So you have just finished creating your first website and you are now looking for some web hosting. Many people begin by looking for free hosting options. However, you should not consider using a free web hosting provider for a number of reasons.

Many free web hosting providers do not allow you to use a domain name. Instead of having a professional looking website name such as www.mywebsite.com you instead wind up with an amateur looking address such as http://mywebsite.freehosting.com. As well as looking unprofessional the domain is also difficult for people to remember. You need an easy to remember domain name that looks professional.

Control of your website is very important, and when you host your site with a free web host they can take your web site offline at any time. Quite often, a popular site hosted by a free web hosting provider will be subject to “skimming”. The free web host will automatically redirect a certain number of your visitors to one of their advertisers’ pages. If you want to guarantee that people will see your website then you need paid hosting.

Another tactic that is notorious in the free hosting industry is to place advertisements on your web page. Free web hosting providers have to pay the bills, so they will add a variety of advertising on your web site. You may have banner ads, text ads, pop-ups, or the much hated interstitial ads. You have no control over these ads and when someone tries to come to your site for the first time they will rarely come back because of all the intrusive ads.

You will not get any support with a free web hosting provider. Why would the web host spend time and money providing you with support? They are only interested in placing adverts on your site. If you are using a paid host you can get support by email or by calling a toll free number.

Paid hosting generally provides a lot more space and bandwidth. If you are using a free host and you try and make a website successful, many of your visitors will never have the chance to see your website. These free hosts will instead replace your website with a page that says “Bandwidth Exceeded” and then have ads for their own products.

It will actually cost you much more to use a free web host than it will to use a paid host. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you found a good provider to use for free web hosting. The tactics that free hosts use may vary from one free web host to another, but all of them are there to strip you of your visitors in one way or another.

Many scam artists have historically used free web hosting, and as a result many free web hosting providers are heavily penalized by the major search engines. If you cannot get traffic from Google with free web hosting, then you will never have a successful website.

You can save yourself the time, energy, and money and use paid web hosting. It is a decision you will not regret.