There are lots of variants to get a website for free. Free website builders are available today, and lots of companies are offering free hosting services and many possibilities for customers. Of course, it’s a tempting opportunity to get a website without spending a single cent, but is it really a good idea for a business or promotional website?
No matter you create a personal blog or a corporate website, some compulsory aspects like the security of content, appropriate loading speed, eye-catching domain name, and some others must be present. We’ve decided to speak on the risks you may face if you prefer a free website for your business or personal needs. So let’s speak on them.
1. Slow loading
If you choose a free hosting provider, your website will be one of the hundreds of others that have been put on the same server. Of course, this results in very bad loading speed and poor user experience for your visitors and potential customers. Website loads slowly, so people leave it being bored with waiting.
2. Forgettable Website Address
If you choose to be present on the Web for free, you lose the opportunity to have a custom domain name. If you make a website for your business, it’s important to make it trustworthy for customers, so your domain name should make them believe you treat your business seriously. A website address should better be brief, easy to remember, and should reflect the nature of your business. And a custom domain name is always a paid-for service.
3. Inability to Move Your Website Data
If you start using a free service, and then you want to move to a paid one, sometimes it can be impossible. Free service providers don’t have special tools that allow your website to easily migrate, so your data will be locked and it will be impossible to move it anywhere. Of course you can hire a third-party expert to move your information manually, but again it will require additional costs.
4. The Risk of Your Website’s Closing Or Your Content Selling
When you use a free service, you should be aware of the fact that you don’t actually own your content, so they can shut down your website at any time and you will lose all of your content. As you don’t pay for hosting, your website becomes a product to sell. So nothing prevents free service providers from selling your data.
They sell your information to make money, ‘cause free services don’t bring revenue. They sometimes can sell your personal data, your email address, or even sell your domain to another owner. So your data here isn’t secure.
5. Irrelevant Ads On Your Website
One more way of making money for free hosting service providers is to sell a place for the ads. So you create content and construct your website but other business owners pay for the ads on your free website. Those ads will be displayed even if they don’t match your business nature and are absolutely irrelevant. You don’t own your website so you can’t choose what ads to display there. Sometimes such ads look intrusive and distracting so people can’t close them and leave your website without learning its content. As a result, you lose your visitors and your traffic.
6. No Site Builders and No WordPress
Free companies offer a limited list of tools and services or sometimes don’t offer any convenient website building tools, so your website won’t look professional and trustworthy. Of course many free service providers don’t allow to install WordPress on your website ‘cause it requires more sources than a free website can afford.
7. Limited Bandwidth and Low Storage Space
Good bandwidth can’t be free because it is a costly thing. Bandwidth is defined as the volume of data transferred from a server to a browser. So as you understand, a free service provider has very limited bandwidth. The same is with a storage space: a lot of websites share the same server, so you can’t store much data. If you need more space, you’ll have to pay for it, so again the free website is not as free as it may seem.
8. More Hacking Attempts
Free websites have poor security, so they are subject to hacking attempts. As you have limited access to your files and data, you won’t be able to recover all of this after a hacking attack.
9. Not Many Design Choices
Of course you can’t choose any theme for your website if you own a free one. It’s not a self hosted site and it has just a limited amount of poorly executed designs to your choice. Usually they don’t allow to use your own templates you’ve bought or downloaded from a third party.
10. Limited Number of Pages
An absolutely free website has a limited number of pages you can use for filling them out with content. If you’d like to use more pages for your website, this is usually an additional premium service, and you will again have to pay.
Conclusion:
Lots of other risks are possible if you choose a free website. The main thing is that there are hidden fees for necessary services such as additional pages, a custom domain name or storage space. By the way, a free service can be available as a trial one for a definite period, after which you will nevertheless have to pay. So, there’s no need to spend a lot of money for every service separately, there are much more cost-effective variants of launching a good professional website and saving your costs, and WordPress is one of them.
