If you don't have much money to host your Joomla website then a free hosting service could be the best option for you. Although free hosting services have limitations they can still provide you with everything you need to build a website. The number of companies offering free web hosting has increased and quality of the hosting has also improved. You also get less restrictions forced upon you including having to display advertisements on your website. However as with everything that’s free you will still have some limitations including the amount of disk space you get, bandwidth you can use and resources on the server you can use.
Advantages of using free hosting for Joomla
- It’s free with some restrictions.
- The technical requirements are in place to run Joomla on a free web hosting service.
- Good for testing out Joomla on a live server environment before committing to investing in a paid service.
- Great for getting to know how Joomla works by building your first website on a free hosting service.
- You only plan to run a small website which will use limited disk space, bandwidth and resources on the server.
- It’s normally very easy to setup Joomla as the hosting company will provide the option to install the CMS via Cpanel.
Disadvantages of using a free web hosting service
- The bottom line is paying customers will always come first. If you have a technical issue you may have to wait alot longer to get the problem resolved.
- Limitations will be in place based on the server resources you can use including the amount of bandwidth, disk space, MySQL databases, sub domains, email accounts you can setup and use.
- The website may not behave in the same way as it would by hosting the website on a paid plan.
- Popup advertisements used by the company to subsidise the service may appear on your website.
- You may have to use the company’s domain name in your website address.
- The website may experience more downtime compared to a paid service.
- The Joomla installers which are available to install via the hosting control panel can be outdated.
The list of advantages and disadvantages to support the case for free hosting could go on and on. Free web hosting is great for learning about and testing out Joomla to see what is has to offer. It’s also good for small websites and for people who don’t mind living with the limitations the service has to offer. However if you need support and want a stable environment to run your website then a free service may not be the right solution for you.
List of free web hosting services For Joomla
Joomla.com
Joomla.org have teamed up with siteground.com to offer free hosting for Joomla which comes with the following. Free site name at the joomla.com subdomain (example: mywebsite.joomla.com). Comes pre-installed with additional extensions, templates, and all available languages. Automatic updates. No Advertising. The Joomla backend is translated in more than 50 different languages making Joomla.com a great opportunity for people all around the world to start their online presence easily and freely. It's also easy to upgrade to a fully hosted service with custom domain.To find out more visit www.joomla.com
Cloudaccess.net
Cloudaccess.net offers a free hosting service which is optimized for Joomla that includes the following. 500MB Disk Space 1 CPU Core, 1GB RAM, Free Sub domain, FTP/MySQL Access. Some of restrictions in place at Cloud Access include you are limited to using there sub domain name, you need to log into the website control panel once per month to prove that you are still using the service.
To find out more visit https://www.cloudaccess.net/free-joomla-hosting.html
xtreemhost.com
Xtreemhost.com comes with a large amount of disk space, 2,500 MB which is enough to host a Joomla website. You also get 100GB bandwidth, FTP access and 1 MYSQL database. However they do have a few restrictions in place including no pop, web or SMTP email, no video streaming and limited support. To find out more visit http://www.xtreemhost.com/
byet.host
Byet host offer an ad-free load balanced free web hosting service which supports PHP, MySQL, FTP. The features included in the free plan can be managed via there in house Vista panel . This is one of the better free services you can use plus it has very few limitations. To find out more visit https://byet.host/
We have not listed all the companies offering a free service as you can easily do a quick search in Google to find lots of companies who offer this type of service. The purpose of this article is to provide you with an overview to the advantages and disadvantages which you may find useful to help you make a decision before going with a free solution to host your website.
