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When you opt for a career in affiliate marketing, you often look for areas where you can cut costs and limit expenses. With this in mind, you may consider free WordPress hosting, and here, we shall see why that might be a bad idea.
Free WordPress hosting sites offer certain benefits, but what we fail to recognize are hidden charges and drawbacks that overshadow the benefits they provide.
Why Are They Offering Free WordPress Hosting?
This is a question you need to ask yourself before making use of free WordPress hosting. WordPress hosting is not an easy task for the hosting service as it comes with a lot of hardware, technicalities, and support. All of these are expensive aspects, so you need to be doubtful about the free hosting they offer. The only possible explanation is that the service provided is of low quality, or that it might cost you much more money later on.
Free WordPress hosting has limited features and restrictions on storage, bandwidth, and customer service. They also have hidden charges for security, tech support, backups, and even charge for higher traffic into your site. These charges may together cost you more than you’d have to pay with a regular, trusted web host.
If you’re experimenting with owning a website or looking to cut costs for a website just starting, you will face issues when your site begins to grow. A growing website on a free WordPress hosting platform leaves you with two choices: to cancel any plans of expansion, stay small, and lose opportunities for more traffic. The other option is to opt for a premium service that these free hosts provide at rates higher than other WordPress hosting sites.
Technical issues with free WordPress hosting
Free WordPress hosting comes with loads of technical problems that may affect your site and business detrimentally. A few of these issues are as follows:
- Server Errors
This is one of the most common issues you face when using a free WordPress hosting. To get the server issues sorted, you might have to uninstall and reinstall your WordPress site multiple times for smooth operation. There might be other issues with the servers that lead to technical problems you may not be able to solve depending on your skill level in the field. The lack of technical and customer support in free hosting adds to the problem.
- Lower Uptime
Uptime is necessary as you need your website to be accessible to visitors at all times. Free WordPress hosting has high instances of downtime, which takes away visitors and business. This effectively renders the cash you saved on free hosting as a liability.
- Slow Loading of Website
Free WordPress hosting comes with many restrictions on storage and bandwidth, which will result in slow loading of the site for your visitors. This is not preferred as the audience is used to quick results. A lag in loading will result in losing customers.
- Problematic C-Panel
Free WordPress hosting services have outdated control panels, making navigation difficult. With their clunky structure, it isn’t easy to find the required options for beginners and experts. Since the customer service is not of high quality, it won’t be easy to get your queries regarding the same clear.
- Glitches with Plug-ins
Free WordPress hosting lacks in quality and regular updates. Therefore, its outdated version is incompatible for incorporating plug-ins to your website, and this includes a simple plug-in like a search bar.
- Site malfunction
The server issues combined with a lack of compatible plug-ins lead to malfunctioning of the website. This makes it difficult for visitors to view your content and navigate the site. Such malfunctions may lead to loss of audience, which is detrimental to the growth of your website.
Such technical difficulties raise the cost of hosting as you may need to outsource some of the work. Other issues you may face include security breaches and inappropriate ads cluttering your website, all of which are not worth the apparent savings.
So, Is There a Better Option?
Yes, there is! Many paid hosting services support WordPress, but you need to choose the best one for you. WP Engine is an excellent and affordable option for WordPress hosting. It provides all the services unavailable in free hosting, such as scalability, excellent compatibility with plug-ins, and a user-friendly C-Panel. WP Engine has many hosting plans, and even the most basic plan comes with free SSL certificates, 10GB storage space, and up to 25,000 visitors per month. Their excellent customer support system ensures that all your issues are cleared up.
Therefore, free WordPress hosting is undoubtedly not worth the weak security system, the limited features it provides, and the hidden charges that come with it. There are paid hosting services that offer the best WordPress hosting out there, minus the risk of security breaches and poor uptimes.