If you decide to place your own website on the Internet, the first of all you need to decide which type of hosting you will use. Differences between free and paid hosting are a topic that is of interest to many novice users. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss the main points about these types of hosting.
Let’s start with the free.
Pros
Obviously, the main (and often the only) plus of free hosting is the lack of payment for providing the user with space on the server. Therefore, such hosting is suitable for novice users who want to understand how to place their project on the Internet, publish personal pages or simply experiment. Several years ago free sites were actively used to host their own blogs, now there are many free blog platforms (Blogger, WordPress.com, LiveJournal and others) that you can use for this type of web activity.
Another advantage of free hosting is the provision of ready-made layouts and templates for creating a website. In fact, you get a foundation, which you then customize and fill out at your discretion. This is convenient for novice users, as the site can be made and published quickly enough.
Place a site on a free hosting can be really fast and easy – but do not forget about the pitfalls.
Minuses
Free hosting has a number of drawbacks and limitations, which must be borne in mind when posting the site.
First, free sites are usually located on third-level domains. So, the sites will be worse indexed by the search engines and it’s just worse to remember. If you are doing a website for yourself, then this may not be so important, but if you want to create a website with benefits (for example, sell something), then the domain can become one of the decisive factors in the popularity of your site. Briefly: third-level domains are unlikely to be used by a serious company (and users understand this).
Secondly, sites on a free hosting, as a rule, work more slowly. This can adversely affect the search engine promotion of the site, like the point above. And the disk space on the free hosting is usually small.
Thirdly, free hosting may not be suitable for the technical requirements of your site, as it is likely to have technical, system limitations, such as the execution of scripts.
Fourth, do not think that free hosting is a game of virtue. Nothing happens for no reason, and a free hoster also wants to make a profit or at least partially pay for the services provided. This translates into the fact that on your site may appear advertising: banners hosting provider, contextual advertising and so on.
In fact, free hosting is not having any guarantees, the site does not belong to you. Hoster can not just add advertisements to the site, but even block the site or delete it.
The lack of guarantees is one of the main disadvantages of free hosting, along with low security.
Therefore, let’s draw a conclusion: free hosting is primarily convenient for home pages of users, other simple non-commercial projects, as well as for sites that can later be transferred to paid hosting.
Let’s move on to paid hosting.
Most webmasters make their choice in favor of paid hosting, which is much more reliable and provides much more opportunities. In this case, you must monthly (or annually) to give a certain amount for the use of hosting.
But it should be remembered that hosting providers provide a large number of tariffs – from the most budgetary and basic to premium and advanced – so finding the right option is not difficult.
Variants of Paid Hosting
Depending on the method of storage on the server, paid hosting is divided into the following types: virtual hosting, virtual dedicated and dedicated servers, also sometimes allocate a colocation.
Virtual hosting is the most economical type of hosting, as several websites are hosted on the same web server, and all of them use shared resources.
Therefore, this option is suitable for small projects that do not require a lot of space to place information, and which will not exceed the specified percentage of performance resources.
When you select a virtual dedicated server (also called VPS – Virtual Private Server – or VDS – Virtual Dedicated Server), you get a certain amount of disk space, as well as part of the total memory and server CPU time. However, other sites may be located on the server, but they can not use the resources that were allocated to you.
In other words, this type of placement is more autonomous than virtual hosting and is similar in functionality to a dedicated server, but some restrictions on the resources provided still work.
A dedicated server is usually chosen for large projects with high requirements, that is for portals that can not coexist with other sites on a single server. In this case, you have at your disposal a whole server, and you can configure it to perform only its tasks (for example, to install the necessary operating system and software). That’s why this type of hosting is the most expensive.
Colocation (or colocation) allows the user to get a place in the data center of the hosting provider, that is, to place there their own server, as well as receive the appropriate maintenance. Responsibility for the server’s efficiency, including for providing electricity, access to Internet channels and other resources, lies entirely on the hosting provider.
Let’s return to the pros and cons.
Pros
On a paid hosting, you can select any desired domain name (if it was not registered earlier). You can choose freely and the domain zone; if previously popular were mostly. com, .net and .org, as well as .ru, now more often there are original domain zones like .me, .tel, and also the Cyrillic zone .рф.
Any rate of paid hosting implies obtaining certain resources that you can safely count on. This is expressed in the faster work of the site, and more stability of the site as a whole.
Naturally, on paid hosting and speech does not go about any advertising from the hoster, and there are practically no restrictions: the site can be made the way you want.
At the same time, you can create your site almost as quickly as using free hosting: for example, in Timeweb you can install one of the CMS in just a minute.
Moreover, paid hosting allows you to configure not only the site, but also the server (if you choose one of the VDS tariffs or a dedicated server). Therefore, on a paid hosting you can find a tariff suitable for any project, regardless of its system requirements.
Paid hosting is reliable: choosing cooperation with the company, you conclude a contract with it, which determines the rights and obligations of both the customer and the performer.
In addition, hosting companies offering paid hosting tend to provide technical support to users where customers can contact 24/7. This is not just a convenient, but a real necessary service, where clients are not only given answers to questions but also help to cope with some problems.
Minuses
The main disadvantage of paid hosting, if you compare it with free hosting, is, of course, the need to pay for hosting services, as well as to pay for the use of the domain.
Another point – when ordering VDS or a dedicated server, you need to have sufficient technical knowledge to administer the server. This is not a minus, but new users should take this into account.
Free and paid hosting have different purposes and, as a rule, are chosen for different tasks.
Small blogs and personal pages with low attendance can be placed on a free hosting.
Paid hosting is the right choice for a commercial project, as well as for any more or less serious projects that require a reliable and secure platform
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