Using a free website on the Internet is considered one of the points with a high search rate recently, but this method causes you many problems that involuntarily face you, leading to the failure of your project and halting its development plans. Therefore, we have collected for you the most important reasons that show you the extent of the defects and risks that you may be exposed to. Its when you use a free website.
We will present all of these reasons in order from most important to least important, but before we discuss those reasons, we will explain the concept of a free website to you, so continue reading with us.
What is a free website ?
Any website in the world consists of two basic sections as follows:
Hosting service : This is the server on which your website files are uploaded and stored. Domain
name service : This is the address of your website.
And when you get a free hosting service and a free domain name, this is known as a free website, you certainly think that this is tempting, but the truth of the matter is that companies do not do this for free unless there are reasons, some of which are obvious and some of which are hidden, that negatively affect your site in general, and your project in a way. Special, and we will explain all of these reasons in the next paragraph.
Disadvantages of using a free website
1- An unprofessional domain name
The domain name is the first factor that a customer is exposed to when entering your site. When using a free website, you will find a subdomain before the main domain, for example www.websitename.freehost.com, and this gives a bad first impression to the visitor.
If you target visitors from the Google search engine, you will find that the click-through rate on your site is low, even if you are able to rank at the top of the search results for a specific word, because the visitor will certainly prefer to enter a site with a paid domain because it is more clear to him, and because he will think that the site with the paid domain is more professional. And you definitely do!
Also, the Google search engine does not prefer free domain names, which makes it more difficult for you to rank high in search results. When you search on Google for any topic, you will not find a free domain name on almost the first page, and it can be said on the second and third pages as well.
2- Long loading time
Using a free website makes your site speed slow, so it takes longer for the visitor to fully view your site pages.
This negatively affects your site, especially by providing a bad user experience for the visitor, which causes him to leave your site directly to move to another site, thus increasing the bounce rate from your site, which also negatively affects improving the search results for your site. Studies indicate that the possibility of the visitor leaving your site increases. By 32% if the site loading time is 1 to 3 seconds, what about if it is longer than that? This certainly happens with free hosting.
Also, the Google search engine depends on the speed of loading your site as a factor in ranking search results, so you will lose your site’s ranking and will find it very difficult to rank at the top of search results in all directions, because all factors are against you.
The main reason for the slowness of free websites is that the hosting company places a large number of websites on one server, and thus all the websites affect each other, and the server’s resources are few so it cannot handle this large number.
3- Low server uptime
Server uptime is the average number of hours your site operates during the day, and it expresses the readiness of your site to receive visitors.
The average server uptime in paid hosting companies is around 99.9%, while in free hosting companies it is very low, and this means larger vacation periods for the site, which gives a bad user experience, and customer losses during vacation times.
4- Poor customer support
Customer support service is considered an important service for customers, especially in hosting companies, because websites are constantly exposed to technical problems and need immediate technical support in order to solve these problems so that you do not lose your customers during the holiday period.
It can be said that there is no customer support at all when using a free website, and there are a few free hosting companies that provide customer support service, but they are very weak, whether in technical expertise or the response rate, which reaches several hours and may reach days, or in methods of communication. Available.
While most paid hosting sites provide customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and operate even on official holidays, they provide more than one different way to communicate with customer service, for example, direct chat, email, or phone call.
5- Free websites are difficult to archive
The Google search engine relies on many factors and algorithms in archiving website pages and articles, and most if not all of these factors are not available in free website hosting, for example, website speed, and compatibility with mobile devices.
Also, all free hosting company servers are shared servers and have one common IP, and free websites are mostly used for spam services, so the entire server IP is blocked from the Google search engine and their indexing is blocked as well, so it can be said that archiving free websites Very difficult and almost impossible.
You must rely on another traffic source if you want to use a free website, or accept the idea of making a great effort in order to get a very small number of visitors from the Google search engine.
6- The appearance of many random advertisements
Hosting companies will not give you a free website without getting a benefit in return, and the main benefit you get is profits from displaying ads on the free websites they host.
These ads are displayed obligatorily on your site, and most hosting companies do not allow the customer to control or choose the ads that are displayed on his site, which causes him many problems, for example, displaying ads for a competing company or displaying ads for pornographic materials, malware, or Other than that.
Also, the method of displaying ads is completely random. More than 5 ads may appear in different places or in inappropriate places for the visitor when he enters your site, and it will certainly be annoying for the visitor, causing him to leave your site immediately and look for an alternative site because you provided him with the worst possible user experience.
7- The difficulty of making a profit from a free website
If you are planning to create a free website in order to make a profit from it, you should know that it is very difficult due to many reasons, the most important of which are the following:
- You will get few visitors due to poor user experience, and the number will continue to decrease.
- The advertising company Google AdSense, which is the main company for making profits from websites by displaying ads, will not accept displaying ads on a free website because the acceptance conditions do not apply to it. If you try to set up the acceptance conditions on your site, you will find it difficult for Google AdSense to approve the advertising content that appears on your site from Hosting company.
- You will find that very few advertising companies accept free sites, and the financial returns from them will be very low, and they may not be guaranteed.
8- Very limited bandwidth
Bandwidth is the rate of data transfer from the hosting server to the visitor’s browser, and this definitely costs the hosting company money, and it is calculated based on the number of visitors to your site and the size of your site’s pages as follows :
Bandwidth = number of visitors x web page size
Most free hosting companies offer a very limited bandwidth and therefore the number of visitors is also limited. When the maximum bandwidth is reached, your site will be stopped, and you will be asked to upgrade to a paid plan to increase the bandwidth. The cost of the upgrade may reach more than purchasing paid hosting from the beginning.
9- Limited storage space
Free hosting companies offer very limited storage space for your site files, and therefore you will have difficulty uploading videos and images in your articles with complete freedom.
Some other hosting companies offer unlimited storage space, but they add a large number of sites on the same server, which makes your site’s output from the server will also be small.
All free hosting companies use an HDD storage unit, which is considered the slowest type of storage unit, and affects the speed of the site in general.
10- It does not provide a backup service
Backup is the process of copying your site’s data and files on a private server, and returning to that copy when any problem occurs, and this is considered an essential point for maintaining the security of your site.
But you will not be able to benefit from this service because all companies that offer a free website do not provide a complete backup service except at additional costs amounting to the price of purchasing shared hosting. Therefore, if a problem occurs on your site, whether it is a technical problem, a loss of data, or a hacking of the site, there is no A way to completely restore your site files back.
11- Inability to install WordPress in most cases
If you want to install WordPress on your site, the option of using a free website is not entirely suitable for you, because most hosting companies that provide this service do not allow installing WordPress on the site, because WordPress will consume more resources and space from the server.
Even if hosting companies allow WordPress to be installed on the site, you will see many errors, due to the limited server capabilities, which will make the experience of using WordPress not entirely good for you.
12- Inability to fully control your site
Free hosting companies do not allow customers to fully control their site. For example, some hosting companies do not allow access to the server via FTP except at additional costs.
Also, most free hosting companies do not allow linking an external domain name to the free hosting, and they always make you linked to a subdomain name from their main domain, and this is certainly a form of advertising for them.
13- No support for PHP/MySQL
Companies that provide a free website only support HTML pages, and do not support PHP dynamic pages linked to MySQL databases.
This is because PHP dynamic pages linked to databases need more space and thus occupy and consume more server resources, making the number of websites that can be hosted on the same server less.
Some free hosting companies provide support for PHP pages and MySQL databases, but for a fee, and if you want to use this development, it is definitely better for you to buy paid hosting than to use that limited free hosting.
14- It is not completely free
Using a free website may cost you some fees in the long run, as some companies offer free hosting for a limited period, for example three months, and after that period you are asked to renew the hosting for a fee, and if you do not renew the hosting, your site will be completely stopped.
There are also some high hidden fees for some additional services, for example, hosting images or videos on your site, email accounts, data transfer via FTP, etc.
15- Service without guarantees
Relying on a free website means that you are giving up guarantees, because you will not receive a tax purchase invoice in the first place as happens with paid web services.
You must agree to some terms and conditions that contain some clauses that allow the hosting company to delete your entire site at any time without providing you with reasons. It also allows them to sell information about your site to advertising companies, and this is part of the income that they depend on.
Also, the lifespan of most companies that provide free hosting services is short, so you can find hundreds of companies appearing and then quickly disappearing and other companies appearing in their place, unlike the major hosting companies that have more than one headquarters in different countries and have been operating for a long time.
16- Redirection cannot be performed
When using a free website, you will not be able to perform any type of redirection from your old site to your new site, even if you move to the paid plan, it will not allow you to redirect from your old site as well, but it will allow you to redirect to the new site.
17- Inability to obtain analytics for your site
Free hosting companies do not provide reports or analyzes on your site’s performance, unlike paid hosting companies that allow you to obtain detailed reports.
Also, some important services that you can rely on to analyze website performance, such as Google Analytics, do not allow creating an account linked to a free website, so it will be difficult for you to obtain any reports on your site’s performance.
When to use a free website
There are some sub-issues in which you can use a free website, the most important of which is training and experience, as you can train on this site in terms of modifying some settings and using some special additions, as well as experimenting with a specific software code, or a special appearance of your site, for example, changing Website template or typeface and preview the effect before actually applying it to your website.
When using the free website for these matters, you can accept some of the previous disadvantages of annoying ads, low hosting limits, difficulty of archiving, and so on, because the website is truly free of any costs and is not intended for any profit goal and does not target any visitors.
The cost of purchasing a website
After reading all the previous reasons, your choice will definitely be to start your project by relying on a paid website, but is the cost of purchasing a website high?!
The simple answer is that the cost of purchasing a website varies depending on the hosting company, the characteristics of the server that suits your site, the domain name company, and certainly the duration of the contract.
But as a startup website, you can buy hosting with average features at a price starting from only 2.5 US dollars per month, and a domain name at a cost of 1 US dollar for the first year, so the cost of purchasing a website is 2.5 x 12 + 1 = 31 US dollars for a full year.
In this way, we have reached the conclusion of today’s article after we have explained to you the most important reasons for avoiding using a free website, and the only reason that is valid for using free websites, as well as displaying the estimated cost of purchasing a startup website for an entire year. If you have a question or inquiry, do not hesitate. Comment below the article or contact us, and you will be answered as soon as possible, God willing.
Description: There are many reasons why you should avoid using a free website, and there is one reason why you should use this site, we will discuss with you all those reasons from the most important to the least in 17 main reasons
