Personal Web Hosting Services
How do you choose between all the personal web hosting services out there?
It depends on what you want to do with your web site and what its purpose is.
Set Up Your Own Blog or Web Site
Many people just starting out decide to begin with a blog. This an easy and often free way to get your feet wet and discover the joys of being online. You can post your ideas, add photos and video and share your point of view.
If this sounds like you, please see our resource on blog web hosting for more information.
Maybe you have decided that blogging is not for you at the moment. You would prefer to create a site that focuses on a theme such as your family, hobby, sport, profession or other interest but you don't want to or you don't have the time to update it daily or weekly as you would with a blog.
Feature Hobbies, Sports, Personal Activities or Work From Home
Do you have a hobby or sport that you would like to showcase by creating a web site?
Maybe you would like to have a web site to advertise and sell some handmade items you make as a hobby.
Or maybe you would like to quit your day job, or are retiring soon, or would like to work from home and you are thinking of creating an online link business. Please take a look at our specific tips for evaluating web hosting plans for a business.
If you have decided you really want to create your own web site what do you do next?
How To Choose Personal Web Hosting Services
Not sure what a web host is? Find out here.
You should also read our general advice on choosing a web host .
Below you will find special things to consider when selecting a web host and evaluating personal web hosting services.
Free Hosting
If you are just starting out you may want to consider hosting your site for free. Yes free!
Sounds pretty good right?
Well it can be an excellent choice for starting out, but there are also some significant drawbacks you will need to consider to see if they would impact you at all negatively.
Where can you get free hosting?
There are many companies offering free personal web hosting services. You can host your site free with Google or Yahoo. The company that you host your own internet access through may also offer free web site hosting.
Many regular paid web hosting companies offer free plans that are chopped down versions of their paid plans.
Do a search and you will find multiple listings for free web hosting.
If you do decide to go with free personal web hosting services, please be aware of the following possible issues:
- Domain name - is it an actual standalone name or is it a subset of the provider name.
- Ownership of domain name -- do you own you domain name and can you take it with you if you decide to move to another hosting company? Is there a fee for this?
- Forced ads - Sometimes the hosting company will be able to recoup their costs by running ads on your site. Find out if this is the case, and if it would bother you, find out how to opt out if possible.
- Speed - Free personal web hosting services rarely come with a speed or uptime guarantee. In fact free sites are often located on the older more crowded servers that a web host has.
- Disk Space - Disk space for you to store your web pages and associated photos and video is usually limited with free hosting. But this is often the case for many paid hosting plans as well. Just be sure to check what the limits are and be comfortable that they will meet your needs - at least in the short term.
- Permanance - Although it can be true for paid hosting plans as well, there is a bigger issue around permanance with free hosting. Sometimes companies offer free hosting as a way of obtaining customers - just like giving out free samples. The free hosting plans usually run at a loss, and sometimes the loss is great and the company just never gets enough paid customers and goes under --leaving you without a website.
- Business - Free hosting sites simply do not convey a professional and business like impression. I cannot recommend using a free web hosting plan for a business.
Paid Personal Web Hosting Services
Many people choose the security of paid personal web hosting services.
There are so many hosting services out there that it can be hard to choose.
But as long as you are just interested in a small personal site that family and close friends may view, and you do not have future larger ambitions for it - such as earning income from your site or expanding it into a business there are many great options out there for you.
Speed and server reliability and disk space will not be an issue that you will need to worry about as your visitors all know you personally and have a personal vested interest to see what is on your site and don't mind waiting if your site is slow to load or down.
You should be able to get hosting for this sort of site for free or for less than $10 per month.
You don't need a fancy hosting plan with all the bells and whistles!
The biggest key factor in choosing a web host may be your own web design skills.
Look for a Host with easy to use web site building software
Do you know HTML? Or are you proficient in web design software such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage? Do you have other web design software that came bundled with your home computer that will create web pages?
If not, you will need to look for a host that has an excellent easy to use web page building program that comes with the hosting service.
We have reviewed several and have listed our reviews in the review section of this site -- take a look.
You may also have video you would like to add. If so you will need a hosting plan with sufficient disk space allocated to accommodate data intensive files.
If you think your site will be running ecommerce or will be a serious hobby site or is a small business site, please check out our guides on selecting a host for your business site.
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