Choosing a web host is one of the most important decisions when starting a blog. While free hosting options seem tempting, they come with major downsides for serious blogging. In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore 8 key reasons why free hosts are bad news for bloggers.
1. Extremely Unreliable Uptime
Reliability is arguably the most critical metric for any web host. After all, even a few minutes of downtime each day can equate to major losses in traffic, revenue, and reputation over time.
Unfortunately, free hosts are notoriously unreliable when it comes to uptime. Most offer an uptime of around 95-97% only. This may not seem much, but it still means hours of cumulative downtime every month. During these periods, your readers will face frustrating error messages instead of your content.
As per Cloudways, a 99.9% uptime standard is ideal for any professional website. However, most free hosts struggle to even hit 97% uptime every month. The more readers you gain, the more this unreliability will hurt your blog.
2. Snail‘s Pace Load Times
Along with uptime, site speed is a vital factor affecting reader experience. Faster load times lead to higher visitor retention as well as better SEO rankings.
However, free hosts almost never prioritize performance. Instead, they overload limited server resources by cramming in as many sites as possible. This leads to unbearably slow loading speeds, especially during peak traffic.
Tests by HostingFacts revealed average load times of 6-8 seconds on popular free hosts. That‘s nearly 3 times higher than the recommended 2-second threshold. Such sluggish speeds will cause most impatient visitors to abandon your site.
3. Security Threats at Every Corner
Hosting companies need to vigorously guard against threats like malware, exploits, viruses, and data breaches. This requires regular patching, encryption, firewalls, and access controls to be implemented.
However, free hosts almost never invest adequately in security measures. Some even run outdated software with known vulnerabilities just to cut costs. This leaves sites on their servers highly susceptible to being hacked or compromised.
In one incident, over 6500 sites were infected at once due to a vulnerability at free host 000webhost. Designmodo and SecurityTrails have also exposed multiple unfixed issues plaguing popular free hosts.
4. Deceptive Claims and Hidden Charge Traps
While tempting you with offers of free hosting, many shady providers hide multiple nasty surprises in their fine print. Some commonly impose strict resource limits – meager storage space, low monthly bandwidth, high CPU usage restrictions, or short database limits.
The moment your site exceeds these, you‘re forced to upgrade and pay unexpected fees. Other hosts bait-and-switch by offering introductory free plans only to later charge without warning. Unlimited storage/bandwidth offers also suspiciously disappear once you begin relying on them.
5. No Control or Flexibility Whatsoever
Having a high degree of control over software configuration is vital for any web host. Unfortunately, free hosts take away that flexibility by severely limiting your access.
At best, you may be allowed to use open-source apps like WordPress. But beyond that, most configuration areas will be locked down. Any customization, whether it‘s .htaccess tweaks, extra software installs, SSH access – can be near impossible. This hinders designing your blog to suit your specific vision and needs.
6. Abysmal Customer Support
Even well-maintained servers can occasionally face issues like corrupt databases, plugin conflicts, malware injections, etc. At such times, prompt and knowledgeable support makes all the difference.
However, being a non-paying customer on a free host does not qualify you for any assistance. Most free hosts don‘t even provide easy ways to contact them – no live chat, call centers, or even email support.
Some may offer forums where unpaid users‘ concerns are routinely ignored. Others rely entirely on docmentation and FAQs – no help available if your specific problem isn‘t covered. Overall, don‘t expect your tickets or concerns to be entertained anytime soon – if ever.
7. Intrusive Ads and Tracking for Revenue
So how do free hosting providers manage to stay afloat? Simple – by exploiting your site visitors to make money. Typically, this involves plastering obtrusive ads on hosted websites and pages – ads the site owner has no control over. Visitors get bombarded with annoying popups, banners, interstitials and more.
Worse still, your visitors‘ personal data is freely tracked, monitored and sold to advertisers by most free hosts. After all, visitor stats and engagement metrics are what attracts higher ad revenue. Little care is given regarding consent or data privacy violations in such cases.
8. Zero Legal Accountability
Lastly, free web hosting also comes with zero legal accountability or guarantees by providers. Since you don‘t pay them anything, they hold no liability whatsoever for any downtime losses, security breaches or data destruction.
The common agreement across such services is that availability and security are entirely at the provider‘s sole discretion. Any week your site goes blank or gets hacked to shreds, neither explanation nor compensation will be offered. This lack of accountability should be the final red flag for any serious site owner to stay away from such hosts altogether.
Finding Reliable Paid Alternatives
While the perks of free web hosting may be tempting, clearly the downsides far outweigh them for serious blogging. Instead, it‘s safer to use affordable paid alternatives that offer complete reliability.
For instance, top low-end shared hosts like InMotion Hosting offer plans from $2.49/month. Entry-level offers by SiteGround and A2Hosting also start at $2.99/month and $3.92/month respectively.
These reputed providers offer guaranteed 99.9% uptime on even their cheapest plans. You can expect blazing fast site loading speeds, hack-proof security layers, expert support, and full transparency. The marginal monthly expense is perfectly justified by the superior hosting quality and reliability they deliver.
For ultimate WordPress hosting performance at a serious blogger level, managed WP hosts like WP Engine provide optimized infrastructure. Their specialty WordPress-only servers ensure the best possible speeds, security, and support. Plans start from $29/month which includes free migrations, staging sandboxes, and an army of WordPress experts at your service.
The choice comes down to valuing your blog‘s reliability, security and longevity versus grabbing a cheap short-term freebie that‘s doomed to fail sooner or later. As experts, our advice is clear – when picking a web host, you get precisely what you pay for. The nominal investment is well worth it for the long-term success of any serious blogging business.
We hope this guide has helped shed light on why free hosts can severely hurt bloggers despite seeming tempting at first glance. Paying a little extra goes a long way in unlocking reliable hosting performance and true growth potential!
