Web experts and common sense dictates that you should give free web hosting a wide berth. Almost anyone will agree that the only way to go when it comes to hosting your site (especially a business one) is for you to pay for the domain name and the hosting of the site itself.

Two reasons usually quoted included:

• Your free hosting account can go under at any time when the provider closes shop or simply decides you are not welcome any more. Since they aren’t getting paid for their services, you really don’t have a leg to stand on in an argument emanating from their decision to simply take your site offline.
• Most (if not all) hosting providers with free services use ads (which are placed on prime locations of your site) to sustain their services – they can actually make money off of your site (if they use ads from Google, for instance).

Most of the time, these ads will indicate that you are hosting your site on a free web hosting provider’s server. This will not leave a good impression with your business clients who – as soon as they see that you are on a free server – will wonder if you are a really genuine business indeed. After all, if you’re not willing to invest in your business, why should they give you the time of day – or their hard earned money?

Now, with that having been said, does it mean that we should never, ever, use free web hosting? Well, the short answer is, “no.”

Going into more detail: what you should never, ever, do is to have a website without owning the domain name – that is a no-no. You should outright own your domain name and then consider using free web hosting services under certain unique conditions.

These include:

• You are a non-profit organization. The IT world too has its share of kind-hearted and enlightened souls who do their share of giving to the community by providing free hosting services to non-profits and aid organizations. If you qualify, then there is nothing wrong with going the free hosting way.
• You don’t make money online. If you own a website that isn’t used to generate any income – say it is just a few pages that are up for informational purposes – and you won’t lose any money if it suddenly disappears one day, then you can go for the free hosting offer.
• You don’t store clients’ data. Some hosting providers go a step further and offer you data storage for free. They even give you options of databases (MS SQL, MySQL, etc.) which can seem like offers that are too good to be true – and so they are. If you use these databases to store your clients’ personal information, you run the risk – a much bigger one, at that – of having it stolen by someone. You should remember that the databases are offered to you for free and this means the hosting providers are in no way obligated to keep them as secured as they would the premium ones. They might do their best to ensure that they are protected but not so much in ensuring that you are.

Besides, ask yourself this: again, would you want to store such critical information on a database server that could go kaput any day?

• You are still getting your sea legs. If this is your first venture into the world of business websites, then you might not be sure about what exactly it is that you will need to get things going. You can temporarily make use of free web hosting offers to get your pages up, setup process, connect databases, and the lot. You can use the time to find out what packages, operating systems and bandwidth you will need before you go out and buy your paid web hosting solution.

Needless to say, during this testing phase you need to make sure that you won’t be using any confidential information or actual clients’ data.

• You are implementing a new phase or process in your website. A very good reason to use a free web hosting service would be if you already have an up-and-running website but need somewhere else to test out a an extension or a new process without putting your production site at risk.

In this case, you can create the new site (and even mask it as an extension of your production site so no-one knows they are on another server) and let the public have a go at it. Once you are sure everything is working as it should, you can either add the extensions to your current live website or have it hosted on another paid package, depending on your needs and requirements.

So, the moral of this story is simple: although many people may say there is no need to use free web hosting when you are a business, there are few exceptions to that rule – just like the ones we’ve mentioned above.