Web hosting costs money

WEB HOSTING COST$ MONEY. <~PERIOD. (*ka-ching*)

That's right. There are no two ways about it.

More specifically:

• Web hosting servers (computers) cost money.
• Renting a place to put the servers cost money.
• Bandwidth costs money.
• T1 connections cost money.
• Maintaining a fully functional web hosting service takes real time and real manpower (and more realistically, a staff of people, not just one person) which also... yep, you guessed it... COSTS MONEY.

So you want all this for free now, do you?

Okay. But anyone running a free web host will have to reimburse their costs somehow and will probably even want to... (*gasp*)... make a profit.

Make a profit?!?...
   /


Yup. You got it. They'll want to make a profit. Why else would they give away something for free?

Soooo.... All this just begs the question...

Why is Some Web Hosting Free?

Here are some typical reasons why some web hosting providers offer free packages:

1. To make money off banner ads displayed on your website and/or your web hosting control panel(s).
2. To make money off advertisements displayed on forums to which you must visit and post to in order to retain your hosting.
3. Business web hosting services offer freebies in hopes of enticing users to switch to a paid package.
4. Wanna-be entrepreneurs want to see what it's like running a web host without any obligations to clients before switching it all over to a paid service. (These are the least reliable.)
5. Some companies will offer free website hosting as complimentary service if you buy or renew a domain name through them. (Although not truly 'free' these are the most reliable).
6. Some individuals find operating a web host amusing so they do it as a hobby. (This is not a joke. Web hosts like this actually exist. No profit here but the few hosts like this I came across had such stringent sign-up requirements that I can't seriously recommend them.)

Now you know what you're up against. And the bottom line is, the more commercially successful a free web host is, the more likely it is to survive and provide you with reliable service (this is what you want).