Free WordPress hosting is always appealing for a new website, especially when you are unaware of the scope of the project you are working on. WordPress is the go-to content management system; understandably, there are many free hosting options available because of this. However, free always come with a price. Here is our list of reasons to avoid free WordPress hosting.
Customer Support
One of the most favourable reasons to go with a paid hosting provider is customer support quality. Everyone knows that WordPress can have issues when it comes to untested plugins or even simple optimisation problems that cause the website to crash. These problems are not limited to one particular type of website, but to everyone that uses WordPress.
Thus, it is critical to have an excellent support team to help you out when you need to fix something from the server-side, especially if your knowledge isn’t that of an expert. Outstanding customer support teams help restore the website for you and give you tips to avoid the same problems in the future.
Server MaintenanceÂ
Another scary danger of free WordPress hosting is the lack of maintenance on the server-side or even worse overloaded servers. With many free options, the goal is to get a customer through the door and then offer a paid version of the service. Thus, in some ways, it is there goal to make things seem problematic on the free version. These problems give the hosting provider an option to up-sell to a paid version that eliminates the problem the free version includes.
Security Threats
Many great hosts invest in their servers and platforms security, meaning the back-end access to your website is between you and them. Security is a big issue when it comes to free hosting. Back in 2015, popular web host provider 000webhost was hacked, which meant thirteen million customers were exposed to hackers. Security flaws of this type can happen to anyone, but they are more likely to occur to free hosts, whose security measures are likely not adequate.
Disk Usage and Visitor Limits
The limits set by hosting providers seem pretty self-explanatory. When someone launches a website, boundaries do not even enter your mind. However, one day you seem a good influx of traffic, and suddenly your site goes down. You’ve run out of disk space, and your provider won’t keep your website live anymore. With paid services, you’re going to have much bigger limits, and even if you do run out, majority of them will go over for an additional fee, meaning your website will never go down.
Backups
We don’t like to think about it, but backups are essential for any website. Daily backups can save your life and thus it’s necessary to realise that you will eventually run into significant problems if you don’t have any. At Talks, we recommend daily backups; therefore if your provider doesn’t offer that, it’s best to shop around somewhere else. Backups are generally not included in free WordPress hosting, making it our final reason to avoid them.
