Katy Budget Websites

Support-

Professional Web Hosts have tech support departments that you can call if you have a question or if something goes wrong. With a free site, you take your chances and service is either community dependent or non existent.

 

Domain Name-

Many free sites will not let you set your own domain name. This requires you to have a name like “yoursite.freehost.com” making it difficult to market or for your customers to remember.

SSL/TLS-

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)  or TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a type of encryption that is used to secure online transactions. If you plan to sell items online you will need it and it’s something that a free site just can’t offer. (This is what makes the padlock appear in your browser.)

 

Uptime-

Most hosts (including myself) have an “uptime guarantee” assuring you of uninterrupted service. Free sites can be down for hours or sometimes days without warning, costing you customers or even direct sales.

Backups-

Pro web hosts have what are called “catastrophic backups” in case something horrible were to happen to the server your site is hosted on. This allows us to restore your site quickly. In some cases, free sites do not backup your site at all. So if you have a free site and something happens you may be on your own.

 

Bandwidth-

Think you might get a sudden surge of traffic? If you get linked to by a site with many visitors you could really see a massive flood of visitors. (This happens frequently, in my experience it is responsible for most site crashes. Don’t think it won’t happen, it only takes one link.) This is great for your business but bad for your free site. Most free sites cannot handle that kind of traffic surge and shut down. When will it come back? Your guess is as good as mine. However with a professional host they can increase your bandwidth quota to accommodate the incoming surge as well as get you back up and running ASAP. This means your worrying about filling orders and completing sales, not waiting for your site to come back. For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdotted

Adsense-

Looking to sell ads on your free site? Think again. Many free sites make their money on advertising. That’s right, they make their money off your content. Naturally, they don’t want to share. With a professional host, what you make is 100% yours. 

Stats- 

Looking for comprehensive statistics on who is visiting your site? While a free site can tell you how many visits you get a professional host can tell you more. Some stats include: country of origin, time of visit, duration, unique visits, links clicked and many more.

 

Will they be there tomorrow?-

With a free site you just don’t know. They make no promises or guarantees, it’s use at your own risk. Professional hosts are obligated to notify you ahead of time regarding any change of service. In addition they are required to keep your site active until the end of your payment cycle or give you a partial refund.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.