There were many free web hosts which now are completely disappeared or offer commercial web hosting only. So keep a copy of your web site on your computer for backup purposes if the free web host disappears. On the other hand there are some web hosts which provide life long web hosting e.g. Geocities , Tripods. Did you think why free web hosts bear costs for providing free web space and bandwidth against advertising. Some web hosts put you on their mailing lists just to provide web hosting with them. They are earning from advertising to fulfill these costs. These companies provide preplaned web hosting type but if yu need some kind of special feature for your E-commerce or personal use then it becomes impossible. It is difficult to find commercial, business, dedicated server web hosting or E-commerce web hosting plans free of cost.

Advertising

Different free web hosting providers have different policies while providing hosting. Some web hosts require advertising on your web site to cover the costs of providing your site the free web space and other services. Some require to place a banner on your pages, when your web pages are accessed the banner will be shown, others require to show pop up window when some body accesses your web site. Some web hosts require advertising frame on your site. So web hosts have different requirment to fulfill their costs of providing free web space for your web site. Webmasters have their on likes and dislikes, some likes banner others dislikes. Similarly it is applied in case of pop up window and advertising frames. The web master choose the web host with which they feel more comfortable.

Amount Of Web Space

Now the one of the most important questions is how much web space do you need? Mostly site use less than 5 MB of space and free web hosting providers provide space frome nearly 5 MB to 15 MB.If your site is going to be increased in future in size due to some pictures, video or audio files then you need more space. Your needs will vary according to your requirments.

FTP Access

Mostly free web hosts provide you the facilitiy to design your web site by using their free online web host builder. It is useful and easy for the beginners but with the passage of time you need some more facility e.g. FTP access, uploading your pages throug email or browser but web site builders do not provide this facility.

File Type & Size Limitation

Free web hosts restics your web space up to a certain amount of space, some restrict your page size not more than 200 KB. Some free web hosts allow certain type of  files to be uploaded e.g. they allow to upload GIF/JPG, HTML type of files but if you want to upload your own or some scripting type of application than you cannot use free web space provided by that web hoster.

Reliability & Speed Of Access

It is very important that when some body accesses your web site its speed should be good, if its access speed would be slow than the visitor would not wait for long to open the site and your web site would be listed down. Your site should not be down , if some one accesses your site from the list, search engine provided but he/she comes to know that it is down he will move to another site and leave yours. So always try to find reliable and speedy web host to place your web site.

Scripting Languages Access & Bandwidth

Some web hosts do not provide scripting language access but do not bother because there are so many CGI services providers. You not only to provide the scripting access but you should know the environment of your script.

Bandwidht is another important issue for free web hosts, some free web hosts impose limit up to a certain amount of traffic on your web site. It means if the number of visitors increase or the number of web hits increase from the limit the web host will disable your web site. It is difficult to recommend a specific minimum amount of traffic. In general 100 MB banwidht is too little for a month, 1 – 3 GB of bandwidth is adequate for a month. Normally free web hosts provide limited features to its clients as compared to the other web hosts which charge for their services.

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