The standard way to create a website is to register a domain name and then pay a web hosting company to host the site, but many internet newbies often consider using a free hosting service as an alternative. It’s a cheaper option, and it may seem like there is nothing to lose, but that is not the case. Free website hosting services are notorious for disappearing as fast as they appear. When this happens the sites hosted on their domain are lost, along with all the hard work that has been put into their creation.
Sites that are hosted for free are usually created as a subdomain of the hosting company’s domain. If the free host company was called freesite.com, for example, and the webmaster wished to call their site Online Wealth Platform, the site’s address would be www.OnlineWealthPlatform.Freesite.com. By registering their own domain though, and paying for hosting services, the webmaster could have a shorter, simpler, and more professional-looking address: www.OnlineWealthPlatform.com. It would be easier for people to remember, and—most importantly—the address would be permanent and portable between hosts. If the owner of OnlineWealthPlatform.com wished to change their web hosting company later on, or if their existing hosts went out of business, the site could be easily moved to another host and the website address would always remain the same—www.OnlineWealthPlatform.com.
If the site was hosted at Freesite.com things would not be so easy. If FreeSite went out of business Online Wealth Platform would need to find another hosting service and their address would change accordingly. It may become www.OnlineWealthPlatform.FreeHostingForAll.com, or www.OnlineWealthPlatform.DontPayForHosting.com. All inbound links to the site would be lost because the address would have changed. If the original site had a good page rank that would be lost as well, and regular site visitors would discover their browser returned an error message when they tried to visit the site. This would result in a loss of traffic and a loss of traffic usually results in a loss of revenue.
These days, webmasters can often register a domain for just $10, and webhosting can be purchased for under $4 a month. It’s a small investment, but it can be big on returns; so buying a domain name is always the sensible way to go.
