Top Web Hosting Companies and Comparing Free vs. Paid Hosting
In the world of the internet, hosting is king! Without it you wouldn’t have a web site, email, Facebook, Google or any of the joys the internet has to offer. With that said, there are thousand of web hosting companies trying to fight for your business. Some of them are cheap, some are expensive and some are even free!
Who you decide to host your web sites with is ultimately your decision, but being aware of the differences between free hosting and paid hosting is something everyone should know about. In this post we are going to highlight the differences between free and paid hosting services, while also featuring the list of top 25 free hosting companies in the web market today.
Free Web Hosting vs. Paid Web Hosting
If you’ve ever wanted to start a blog or web site of your own but didn’t have the start up money for a domain name and a hosting package, then free hosting services are probably an excellent choice for you. Here is a quick breakdown of each.
Free Hosting:
Free hosting services makes it extremely easy for anyone to get setup with an account and web site fast- Most services come with easy site builders since the majority of their users are new to hosting and site building
- Ability to upgrade and add impressive site features to your account at any time
- Hosting and instant upload from their site, which means no need for HTML and FTP software
Paid Hosting:
- A great solution for anyone who wants to have their own domain name and full flexibility of their site design and content
- Hosting packages of all sites, ranging from $7 to hundreds of dollars per month
- Depending on your host, full support through email, chat and phone
- Upgrading at any time to fit your business and traffic needs
As you can see, both free and paid hosting services are very similar. From a business stand point, if you are going to create a site that you plan on getting a lot of traffic from, or sending paid advertising to for cpa arbitrage, you are likely going to want to go with a paid hosting plan to solidify the security and uptime of your site.
If you are more of a newbie and looking to start your first site and not really sure where you want to go with it, or have no idea how to design and upload content, a free hosting service would be your best option. To learn more about web hosting and how it works, you can check out this hosting guide.
2013 Web Hosting Stats to Blow Your Mind
When you look at the internet as a whole, it can be quite mind boggling. The amount of information out there, along with how many people are on the internet every day is just insane. The numbers behind the actual web sites and how many are created every day is also just as amazing.
Here are some of the crazy numbers that were pointed out by the recent Blogging.org report.
Estimated 726 Million Active Websites on the web to date- 243 million domain names registered
- 11.27 billion pages published on the Internet to date
- Estimated 270k new websites created every day
- 45 million server (8.2 million sold yearly/5 year lifespan average per server)
With over 270,000 new web sites being created every day, you should really be proud of yourself if you currently have a site ranking in the top 100k on Alexa, as it’s becoming more challenging every day! To backup the reasoning behind these mind blowing numbers, we can look at internet live stats to see how many people are getting online for the first time daily.
It also helps that web hosting is so cost effective and that WordPress can easily be setup with a simple click of a button. What used to costs hundreds of dollars per year, now costs less than a few dollars per month to setup. An example of this can be seen through A Small Orange coupons and how they offer web hosting as low as just $4 per month — in comparison to monthly shared hosting rates of nearly $20-$30 per month in the last 90s, and early 2000s.
The Top 25 Free Hosting Companies – Infographic
Over 40,000 businesses and site owners were polled to come up with the stats from the “Top 25 Free Hosting Companies” infographic below. You can view the full infographic by clicking here and viewing the shortlist of the top ten recommended free hosts below.
- wix.com
- weebly.com
- 000webhost.com
- yola.com
- edublogs.com
- freehostia.com
- webs.com
- 5gbfree.com
- jimdo.com
- freehosting.com
Also be sure to check out my full “create a blog” case study on BloggingTips.com which is completely free and walks you through the whole process of creating your first niche blog and turning it into an authority site.
I prefer paid hosting.
Free web hosts limit the amount of bandwidth you can have and customer support is very basic and minimal.
You get what you pay for.
But free hosting is fine if your website is just for personal use, or for practice purposes.
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Hi Zac,
I sometimes wonder how many websites exist in the world today, and how many are started up and die off. I used to type just https:// into Google, but that doesn't yield very accurate results. A 726 million estimate that is a big number. I wish it were possible to figure out something like the differences in 2000, 2005, 2010, etc. how the numbers might have grown.
Regarding the 5 year lifespan of a web server I would say that is probably right on the money. I have had the same account with my host for 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 years. The entire time I was on the same server. The first week of this past January they retired the server and moved me to a new one. So far so good too.
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If you are a serious blogger and looking blogging as career then start your blog with paid hosting.
This is one of the best suggestion I can give to any new blogger.
My recent post 4 Most Important Things to Remember while Creating Online Content
I think all of these free hosting has one backdrop, that you can't monetize your website. Otherwise they'll ban your website and all your hard work for creating your site goes into vain. So if someone is looking for monetize his/her website then should prefer only paid hosting.
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Hi Zac,
To be honest and sincere with you,my blog is a freehosting package. It's now my priority to moving it to a paid hosting but looking for a good hosting company which accepts libertyreserve as form of payments.
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I would go for paid hosting as it gives one instant credibility. It would be interesting to read your thoughts on top paid host providers out there. Cheers!
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There's really so much limitations from free web hostings. This are for those who take blogging as a hobby only. But when you plan to make money out of your blog, it really best to pay for your own domain and hosting. All your hardwork will not be i vain.
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Good quality hosting is key. Many of our customers often buy cheap hosting and at the end they get burned. Quality hosting is key, especially if they give you a dedicated IP Address which can help boost your website speed and performance in search engines.
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I just know one thing, Hosting is important like as the unique / quality content on the blog. So if someone is compromising its hosting service quality, then he/she will also compromise its readers trust.
My favorite hosting is HostGator. I have experienced a lot with different hosting services, but at the end of day! HostGator is the one who saves me!
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