Free hosting – should you choose? Which is the best?

[Outdated]

The web is full of interesting stuff, the more interesting part is that most of them are free. Take the case of web servers. All my websites (spare my projects) lies in free web space. I doubt why would someone go after paid hosting when they can get as good or even better hosting.. for FREE.

Yeah, you must me careful in choosing the web hosting provider. Some free hosts sucks.  The main problem with many of the free hosts is uptime (server online time). Actually I liked the free hosting provided by Websites Network (wsnw.net – dead now), but after a few days, I found myself searching for another one, their uptime is pathetic.

Then I used HostSnake , another good one, and it was new to the scene. Had many good features, but soon they started putting up large banners above and below my pages. Then I was totally desperate and was beginning to believe that all free hosts suck. It was then my friend told me to try X10Hosting.com, the signup process was a bit lengthier, but their service was great. The best thing is ofcourse the uptime, (but you have to signup in their forum!!). Now almost all my sites including this one runs on X10 servers. They are offering MySql databases,addon domains,subdomains and many other features.

So from my experience and experiments with free hosting for over two years, let me point the good ones for you.

x10logo – Adfree, PHP, MySQL, addon domains, subdomains, scripts installer, MX records etc… great uptime too.

Google Pages Logo – No PHP, No addon domains, Easy to use, online page creator, very fast loading, Great for novices. [ Google Pages is no more taking new sign ups, instead they have come up with another hosting service with more features, Google Sites ]

Office Live Logo -Superb hosting! Online page editing, addon domains, email ids, super fast loading etc. Great for novices,small businesses,startups etc. Lots of templates.

110mb hosting is also cool, but some features like addon domain, mysql databases etc are paid features. Worth checking out

These are the best services I have ever encountered. Choose x10hosting if you are really into PHP hosting and projects that require more freedom. Choose Google Pages if you don’t want to spend a lot of time editing your pages and want to get it all done so quick. It is as simple as Google itself. You can opt Microsoft Office Live if you need a Great website for your business, school or personal. More options to configure, but sure they are worth.

Have a lot of fun making a great website. Bye


3 Comments

  • jenneyts |

    I’m new to dna.intellwiz.com.
    I hope I can be a regular here!

  • Andrew Reader |

    Hi Saurabh,
    I sent the following info to Support@Intellwiz but no reply as yet. In case it hasn’t been forwarded to you, please reply before end of April. Regards, Drew.

    I found Intellwiz when I was researching the potential of Google Apps for my employer, Accolade Partnership Limited.

    Our Apps project will be discussed later this year, but I am currently looking for someone to build a separate site to advertise our Enterprise Investment Plan.

    The relevant pages can be found within our main site (ACCOLADEplc.com) http://www.accoladeplc.com/about/Enterprise_Investment_Scheme . I’ve recently created a holding page http://www.eis-enterprise-investment-scheme.co.uk/ which will be developed into a 4 or 5 page site using text from the EIS Prospectus and Notes child pages from the plc site.

    Please give me an estimate of your charge for this type of work. If I can persuade Accolade to use you for this project, we own hundreds of other domain names requiring 2 or 3 pages each which would link to their corresponding pages in our main website. See, for example, http://www.5pgbk.co.uk/ .

    Our main site has been developed by a Computer Science student at Edinburgh University.

  • Usman |

    I still prefer to have a paid hosting which is more reliable. Actually one of my friend’s site got deleted from the free hosting and they were never ready to even give the data back. That’s why I don’t trust free hosting providers.