company:
- Dedicated hosting (not an issue for the vast majority of small websites)
- Database
support - you will be hard pressed to run a dynamic website on a free
web host without substantial upgrades to your account (aka -- money out
of pocket)
- Signicant diskspace
- Substantial bandwidth - this
may not be an issue to start with, but as you grow you may notice a
struggle to stay within the free web hosting company limits
- Support for server-side scripting languages (Perl, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion to name a few)
