by The Extraordinary Tourist

Created on: February 26, 2009

The choice to go with a free web site over a paid service is one that should be considered carefully based on your needs.

Free web sites are generally highly impractical in most cases if you're wanting to set up a database driven web site. If that is your purpose then you'll be hard pressed to find a free web host that will enable that kind of web site for no cost.

If you plan to make a more general, informative style site with plenty of your own free content or you're looking to start an online business (or get your business online) with little cost then a free web site may be practical for you.

No matter what you will be using the site for, if you are just starting out, then a free site is an ideal way to see if you're going to stick with keeping the site updated over the medium to long term. There's no point in spending money only to discover a web site just doesn't suit your purpose, schedule, interest or you just can't be bothered keeping it updated. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

If you're using a free web site for personal use then you'll have many more choices for which web host to go with. If you intend to run a business from your free site then be sure to check that your web host's Terms and Conditions of use permits their free sites to be used for 'commercial' purposes. Many don't. You don't want to find your site suddenly shut down simply because you didn't check.

From a practical point of view free web sites often come with desirable easy to use options. For example Freewebs (www.freewebs.com) is great for people who have no web design experience because you can choose one of their many professionally designed templates. They make it easy to add functionality like guest books, forums, photo albums, shopping carts, payment buttons, subscription boxes and more all without needing to know a scrap of HTML, Java script, PHP etc. They also feature their own online WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) site editor.

On the negative side the majority of free web sites are not actually free. They usually come with the caveat that you can use them free if you're prepared to have advertising banners automatically inserted into your web site pages. Freewebs, for example, will place a Google banner advertisement across the top of every page of your site.

On a personal site the advertising may not be an issue however if you're running a business you may just see competitor advertisements appearing in those banners. Not always but possible.

If you're looking for a free

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