What Are the Advantages of Web Hosting?
You have 2 options for getting a website online. The first option is to create your website on a free hosting, such as Google pages or WordPress dot com. This can be a good solution if you don't have the money, you don't care about branding your business, or you're worried that the free service will disappear. A much better solution would be to purchase your own hosting account.
Top 7 Advantages of Having Your Own Web Hosting Account
1. Place your own domain name
Free hosting means that your domain name must contain the company name. For example, if you create your website on WordPress dot com, your web address will look something like this: redshoes.wordpress dot com. This makes it difficult for your visitors to remember or write the domain name. The advantage of having your own web hosting account is that you can register a real domain name and host it on the server.
2. Control over your own website
A web hosting account provides flexibility regarding your website's files. You can install scripts, forums, software, etc. to improve your website. Your hosting package usually includes site statistics, which allows you to track how many visitors your site receives, where they come from and by what keywords people find your site.
3. Create your own email accounts
If you are going to do business online, you need a professional email address that includes your domain name (e.g.info at yourdomainname dot com). If you use Gmail or Hotmail to do business, your customers may not think that you are serious or professional. Your hosting plan allows you to create email accounts that include your domain name.
4. Branding
If you have created your website on a free hosting, it will be difficult for you to brand your domain name. For example, if the company stops its free service, you will lose your domain name and all the content of your website. It will disappear forever if you don't regularly back up. Many site owners kicked themselves for allowing this to happen and lost all the content they created.
5. Create a professional online business
The free hosted solution gives the impression that you are not a professional business person. This can affect the quality and quantity of relationships you want to build online. A professional website address posted in your personal account will attract similar business people in your niche.
6. Search engine optimization
Having a hosting account allows you to create web pages that are convenient for search engines. This means that you can create your own meta tags of title, description and keywords, title tags, optimize image descriptions and give names to your own files. If your free website hosting disappears, you will lose all your search engine rankings and the traffic you received while the site was active. A website with your own domain name hosted on your own web hosting account will remain in search engines forever as long as you continue to pay annual expenses.
7. Design flexibility
Hosting your own website allows you to manipulate the HTML code of your web pages so that you can create any design you wish. A free hosted solution usually provides templates that do not provide much design flexibility.
After reading about the disadvantages of free web hosting and the 7 advantages of having your own web hosting account, it makes sense to choose the latter.