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Having a web site is no longer an option for your company -- it is a necessity. A web site enables your business to reach more customers at anytime and anywhere. With more than one billion people worldwide going online, your business will be missing out on a large portion of the market without a web presence. In order to establish a web presence, one of the issues you will need to look into is getting a web hosting service for your web site. With technological progress and market competition, web hosting services are becoming more affordable, and better yet, many providers are now offering web hosting service for free. Yes, that means you don't have to spend even half a cent to get your business online. Other than for the obvious fact that it's free, here are a few reasons why you should consider using free web hosting for your business: • Test ground for your budding web skills - If you are thinking of being your own webmaster and want to get your feet wet in web building, you probably won't be ready to invest much on web hosting yet. Free web hosting services will give you the freedom to test out your skills, to see what does or does not work in your site, and can better visualize the cost and effort needed in creating and maintaining your company web site. Free web hosting also allows you to try the hosting provider's service for an initial period; once you're confident that the service provider is reliable enough for you, you can upgrade your company web site to the service provider's paid package that is better and with more frills. • Convenience of built-in features - Most free hosting companies, such as Bravenet, Yahoo! Geocities and Tripod, provide easy-to-use web page builder, and tools such as guestbook, hit counter, email forms, and others that can enhance your web site. You will be able to build your company web site in just a few simple steps, while providing you with a more than decent web site in just minutes. The extra features frees you from having to hire programmers just so that you can have online applications to capture visitor feedback, setting up of polls and survey, as well as building up your subscribers for your online newsletter. • High return on investment - You get free web hosting, you design your own web site, and you have fancy tools added in your site to give it extra functionality, all without having to spend a single cent. Add these up, compare with the potential new customers that you will be getting, and you find that your ROI for establishing a web presence for your company would obviously be significant. You can now reach out to your online market and hopefully your online strategy can effectively increase your revenue. On the other hand, the downside to using free web hosting is also numerous and comes in the form of hidden costs to your business: • Lack of flexibility and control - Be sure to read the provider's Terms of Service before registering for your free web hosting account. Some free hosting providers restrict the use of certain file types, content, or even languages. In addition, they can also overload your web site with unneeded and irrelevant advertisements in order to support their services. When bombarded with such annoyance, visitors to your site are going to take the effort not to visit your web site ever again. You will also find that some advanced tools needed to operate a fully functional e-commerce presence are not possible with the use of free hosting, such as shopping carts, secure ordering system, and online payment gateways. You may have to upgrade or switch to a paid web hosting service provider if you decide to use them, which will require not just the extra effort but also the extra cash.
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