The web hosting service allows you to place a website on the internet and acts as an online portfolio and storage unit. You can host your data on fast servers for a fixed monthly price or choose to host it for free, on slower, shared servers. These servers may at times be overcrowded too and you can experience slower browsing. Free web hosting, still, is very popular because of easier experience and people who just want data to be posted for public view or are beginners and want to build their first website.

Most of the free webs hosting service providers cover the cost by placing advertisements on the free web hosting. They may place ad banners or pop-ups to generate revenue for them. Another reason, that free web hosting is available is because the server is shares by a large number of users. Most of the popular free hosting companies offer only enough space to have a small personal website. The good ones have paid options available so you can upgrade to paid web hosting when you are want o move forward.

Benefits and Limitations

Apart from the benefit of building a free website, the availability of free web hosting may prove to be beneficial to a lot of people, especially individual users or companies who want to display information for a shorter duration. Generally, If one opts to use a paid site for such use, they may have to pay the fees for an entire year, without any actual need of the hosting after the purpose is solved.

One drawback on registering a domain with a free web hosting service is that, if one spammer gets banned or blacklisted for any unethical practice, it may effect all associated domains on that server.

Advantages of free hosts

1. Free\No cost - The web hosting options are available free of cost and you can make an individual or company website at beginners level.



2. Good for experience - The free web hosting is perfect for beginner level experiences as a user or a website developer



3. Simple and Convenient - Most of the free web hosting service providers’ supply site- builder and website templates, which eliminate the need of experienced web site designing. So, people who are not acquainted with software like Dream weaver or FrontPage need not worry and can still make their own sites.



4. Sub domains - Most of the free web hosting service providers offer a free sub domain, for example –yoursitename.thefreehost.com. This facility enables users to launch their sites instantly and eliminates the need to wait for domain registrations for the launch of the site.

Disadvantages of Free Hosts

1. Lack of Support - Free hosting services generally offer no customer or technical support. As a result, if you face a problem, the resolution is time taking and slow.



2. Busy servers - Most of the time, it is observed that the free web hosting servers are not reliable. As they are overcrowded and shared, a lot of technical issues and slow browsing may be experienced.



3. Limited Features - Advanced features like PHP, MySQL and FTP accounts are normally not available on free web hosting services.



4. Ad banners and Pop ups - The Free web hosting sites promote ad banners and pop ups as medium of advertisement and source of revenue generation. Sometimes, it may be very irritating to be disturbed by such interruptions while browsing.