As an advanced individual or business with the intent of joining the online digital wagon, it’s only natural that at some point you’ll want to secure your place on the internet. It could be something as simple as a blog, or a full e-commerce website. Regardless of your needs, you’ll want somewhere nice, affordable, and above all, functional.
000webhost is an online platform that offers web hosting services from as low as free to as high as around $8.00 per month. Places like Forbes, HuffPost, Bloomberg, and Trustpilot recommend this platform for web hosting. Let’s look at why they think you too should consider this online service the host for your online business.
A Closer Look
The first thing that captures anyone’s attention when they hear about, read about, or visit 000webhost is the fact that they offer web hosting for free. But most people are smart enough to know that not much can be gained from free stuff, so what’s the catch? Believe it or not, there’s no catch. This online service offers reasonable web hosting services for free. We are talking about 1GB free hard disk space for your site’s assets, 10,000 MB bandwidth, 2 MySQL Databases, and up to 5 email forwarders.
The above free features come with no annoying or distracting ads. If you go for free web hosting from other online hosting places, chances are that whatever space they will offer you for free, it’ll be bombarded with ads for this and that. When people visit your free site, they will be wondering whether your site is just meant for ads or there’s some other business going on. With 000webhost, you get your free web hosting without ads so that you and your site visitors can focus on what is really important; whatever it is you are selling to the world through your site.
And if free web hosting is not enough, the guys at 000webhost go even further to provide you with a free website builder. You know, designing and developing a website from scratch takes time, money, practice, and experience. Not everyone can afford all these. With a little working knowledge of web design, using the platform’s free website builder, you’ll be able to come up with a beautiful and functional website or blog in no time. I could say that anyone can use the website builder to create a website, but frankly, if you know nothing about web design, even with the free website builder, you won’t be able to do much. I just don’t want to put your expectations too high. Be that as it may, as long as you can handle the free website builder, coupled with the other free things you get from this platform, you are sure to appreciate their services.
As part of your free hosting, you’ll also get a feature called the cPanel. It’s the main area where you’ll be doing your administrative tasks like uploading your site assets, setting up your databases, dealing with your PHP scripts, and performing a few tweaks and tricks here and there. This area gives you full control of your website or blog. It’s a very intuitive area because it’s something you can learn how to use within a few minutes – I think 30 minutes if you take too long. Uploading your site is a piece of cake. As long as you have your credentials or logins in place, then everything else just works itself out. The cPanel is one of the most beautiful and powerful features offered by 000webhost for free.
Perhaps you want more. Perhaps the 1GB free space isn’t enough for you. Perhaps you want more security, emails, domain names, databases, and more. If this is the case, you can check out their paid plans. 000webhost has two paid plans: Premium – Silver Hosting and Business – Gold Hosting. With the Premium – Silver Hosting plan, at $3.49/month you’ll get:
- Unlimited number of websites
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited SSD Disk Space
- Unlimited FTP Users
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- A free domain name
- Simple Website Builder
- 3x WordPress Optimized Speed
- And more
If this is not enough for you, then you can consider the Business – Gold Hosting plan where you’ll get:
- All that you’ll get from the Premium – Silver Hosting Plan plus
- Daily backups
- Deluxe Live Support
- Free SSL Certificate for securing the data of your clients and to boost your SEO rankings
- 5x WordPress Optimized Speed
- 2x Processing Power and Memory
At $7.95/month.
I believe these are very reasonable prices considering the features provided with each paid hosting plan.
Something interesting about 000webhost is the fact that they also give you a chance to make money by helping them market their services. If you have ever heard of affiliate marketing, this is an opportunity to see the concept being applied firsthand. The first thing you have to do is to get yourself your free account or above. Once you do this, you’ll get your own affiliate link. With your affiliate link, you can use the new free site you’ve created, or another website of your own somewhere else, or your social media accounts, to post the link and put in a good word or two about the platform’s services. If you are not very creative with either words or graphics, you can use their own custom made banners instead and post those somewhere in one of your sites, or social media places. Every time a new user signs up for the platform’s paid services through one of your affiliate links, you’ll get some commission from the platform. You have the chance of making up to $100 from each new user who signs up. It’s no walk in the park but if you have good traffic on your websites or social media places, this is a sure way of making some extra money.
Pros
- You get good web hosting features and services for free.
- The paid plans are affordable and have really useful features.
- The platform provides a forum where its users can exchange ideas and advice. This is particularly useful for users with free accounts since they don’t get extra support from the platform
- The interface and features provided by the platform are intuitive and particularly useful for beginners.
- The lack of annoying ads on the free hosting plan is a good deal.
Cons
- SSL support is only available in the Business – Gold Hosting Plan.
- Sometimes the sites under the free hosting plan go offline. This can be annoying. Albeit the platform indicates that sites under the free hosting plan may go offline for an entire hour within every 24 hours. An hour is a very long time for any site to be offline.
- Free accounts can be terminated at any time without prior notice. That is discouraging.
Conclusion
If you are looking for free web hosting, 000webhost is the place to go. Just look around online and you won’t find any better deals for free as far as free web hosting is concerned. Furthermore, their paid plans are really amazing considering the price they are being offered at. You are free to make your own decision but I think this online platform is it as far as free or affordable web hosting is concerned.