Does Free Web Hosting Really Worth It? Let’s Find Out
First of all, Welcome to the world of publishers, if you are planning to start your first website, you must be aware that creating a website is costly, from web design, SEO tools, domain name, web hosting, etc. there are a lot of things that are needed to be considered in running a website and it will cost you a lot.
But if you are new and just trying to explore and start your website for free? There is a solution, yep you read it right it’s completely free, but don’t get too excited since there are also some drawbacks to creating a free website with free hosting, don’t worry since we will discuss them one by one.
Believe it or not, the website Mirageportal started with free web hosting.
It was hard those days and I’m completely new in the world of blogging, and as a newbie at that time, it was really hard since I know nothing about how to create and run a website.
I’ve tried to create a website from a different platform for free like blogger.com and Wix.com, but then I realized that something is missing.
“The Ownership” having a website on blogger.com is easy, they provide free web hosting, a free domain name with blogspot.com/ attached to your domain name some themes that you can use for design, It is completely free, but at the end of the day the website that you’ve created is not fully owned by you.
Having a site on blogger.com is like renting a house, you can live there, and stay there but in the end, it’s not your house, it’s not your property.
Same with blogger.com, since it was owned by Google the website that you will try to create on Blogger.com is also owned by Google and they have the authority to shut it down at any time if they wanted to.
So for the reason of ownership I left blogger.com and created my website from scratch, but here comes another problem, as I’ve mentioned before creating a website, especially from scratch is costly since you will need web hosting to host your site.
At that time I didn’t have the money to buy a premium web hosting plan. I even knew that if I invested a huge amount of money in creating a website I wouldn’t have an assurance that It would succeed, so I found a way how to get free web hosting to start my website, and after countless searches, I found one that is truly reliable and free web hosting it is 100% free trust me.
Where did I host my website for free?
The web hosting company that I’ve been talking about is Awardspace it makes my dream of building my own website which seems impossible at first become possible, I’m not trying to become exaggerated this statement, but as I’ve said a while ago that at first, I know nothing, I don’t know how to start a website, I don’t have coding knowledge, and I don’t have money to buy a premium web hosting plan.
And finding 100% free web hosting is difficult, there are a lot of claims for free web hosting, but for 100% free ?, nothing beats Awardspace free web hosting in my opinion.
For now, I’m using a premium web hosting plan since my site has already grown and mature enough and is ready to compete in search ranking I decided to migrate from free web hosting to premium.
But my experience with free web hosting will be forever in my memories because free web hosting helps my site grow and explore the things that I need to learn.
Note that free web hosting is just for those who are new to website building since it is useful if you want to explore some basics the best thing about it is that you can use the Awardspace free web hosting as long as you want and If you’re ready you can switch to their premium web hosting plans as I did.
Now let explore further what are Awardspace free web hosting and Its features.
Who is Awardspace?
Awardspace is a web hosting company that pioneers free hosting and as of today when some web hosting companies abandoned their free web hosting service Awardspace stays to their promise and goal that everyone should make their idea and turn it into a website.
Does Free Web Hosting Worth It?
I will ask you a question, what is your main reason for finding free web hosting? Maybe you are a publisher with a limited budget and all you want is to show the world your ideas and your talent and that’s where Awardspace free web hosting is really worth it.
Even for a free user, Awardspace will give you a lot of useful features that you can’t find in any free web hosting out there.
Awardspace Free Hosting Features
1. It Has a CMS installer
Awardspace has its own CMS installer which is convenient and time-saving, all you have to do is to sign up for a free web hosting account.
After you sign up, you can choose from different CMS like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress and after you choose your preferred CMS you can use the Awardspace Zacky installer, which is a one-click CMS installer and your website will be ready in just 5 minutes.
2. 100% AD-Free and No Expiration Free web hosting
Even for free users, Awardspace guarantees that their free web hosting is 100% AD-free, so you don’t have to deal with some annoying pop-up ads, and once you create a free account there is no expiration.
Hooray, no expiration means the time is on your side!
3. It has Zacky Website Builder
In case you don’t want some of the famous CMS like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla and you want to create a unique website you are free to use Zacky website builder for both paid and free web hosting accounts.
Also, users can be used premade designs or create their designs for a more unique kind of website.
4. 99% Network Uptime
As a Pioneer of free web hosting Awardspace gives a fair and best service possible even for their free hosting users, it is guaranteed to provide 99% of Network uptime so users don’t have to worry that their website will experience downtime and losses some traffics.
5. It has a Web-Based File Manager
Awardspace is a web hosting company that valued its customer so much that even for free hosting, they gave as much usability as possible, both premium and free users can benefit from their Web-based file manager tool, wherein the users can upload files, move files, folders, and creating files and directories with ease, this is very convenient and user-friendly for those who are not an expert web developer like me.
6. 24/7 Customer Support
This is one of my favorite features of Awardspace web hosting because their customer support is pretty good in assisting and helping their customers, they help me fix and give some advice every time that I commit a mistake and need help on my website.
They even help me fix when my website is in trouble when I accidentally upload a file that ruins my website’s existence online and take note that they help me with that problem even though my website is still using their free account back then.
7. You can Get Free Short Domain
A domain name is so important for your website to be recognized and Awardspace web hosting will give you a free short domain with dx. am extension, for example, if you are using Blogspot and wordpress.com and you’re using their free domain it will look like this (yourname.blogspot.com or yourname.wordpress.com) which is too long for a Domain name.
But with Awardspace free domain it will look like this (your name. am or your name. dx) which is shorter than other free domains out there.
8. You Will Have a Free 1000MB Disk Space
Once you used their free web accounts you will be given 1000MB of Disk space which is fairly enough to start a small website, if you want to create a blogging site 1000MB is barely enough to store all your blog pages.
9. It has a User-Friendly cPanel
Whether you are a free user or not you can always use their user-friendly control panel which is convenient and easy to understand even if you are a complete beginner.
It also has added drag and drop features so you can arrange the tools you used most so you don’t need to find or scroll down every time you will need your favorite tools.
10. PHP, MySQL Support
This one is for advanced users, who know how to use PHP and MySQL, but free and paid users can benefit from wide support for PHP and MySQL, free users, cannot change PHP settings, unlike the paid users that who can switch from PHP 5.3, PHP 5.4, PHP 5.5, PHP 5.6, PHP 7.0, PHP 7.1 and PHP 7.2.
Disadvantage Of Awardspace Free Web hosting
Slower Website Speed
One of the advantages of free web hosting is the speed, free is free, and the reality is that it is nowhere near some premium web hosting when it comes to speed.
Limited Storage
Another disadvantage of free web hosting is the storage, using free web hosting of Awardspace will give you 1000MB of disk space which is barely enough to build your very first website, but when you start updating your website and publishing more and more content a 1000MB is simply too small for all of it, but still for a free web hosting Awardspace is really hard to beat.
Final Verdict
Among all the web hosting companies out there, only Awardspace offers true free web hosting, you don’t need to spend even a single cent when building a website with Awardspace free hosting.
After creating Mirageportal on free web hosting I decided to upgrade to their premium account, and later in the year 2022 I decided to migrate Mirageportal to Cloudways for reasons that my website traffic is growing and I need better and faster web hosting.
Free hosting is good for creating your first website, it is like an environment where you can test everything that you need when experimenting with building a website, but if your website has started to attract a lot of visitors free hosting will not be enough.
If you want to learn more about my current web hosting, visit my full review on Cloudways.
