For many people and most companies, building a website is a must and finding free web hosting can often lead to difficulty and disappointment. In most cases, domain name registries like GoDaddy.com and 1and1.com will charge for the domain name registry and offer a limited amount of web space to build a website. This space is small and often comes with restrictions. Other sites will offer an amount of time in which the hosting is free but require that a credit card be entered. Then they hope that after your trial you have forgotten about stopping the service and these hosting sites charge the hosting fees automatically. There are ways to create and host an effective website at no cost.
Wix.com and WordPress
These hosting sites offer a great deal for nothing and are growing in popularity. The HTML5 format Themes are easy to manipulate and give the designer an extensive amount of creative freedom. The builder interfaces are simple and use a drag-and-drop operation, which allows the user to administrate and create without having to know web based coding. Where Wix differentiates between WordPress is that Wix themes are designed to be traffic driven websites whereas WordPress themes are glorified blogs. WordPress is open-source, meaning that any developer can use their formats and apply different functions such as apps and widgets. This gives the website creator more options, but WordPress lacks in quality control of these additions. Wix monitors the themes and add-on applications that can be placed on the website.
Awardspace
Another free web hosting option is Awardspace. Unlike Wix and WordPress, this is not a blog style web host. Rather it is a full functioning multifaceted host that builds your website from the ground up. Having some knowledge in web design is helpful but the interface is rather straightforward. Where the blog style websites have virtually an unlimited source of space and transfer capabilities, free hosting from Awardspace is limited.
Subdomain Websites
Until you register a domain name for your website to direct to, all free sites will direct to their subdomain. Subdomains are like the primary address where the given website name is the apartment or unit number. Some website builders like freehosting.eu, x10hosting, or the long-time running 20mhosting allow the builder to create a website and attach host domain name as an extension. Most site builders of this kind require some amount of web development knowledge coding and provide very little in the means of support. What they do provide is ample storage and transfer space, allowing the builder to create complex and effective sites. The downfall to these sites is that the host will place ads on your site that can detract traffic from it. Removal of the ads can often be purchased as a service upgrade option.
Depending on your level of expertise in web development and the amount of access you desire, there are several options to choose from. A common misconception is that having your own website is the same as owning the name of a website. This simply isn’t true. If you want to have your own website name, a domain name will have to be purchased. This is the name in which you will be allowed to use to direct traffic to your site. Both cheap web hosting and free web hosting allow you to create the content that is on the website itself.
