Why you should not use free WordPress hosting
If you’re planning to start blogging, you’ve probably heard of WordPress. And if you already have a blog, you may have heard that there are two versions of WordPress, often referred to as “free WordPress or paid WordPress or “WordPress.com and WordPress.org.”
Currently, there are over 67 million sites hosted on this domain name, with over 10 billion pages views per month. With that number comes even a higher number who plans to start using the free platform; fascinated by the name but not knowing that it’s a bad idea. In this article we tell why and offer you the full knowledge about this platform and other low budget options.
WordPress, what is it?
WordPress.com is a blog host: it’s a very large website that allows visitors to sign up and create a WordPress blog for free with just a few clicks. It is for this reason that it is sometimes called “free WordPress”.
The operation of the platform is managed by the creators of WordPress. The members take care of feeding their blog with content. Obviously, WordPress.com being a free service and common to a multitude of members, it has restrictions and if you want to escape it, you will have to pay for access to additional features.
The limits of creating a site with free WordPress:
To take advantage of all the power of WordPress, and therefore of its themes and extensions, opting for Premium will often be necessary. By choosing only free, you will be limited, and that makes sense.
These are reasons why the free alternative is not the best choice.
1. Less flexible and less customizable
If you’ve already got your hands dirty in WordPress, you’ll see that despite the customization tool and so-called “customizable” themes you won’t be able to do everything you want. At one point or another, you will be faced with the limits of what the free version of the theme allows. This is where you will probably need to invest in the paid version. Or, at least, knowing how to manipulate HTML and CSS code.
2. You will not necessarily benefit from the support
You have probably experienced this problem before. You take a free offer; everything rolls around until the day you have a problem. And this is the tragedy, because the support (assistance) is reserved for the paid version.
Who says free site, also says No support (assistance) concerning the themes and extensions that you are going to activate. In any case, developers don’t have to do it. If something goes wrong, you can of course find answers on a specialized forum, but you will not get personalized feedback.
You may never need it, but if your site ever crashes because of your theme; a little help from the developer wouldn’t be too much to ask.
3. Security
Finally, you may encounter security issues using free theme and extensions. First, because their updates are not always included. A problem that you won’t encounter with paid versions. Ensuring your updates is very important to keep your site as secure as possible. Second, free themes and plugins are more likely to be left behind than their paid counterparts. This can cause incompatibility and security issues, and even crash your site.
4. Your site will load super slowly
We hear to the right and to the left that WordPress is slow, The problem is that many people use WordPress: according to the latest statistics, there would be more than 18% of the sites in the world that use it and more 25% of new sites that are created with this CMS. And the problem is that in the lot, a good number do not understand anything about the web and its issues. So, they install anything and everything, starting with very greedy themes and plugins that are useless and are coded with the feet, making the platform very slow.
5. Sites using free themes look alike
By surfing the free WordPress theme catalog you will realize that a lot of themes look alike. This will make it harder to stand out and have an original design that your competitors do not have. So, it would be annoying to have a site that looks frankly like another and that we confuse the two.
Without mastering WordPress, building your site for free is also not the easiest thing without spending several days or even months there. And that’s not to mention that any accidental changes can turn your website upside down at any time.
The advantages of creating a free WordPress site
WordPress is not all about limits and disadvantages, it has some good features that makes it suitable for some bloggers such as:
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- Recognized as a leader, he has proven his effectiveness and his value in many ways.
- When it comes to blogging, WordPress is the best at it. That’s what it was originally created for.
- Its structure is completely compatible with natural referencing.
- You don’t need to know how to code to use it. However, creating a WordPress site will take some time to learn how to use it and to know some basics of web design for an impeccable result.
- Your site and its content are completely yours.
Who is it suitable for?
It’s obvious until now that free WordPress is not for eCommerce websites or other heavy web projects, but this famous free tool still has a large audience:
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- Those who do not have a clearly defined project, this allows for field tests.
- People who do not need a site for their professional activity, such as a blog, or a personal site.
- Those who do not yet have the financial means to invest in a premium theme or to call in a professional.
- People for whom the basic options are more than enough.
The Three ‘Best’ Free WordPress Hosts
There are many free WordPress hosts that claim to offer the best services, but here we collected the three best hosts to make your choice less confusing and much wiser.
000WEBHOST
Since 2007, 000Webhost has been offering free, ad-free web hosting services. Since they also offer paid hosting options, their business model revolves around offering free customer funded hosting services. This benefits all users as users of free hosting services also have the option to grow their site by becoming paid customers at any time.
Features
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- Free website builder
- Automatic installation (WordPress, Joomla, etc.)
- Ad-free hosting
- Support for PHP and MySQL databases
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Characteristics
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- Disk space: 1GB
- Bandwidth: 10GB
- Database: MySQL 2 databases
- Control panel: Cpanel
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Byet Host
Byet Host is claims to be “the world’s fastest, free web host!”. Part of the reason is that it depends only on the processing time of the server and does not consider anything else. This free host offers a ton of good options.
Features
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- 24/7 support
- Automatic installation (WordPress, Joomla, etc.)
- Ad-free hosting
- Support for PHP and MySQL databases
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Characteristics
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- Disk space: 5GB
- Bandwidth: unlimited
- Database: MySQL 5 databases
- Control Panel: VistaPanel
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ACCUWEB
AccuWeb runs servers equipped with pure SSDs, which means super-fast load times, a great experience for your web visitors, and improved SEO performance. You get 2 GB of disk space, 30 GB of bandwidth, and 25 email accounts. In addition, there’s the added security benefit of multi-layer DDos protection and a free backup.
Features
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- Pure SSD Drives, Blazingly fast websites
- Custom domain names
- cPanel control panel, PHP7 and HTTP / 2 support
- Multi Layer DDos Protection
- Highly Secured & WP Optimized
- complementary backup of your website
- Ultrafast free WordPress Hosting
- Now with new superpower of Redis
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Three Cheap Paid Alternatives to Free WordPress Hosts
If by now you decided that you’re not going to use free WordPress, and if you’re on a tight budget where should you host your site? Even though the best option is to opt for a dedicated server hosting; this plan is very expensive, at least for someone who was thinking to use free WordPress.
Here are the three recommended shared WordPress hosting providers to consider.
- SiteGround : paid plans start at $3.95 a month with very interesting options such as automatic WordPress updates, a custom dashboard and more and free SSL certificate,
- DreamHost : paid plans start at $2.59 a month or $4.95 a month, offering automatic WordPress updates, free SSL certificates and automatic backups.
- Bluehost: paid plans start at $2.95 a month or $4.95 a month, they offer a user-friendly dashboard, staging, automatic WordPress updates and more.
All these options are a much better choice than free WordPress in so many ways:
- Performance: your site will load a lot faster
- User experience: they offer convenient dashboards and helpful maintenance features
- Support: get access to 24/7 support
Conclusion
By the end of this article, you’ve probably made a very clear vision on what to do and whether opt for free WordPress or not. Keep in mind that even if it’s a very economic option, it will make you lose a lot of time managing your site or solving possible problems; you’ll have to be sure that you don’t need a user-friendly experience or fast loading time; and finally be prepared to have your site shut down at any moment with almost no options to restore it.
