Should I Choose Free Hosting or Paid Hosting?

The old adage “you get what you pay for” is very relevant to the question “should I choose free or paid hosting for my mac website?”

All hosting companies need to make money somehow – they can’t give away hosting for free to everyone or they’ll go out of business. If you choose the free hosting option there will always be a catch. For example,

with free Mac website hosting you may to have unsightly banner ads or pop ups or pop unders on your site, have to pay for other features at a later date, be limited in what you can put on your website (ie maybe you can’t sell products on your site), have to pay waay too much for your domain name, or possibly your free hosting will only be for a short duration as a loss leader to get you to commit to staying with the free hosting company for at least a year.

When searching for a good, affordable, quality mac website hosting company be sure to do your homework. You wouldn’t house your physical business in a seedy neighbourhood just because the monthly rent/lease is free, so why would you consider doing the same thing with your website?

Free mac website hosting companies come and go often since offering free hosting is a pretty unstable business model. If you’re serious about building a website that will actually be around for more than a couple months, be ready to pay for quality service from a reputable Mac hosting company.

If you can get good Mac website hosting that comes with its own mac website builder for the $30-$50 a month range you’re doing well. You could get away with paying $10-$20 a month, but you’ll be limited in the functionality those cheaper hosting companies offer.