Free Websites

If you are looking for a free website, there are three items that you need to ensure are free:

• Domain Name. Normally a domain name is about 10 euros/year. There are two ways you can get this for free. One way is that a number of hosting companies will provide the domain name free of charge if you buy server space off of them (although one can dispute if this is really free since one has to buy server space). The other method is that certain companies will allow you to have a sub-domain of their domain free of charge. For a 'hobby' site this may be a suitable approach but we strongly advise against it for business sites.

• Server Space. A number of companies will provide you with server space free of charge (typically along with a free sub-domain name). They normally do this because they insert advertisements above or below your web pages, using the advertising revenue to cover the expenses of the server space. Again, for a 'hobby' site this may be acceptable, but we strongly advise against it for business sites.

• Website Design. The only way that we know of to get website design for free is to do it yourself. Fortunately, a number of hosting companies offer website design software which allows you to design a website with little or no technical knowledge. Alternatively, if you are technical, it is not that hard to learn how to design a website. For discussion, click on Design Alternatives. However, we would suggest that it may be more cost effective to hire a professional to design an inexpensive professional site than to invest the amount of time you would need to do it yourself.

The above are general observations, which we believe are true in most cases. However, we do recognize two special situations when a free website may in fact be better than a paid website, which are discussed in Free & Better.