subject: Beware of Building a Free Website for your Small Business [print this page] Free websites are being offered all over the internet. For the starting small business person without a large cash flow, it may seem like a great option. However, it is not quite as lucrative as it seems.
When you build a website on a free platform, you sacrifice all control. It is not your own system or space, and there are some very real dangers involved which you need to consider before building a "free website".
Firstly, you are at the mercy of the owner of the platform. He or she is free to change the terms of use at any given time, and you have no recourse. It could come in the form of a fee being charged, or third party advertisements suddenly showing up on your professional business website. It could come in the form of limitations being imposed, or even the termination of the service. Webmasters fall victim to these occurrences every day.
Secondly, a free service is always limited in terms of facilities. While you may consider it to be adequate when you just start out, it is inevitable that you will eventually require more facilities somewhere along the line. Paid hosting comes complete with a myriad of features - from a shopping cart right through to a professional help desk support system.
Thirdly, consider the fact that some potential customers might not take you seriously. After all, why would they consider you to be a professional in your field if you cannot even pay $10 for your own hosting account? The fact of the matter is that any "free website" is pretty much "a property in someone else's back yard". You do not have your own identity or independence. Your domain name will usually be something like "yourbusinessname.freewebsitename.com".
Lastly, you are also subject to what other people are building on the platform. if many of them are building junk websites, the whole system will have a poor rating in Google's view, and the traffic to your own website is also likely to suffer because of it. The danger is, however, even beyond that: If other users on the system indulge in illegal activities such as selling illegal goods or hosting viruses, the local government can shut down the whole system. A recent shutdown of a well known blogging platform caused the loss of more than seventy thousand blogs.
Some of those bloggers worked on their blogs for years, only to have it gone in a day. Can you imagine building a website, and then working for months to grow and promote it, only to have it all thrown away in an instant by someone else?
If you have your own website on your own domain and hosting, you have options. If the hosting company goes down or no longer suits your needs, you can simply move your website somewhere else, and have the domain name connected tot he new address - pretty much like you would move a telephone line.
Beware of Building a Free Website for your Small Business
By: Peter Princeton
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