If you think you’ll be fine with free hosting, think again

I hear about this problem time and time again. Someone sets up a blog on a free blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.com, and all goes just fine for years. Then one day, they wake up to find out that the blog they had been working on for years is gone. Usually there is not much recourse to be had either. After all, the company providing the free blogging platform can do what ever they want. If they think you are somehow violating their terms of service, Your done. That’s not to say that you can’t explain the situation or beg for them to give you another chance, but that won’t always work.

Here is a live example of this very thing happening to someone overnight. This was taken from a popular internet marketing forum called the Warrior Forum. The guy ended up getting his blogs back, but how much trouble did he go through and money did he loose while he tried. None of this would have happened if he had used his own web hosting and domain name.

If you think you are saving a ton of money by using these free blog hosting platforms, imagine if your blog was making you a lousy dollar a day. What happens when your blog disappears? All the traffic that was going to your blog is now getting an error message that you no longer exist. Since you don’t even own the domain name, you can’t redirect that traffic to another website of yours. In just 2 months time, you’ve lost enough money to have paid for a year of hosting and a domain name from the start. Now imagine that your blog was making $20 or even $100 a day. There is absolutely no reason to set up a serious website or blog on a free hosting platform. It’s like playing Russian roulette with your business. You might be ok, but why take the risk?

This type of scenario will not happen if you use a reputable hosting company and buy your own domain. With the prices of quality web hosting these days, you can’t afford not to own your own website.

I should point out that free platforms such as blogger and WordPress.com definitely have their place. Nothing could be quicker and easier to set up a personal website or blog. But for business, I would highly recommend staying away from them. I also want to point out that WordPress.com is the free version of WordPress. WordPress.org is the one that you host on your own domain and hosting account. WordPress.org is an open source (free) content management system, so no company owns it.

Blogger is a free blogging platform that is owned by Google. You can buy your own domain name and use it with Blogger, but it is still owned by Google. In other words, if they decide they don’t like what you are doing, they can pull the rug out from underneath you at any time. You might own the domain, but you no longer have a website if that happens.

The bottom line is, if you are serious about your blog or website, you need to explore all your options for hosting it. The quick and cheap way is probably not the best way to do business.