Choosing or finding the right free web host is definitely not a simple and easy thing to do. Surely it is easy to find a free web hosting company on the net, but finding a free but reliable and good hosting is another story.
Choosing a good free host is often hit or miss and can be frustrating at times. Looking for reviews on a host can help you know which company is good, but not always. There are many review websites out there where they mostly post positive reviews about some hosting companies they affiliate with and earn money based on commissions. Some other smart hosting companies created their own web hosting review website and promoted themselves from there.
So when looking for free web hosts, you may want to check what features they offer first before you even try to think of anything else. See if what they offer fits your needs.
Make sure they have at least these features:
– Offers free Control Panel
– More than 100Mb of disk space
– More than 1 Gb of bandwidth
– At least 1 FTP account
– Allows you to host your own domain
Some good free hosts may also offer:
– Control Panel cPanel or Control Panel DirectAdmin
– MySQL, PHP, CGI databases
– E-mail accounts
– Allows you to put your own ads
– Automatic software installer (Install a blog in minutes!)
– Community forum (to discuss your website)
There are many free hosts that may have a good and tempting offer and may have the requirements you need. But the next question is, are they true to their word? Are they able to provide reliable uptime for your site?
my own experience
I previously hosted my site with freeola and kvhosting. I found both were fine at first. But just after a few days or so. I occasionally had downtime issues with my site which is really frustrating most of the time. I thought, maybe that’s what I get for using something for free. When I was about to consider looking for a cheap hosting, at least something paid, a friend suggested Doteasy and recommended me to try it.
I was still a bit hesitant at first, but I finally decided to move to Doteasy. I’ve been hosting with them for about 3 months so far and I’m surprised I haven’t experienced any downtime with my site yet. So far my site is always running smoothly which really impresses me knowing that it is free hosting. Another thing I like about them is that they don’t show any ads on my site. This might be a minor thing to consider for some. But this is a major problem for me, since I already had the experience of having a host totally fill my site with annoying banner ads. Even my visitors get annoyed with it sometimes. And finally, their technical support is also excellent. They are very helpful and I always get courteous responses. Hopefully, things would continue like this and I will surely stay forever.