Free vs Paid Hosting

Duality · Joined: 13 Apr 2006 Posts: 13

What do you prefer to use? Free or Paid Hosting? I personally prefer to use paid hosting. They both have their ups and downs but I find paid hosting more reliable.

Free hosting is nice when it is good quality. I define good quality as sites with: FTP, CPanel, and Fantastico. Websites like GeoCities.com and Freewebs.com are bad quality IMO, they should only be used if your a beginner in web design. There is a forced ad, a domain name that's hard to remember, and an unprofessional looking website.

Another problem about free hosting is that, if there are no ads and there is no funding for the website, they might not last too long. You could have a quality website up and it could get shut down because your hoster couldn't pay the bills.

This is why I like paid hosting better. You know that when you pay your monthly, bi-monthly or even yearly cost, that you are getting hosting that you know won't shut down anytime soon, especially if it is a well known host like BlueHost.com. Paid hosting gives you better support, more scripts, and sometimes comes with a free domain name that is easy to remember.

In conclusion, I think paid hosting is the better of the two only if you know about designing websites, and free hosting is good if you're just starting out in web design.

Rjay · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 8

I have voted for Payed Hosting even though Ive never payed for any before, I always win some in contests or something.
I believe that the quality of the hosting is much better, and use of a cpanel etc is possible.

geline · Joined: 21 Apr 2006 Posts: 65 Location: Philippines

I agree with Duality in the sense that we are more assured if we pay for the hosting of our website. Another reason is that we can design our website in such a way that it fits our needs and purpose. However, for beginners and non-programmers like me, though I like to use paid hosting, I just have to be contented with freewebs, geocities, googlepages for the time being as I don't know how to create one yet. The problem with using these ready made web templates is that, I still don't know how to post my google adsense code ad, especially the ad for content. Anybody there who is willing to teach me how? Smile

Also, since I have google adsense, I just can't use it with my geocities website. So, I still vote for paid hosting because I can see more advantages with it. Smile

Ryan · Joined: 11 May 2006 Posts: 5

For now I voted for free for I haven't used the services of any paid forum hosting. I guess the paid hosting are for fulltime webmasters who can manage their forums everyday. I agree that there are more advantages in taking paid hosting rather than the free one. But as I have said it is good for those who can manage their forums everday.

JTingly · Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 59

if the condition is that you would have the money to pay for paid services, i would say GO WITH IT! of course it is gonna be better than the free service because you would have to pay for it.. more benefits. however if you did not have the money and would have to spend extra time to earn it, don't even think of it. free services are great, provides alot of good stuff if you find the write host.

So in summary: You got the money? Go with paid
BUT, free is already good enough so go with that if you dont have anything to pay with

Tamera · Joined: 16 May 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Georgia

I'm a big fan of Ezboard. Those are free but with the option to pay and upgrade, they have a "community chest" option where members can donate to keep the board payed for.

Now that option is really more for personal than business use, I've always used it for personal interest forums such as "The Sims" computer game, or for members of an online book club.

hwang · Joined: 19 May 2006 Posts: 6

I must say, I prefer freebies more than paid things.
There are so many services offered for free, even some of them are better than paid ones. But I don't like free services because of the ads placing abuse.
Sometimes, free service staff abuses placing ads in your site and finally it seems to be an advertising machine.
Paid services only worth because they don't force to place ads on your paid space.

Jade · Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Posts: 20

I think it goes with the saying ' you get what you paid for'.

I think if you are looking for a quality service with great customer support and uptime etc. You really should go with paid hosting.

If you are not interested in avoiding annoying advertisements and pop ups, then sure why not get a free host.

Also another great thing with paid hosting is that you can fully customize your forums/websites through FTP, were as most free hosts do not provide this access.

Just my opinion.

JoeD2718 · Joined: 09 Oct 2006 Posts: 8 Location: Maryland, USA

I would have to pick paid hosting. There are some good free hosts, but most done live up to their features or shut their servers down pretty quickly. I would rather have a larger company host my site like godaddy.com who have pretty decent prices and your site will always be up. One thing that is bad about free hosts is many may have great bandwith and space but they put a file size limit which sometimes makes those features useless.

45ish · Joined: 23 Oct 2006 Posts: 83 Location: usa

Hi,
I voted FREE forums. The one I am using is unlimited traffic.
(not that it is an immediate problem for me)
I like that there is just one ad banner across the top and no pop ups.
The reason I voted for FREE forums is because I recommend it for new
forum builders. It's the best way to tinker around with this project and
figure out where you want to go with it later on.
If you find yourself becoming a serious expert at this I do suggest moving
your forum to a paid host so that you can have complete control. You should
do this when you find your forum is going to be successful and do it before your
forum gets too huge where you'd be forced to pay a data move fee instead of just
relocating and archiving your posts by hand.

To each his own, I voted free, but that's for new gals like me.
_________________

George · Joined: 03 Nov 2006 Posts: 9

Definately paid hostiing for me.

There are a number of advantages to it:
1. No adverts, this is a major point for me as they annoy members.
2. Much better support, the majority of big companies have twenty four hour live support.
3. Less chance of it going down. When I used to use free ones they often got shut down because of people abusing it.
4. Better scripts; cpanel etc. Some free services have theses, but very few.
5. Better up-time (Generally)

They are also not that expensive. I pay a relatively small amount for the hosting I get and I am not at all dissapointed with it.

More specifically with forum hosting I habe had friends use them and then want to move, or upgrade. Only to find out that they are not able to move their database from the free forum host. Which can be a mjor problem for them; they often have to start over again.

As a lot of people have said so far in this thread, you get what you paid for.
_________________
Yours sincerely,

George

mansha · Joined: 28 May 2007 Posts: 5

I do agree that paid hosts are better quality but still for beginers hosts like freewebs are providing really good services. reewebs has been there for quite a long time so does tripod too. I do trust them, I know ads placed do look nuisance but for the first timers theses hosts are excellent option.You get so many templates to choose from and as well as free tips to add meta tags, submit your site to search enginesand other services for free. Once you have learned the ropes you can climb up to the higher paid level and escape getting scammed on the way to your success.

Yash · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 10

I go with the Paid Hosting as it is RELIABLE. Though you need to spend some peny's but its ok if you get a Secured Hosting aspecially if you are Hosting a warez Board and Hosting something that is against the Laws...

I go with Paid Hosting Wink

albal · Joined: 18 Sep 2007 Posts: 7

I prefer to pay for my web hosting because I feel more safe knowing that my website will still be there when I wake up the next day.

I hate how most free hosts put adverts on your website. I hate having anyone elses advert on my website. If I am not being paid to have it there, I don't want it there.

I also hate how most free hosts restrict the features you can have. Unless they have cPanel, Fantastico, FTP access, MySQL, etc then I won't go anywhere near them.

Sven · Joined: 23 Mar 2008 Posts: 29

Sometimes free hosting can be just as good as paid hosting, however using free hosting doesn't look professional. People will often think 'Oh, free hosting, well if he doesn't want to spend a few bucks on hosting I guess his site sucks anyway'.

And that's why I prefer paid hosting.

myfrmboz · Joined: 20 Nov 2008 Posts: 10

Free or Paid definitely got their own ups and down.
With free hosting you got to spend lots of your time
to build your traffic and it is not as reliable as paid.

So if you ask me, I choose the paid hosting because
it is more reliable and people are mostly can put more
trust into our site.