Free Web Hosting

A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported. Free web hosts will usually provide a subdomain (yoursite.domain.com) or a directory (www.domain.com/~yourname). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Many free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains.

Only a few free web hosts offer basic package for free. Enhanced packages (with more features) are usually available for a cost. This allows users to try the service for an initial trial (see how it performs compared to other hosts), and then upgrade when (and if) needed.

Free hosting may have the following limitations:

• Limitation on the size of each hosted file
• Very small bandwidth per month compared to paid hosting
• Disabling on hotlinking of files
• File type restrictions (for example MP3, MPEG, ZIP etc.)
• Compulsory placement of the Webhosts' Banner or Popup ads into all web pages
• No provided uptime guarantee
• No allowance of custom URLS, such as "http://www.domain.com". It has to be "http://www.provider.com/domain" or "http://domain.provider.com/".

Some free host may provide these extra features:

• A web based control panel
• Free email accounts for the domain or subdomain hosted
• File transfer via FTP
• Scripting languages: PHP, ASP, Perl etc.
• Relational databases such as MySQL
• Scheduled processes, known as cronjobs
• Other features such as guestbooks
• Forums and community resources not typical of paid hosts
• Reward systems which provide extra free products and services
• Have no data limitations offering unlimited space

Most free web hosts discourage using their services for file or image hosting only, with no web page, since advertising is displayed on the web page. Because of this, hotlinking is usually disallowed on free hosts. Some free webhosts will also disallow files over a certain size (for example 5 MB). However, there are free file hosting services which allow large files as well as hotlinking.