When choosing web hosting for the first time many consumers are attracted to free and cheap web hosts. Many feel that they should not pay for a service that is available for free or at such a low cost that it might as well be free. There are three main differences between free, and paid web hosting. These differences are price, overall quality of service, and features. Before you sign up for a free web hosting read more to find out exactly what you are getting into.

Free web hosts are very popular with first time web site owners. Many will allow you to sign up for a free sub domain, a domain associated with the web sites main domain, or they will let you host your own domain name. The reason these free hosts can afford to "give away" their services is because they have found ways to earn an income while hosting web sites for free. These methods often include placing advertisements on web sites hosted on their servers. In some cases the advertisements are discrete and barely noticeable by visitors, on other cases these advertisements are very obvious and will either pop up when the page is loaded.

In addition to having advertisements on your web site or web page free web hosts are able to establish and impose many rules that can change with little or no notice. The owner of the web hosting company can decide what sort of material is hosted on their servers and can take down sites found in violation with little or no notice. These web sites will also often have downtime because of the heavy amount of traffic and activity taking place on sometimes overloaded servers. Customer support is usually nonexistent leaving web site owners unable to contact anyone for help if they notice that their site is offline and their visitors are being redirected elsewhere. On the other hand, paid web hosting is a great deal more reliable and the web site owner is usually free to do more with their domain.

Paid web hosting services have rules and restrictions on content but these are designed to protect the companies’ best legal interest rather than limit the creativity of the web site owner. Often paid web hosting services will only restrict content that could be considered illegal or an infringement on the copyrights of another. Paid web hosts also give web site owners the chance to own their own domain rather than relying on a sub domain. Most premium web hosts will let new users register a new domain name for little or no price.

Since they are a paid service hosting companies have professional customer support staff that is dedicated to providing users with the highest level of customer satisfaction. Paid hosting services make it easier for web site owners to email or call support staff members whenever they have a question or concern. As part of their quest to offer quality customer support paid hosting services have fewer instances of downtime in order to cut down on complaints of disabled web sites.