Saturday, February 9, 2008

Free and Inexpensive Web Hosting? Stronzata!

The claim that some companies make of dirt cheap and even free hosting is at best extremely misleading, at worst false advertising, and almost always a load of "stronzata" (loosely translated, "stronzata" means, er, bologna...).

First of all, they register the domain name while retaining rights to it (some own the name outright, while others "share" the rights with you, which creates a real hassle if you want to switch).

Second, the space is too limited to really make a professional site, and although it is possible, it does get labor intensive, which means either you're gonna pay your web guy the big bucks, or you're going to invest a ton of your own precious time in it. If, as they say, time is money, then either way you're going to have to fork out.

Besides all that, most scripting options are not supported, e-commerce is either not supported or the alternative offered is an all but useless shopping cart that the "free" host provides, not to mention limited, if any, email capabilities, and very limited (again, if any) statistics. Many of these companies also run advertising on your site, shopping cart, email or all of the above (see above).

So I would offer up this time-tested advice: consider the cost - you may just get what you pay for!

Capisce?

Labels: webbing