Free Hosting is sometimes a great way to go when you want to put up a website. Its great when you don't have a credit card to arrange the hosting and domain name. Also if it's your first website, a personal page or many other factors you may choose to go the free hosting route. In order to have a good website though, there are some things you need to be aware of and look for in a free host provider. They are:

1. Trustability

For the first reason, I'm inventing my own word! Trust in the provider is very important though because your privacy is of importance to you. The last thing you want is to have all your information sold to mortgage companies or something. What happens if you spend a lot of time on your website and then the free host company has a server crash or just vanish?

2. Storage, The importance of space

This one is important. Storage is important, especially if you want images on your free website. Many free hosting services are free for the first 10mb and then start billing you in order to get more storage. Find a host that has at least 50mb of storage so that you don't risk running out. My choice of free host offers a very generous 700mb!

3. Bandwidth, Required for your site to stay 'online'

This is where lots of free hosts fall down. They only offer small amounts of bandwidth, and then once you reach it, they suspend your account. If this happens, often you need to pay for more bandwidth, or wait until the month is out in order to get your account functioning again. If this happens in some cases you can email them and ask for more and they might grant you some more, but is it worth the risk of website downtime?

4. Ads

It's a free service and the provider needs to make the income to pay the servers and maintenance somehow, so ads are expected. Lots of free hosts though go overboard with Popups and float-ins, as well as banner ads and plenty more. Try and find a free hosting provider that has non obtrusive advertising (NO Popups, visitors hate that!)

5. Functionality and Uptime

Without user-friendly functionality, you could struggle to get your pages looking the way you want them to look. Try and find a service provider that offers easy editing and also has safe, reliable servers and maintenance, otherwise you may risk your website being up and down throughout the day!