Free Web Hosting

Free Web Hosting Often Limits Space

Free hosting services offer a limited amount of space for your website.

100 MB or More

• 300 MB: TopCities
  ^{Review TopCities}
• 150 MB: Batcave
  ^{Review Batcave}
• 100 MB: InstantName
  ^{Review InstantName}
• 100 MB: DotEasy
  ^{Review DotEasy}

50 MB

• StormLoader
  ^{Review StormLoader}
• Freeservers
  ^{Review Freeservers}
• Blockstar
  ^{Review Blockstar}
• Bappy.com
  ^{Review Bappy.com}
• 2itB
  ^{Review 2itB}

Less than 50 MB

• 40 MB: Webs
  ^{Review Webs}
• 20 MB: Tripod
  ^{Review Tripod}
• 20 MB: AngelFire
  ^{Review AngelFire}
• 20 MB: 350 Pages
  ^{Review 350 Pages}
• 20 MB: 20MegsFree
  ^{Review 20MegsFree}
• 12 MB: IWannaBeFamous
  ^{Review IWannaBeFamous}

Free Web Hosting Also Limits Bandwidth

Free hosting services often limit the bandwidth you can use. Be sure to check if they have specific rules for some content. Some free hosting providers don't allow video or limit the length or number of videos you can host, for example.

Most providers offer 1 GB of bandwidth. I found one (Batcave) that offered 4 GB bandwidth. and one (Max Pages) that offered only 300 MB bandwidth.

Nearly All Free Web Hosting is Advertising Supported

This means that your Web pages will have advertising on them that you don't control. I found five free Web hosting providers that don't appear to be advertising supported. (Note: I based this on their promotional websites, and it wasn't always clear.)

• Yola
  ^{Review Yola}
• Batcave
  ^{Review Batcave}
• ZoomShare
  ^{Review ZoomShare}
• InstantName
  ^{Review InstantName}
• DotEasy
  ^{Review DotEasy}

Free Web Hosting Can Sometimes Host Your Domain Too

Nearly all free Web hosting providers will put your site up as a sub-domain of their URL. For example, my site "webdesign.about.com" is a sub-domain of About.com. But in order to have your own domain, your Web hosting provider needs to provide domain hosting or domain redirection. Most free Web hosting providers offer this service, but not all offer it for free. Check with your free hosting provider if they aren't on this list, to find out if they offer domain hosting and how much it costs.

• Batcave
  ^{Review Batcave}
• 20MegsFree
  ^{Review 20MegsFree}
• Freeservers
  ^{Review Freeservers}
• Blockstar
  ^{Review Blockstar}
• Bappy.com
  ^{Review Bappy.com}
• 2itB
  ^{Review 2itB}
• 350 Pages
  ^{Review 350 Pages}

Some Free Web Hosting Includes Free Email As Well

This is especially useful if you can host your domain on their server. You can then set up an email account on your domain from that hosting server.

• Batcave
  ^{Review Batcave}
• InstantName
  ^{Review InstantName}
• DotEasy
  ^{Review DotEasy}
• 20MegsFree
  ^{Review 20MegsFree}

Which Free Host Would I Choose?

Interestingly enough, TopCities was one of the first free Web hosting providers I ever used (not including the free hosting I got from my ISP - where I also worked), back in 1998. I liked them a lot back then, but quickly grew beyond them. Now, when I look at the different options for free Web hosting, I find myself tunrning to them again. They offer a lot of space and a lot of great features. My other choice would be Batcave. They also offer a lot of space and while they don't offer the most recent versions of PHP and MySQL, they are still there for free sites.