Free vs. Paid Hosting

It seems like the debate of the century is free vs. paid hosting. We will also correlate this with a blogspot.com and your own .com. While there are valid arguments for both, I’ll tell you why it is in your best interest to start with paid hosting from the very beginning:

• Flexibility
• Authority
• Professionalism

Flexibility

For the most part, if you start with free hosting such as blogger.com or wordpress.com, then there is no flexibility. You are given a couple themes and have the ability to make some minor tweaks here and there, yet the free hosting doesn’t give you the the options. With the blogger accounts users can’t really create a product that stands out from the rest.

With paid hosting, you can basically do whatever you want. You are given a building and the tools, and its up to you to do with it what you want.

Authority

It is a whole lot easier for people to take you serious and give you a sense of importance if you have a .com. Think about some of the blogs or sites you frequently visit. Which are your favorite? Most likely they will be a .com.

Professionalism

Somewhat similar to authority, with paid hosting comes your own email and much more tools that relate to your .com. This exudes a whole lot more professionalism, then if you contacted a potential sponsor with a blogspot.com.

Why would someone take you serious and invest money or time with you, if you couldn’t even invest some money into yourself?

Argument for free hosting, but why you shouldn’t wait to pay

The most popular argument for free hosting is its FREE! If you don’t think you can make up or don’t want to risk the $85 that it cost for one year of hosting (price from HostMonster), then you probably shouldn’t get in the business to begin with.

With your hosting, HostMonster also gives you a free domain, so that is essentially your start-up cost all right there. It took me just 2 months before I made that back and I haven’t looked back since (knock on wood).

We never really know how long it will take for a certain idea to take off. It could takes a couple weeks, months, or years. Paid hosting will allow your business to grow, while with free hosting you will eventually have to covert. This can lead to many problems such as: loss of information and readers.

Bottom Line: Hosting and a .com only cost so much. Depending on how confident you are, you can always sign up for different time lenths (i.e. 1, 2, 10 years), but if you truely want to succeed online and at a faster rate, then you should opt for paid hosting over free.