Internet hosting providers are doing everything in their power today to attract new customers. With the explosive growth of internet access and the leaps and bounds with which e-commerce sales have been growing it's no wonder that these companies are trying everything they can to get your hosting dollars.
Many companies are offering free hosting plans. The upsides to providers such as these are obvious. You can't have a lower barrier of entry than free. For most people starting out this consideration pretty much outweighs all others. But like most things in life there is a trade off. Free hosting packages are free like network TV is free. It's heavily subsidized by advertising. And usually advertising of the most annoying sort. Popup ads.
Popup advertising on a free hosting account is service provider's bread and butter. They are highly annoying, incredibly visible, with good click through rates ensuring a steady stream of income for the hosting service. These unsightly advertisements also do two other things amazingly well. They annoy the ever loving crap out of users of your site. And they make your site look very, VERY bush league. While the popup ad is the hosting services first line of attack it defiantly doesn't end there.
Another set of advertising is also going to be embedded in every single page of your website and that's the hosting companies own self advertising. Some providers are so blatant and over the top with their self branding that a visitor to your site may think they have accidently landed on a hosting company's website! No consideration is paid to your sites layout, color scheme or design philosophy. They get their banner ad up there and content be damned. Again this dramatic self branding generates a general dislike of your site and a sense that you are a cheapskate. From a business stand point if you don't have the money to pay for hosting how big of a business can you possibly be running.
The third most common form of advertising and some would say the least offensive is embedded advertising related to your site. These ads can resemble what Google does with its ad sense program. While advertisements like this, being targeted towards your visitor's interests, are less offensive they also handicap you in one very big way. Your ability to place your own advertising is greatly diminished. No one likes to visit a page which is covered in ads. Any non intrusive advertising placed on your site by your hosting provider is a revenue stream you as a site owner have removed from your bottom line.
Another dirty trick that's often played by these companies is to lure in users with free hosting but charge an insanely high domain name registration fee. Where domains can be purchased for as little as seven dollars these companies charge seventy five to one hundred for what they call managed domain hosting. They claim to provide you with all kinds of benefits when in reality they are purchasing the domain name themselves and renting it out to you. Do yourself a favor and spend the ten bucks a month for a real hosting package.
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