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What is free web hosting?

Free web hosting is web hosting that is supplied free of charge. In return for hosting your site most free hosts pay for this by showing adverts on your web site.

Normally the address of your web site will be a subdomain of the web host, for example:

http://yoursite.webhost.com

or a directory, for example:

http://webhost.com/~yoursite

Some free hosts allow you to use your own domain name if you have one.

Due to the reduction in the costs of operating a free hosting service, many of the features that used to only be available on paid hosting are now available on some free hosts. For example, some host allow you to run PHP scripts and MySQL databases.

The advantages of free web hosting

You don't need to buy a domain name.
If you get tired of running a web site, you can simply abandon your site without having to worry about paying anything.

The disadvantages of free web hosting

Most hosts will display adverts on your site.
Some hosts will not allow you to run your own adverts on your site.
Free web hosts can suddenly closedown - and you have lost your web site.
Your site may run very slowly due to the number of sites hosted on the server.
If your site becomes popular, it may be suspended because it uses a large amount of bandwidth.
Some hosts have an inactivity limit - if you don't login to your account for a certain length of time, your account could be deleted.