The mentions of free hosting in online media have long been accompanied by the assumptions of limitations and disadvantages. Articles persistently assert that web hosting necessarily requires an initial investment in order for it to function accordingly.
In other words, you only get what you pay for is a contagious mentality when it comes to both reality and virtuality.
We, however, have always maintained the opinion that the best free web hosting can be just as good as premium, and limitations can be determined merely by the nature of the service and not additionally set as motivation for upgrading.
Even with such an approach concerns about the safety of the particular free web hosting service may arise. Privacy and security policies vary among companies and vouching for free hosting itself would be somewhat idealistic.
This article will include an account on AwardSpace’s free hosting only and will not aim to cover the variations in measures among providers. So, is free hosting safe?
Security
With the concept of web security attracting as much attention as it has in the past few months, it has become a central priority for any contemporary digital service today.
The undermined reputation of data security requires increased measures on the companies to ensure the wellbeing of their users and the further surveillance of their personal information.
This undoubtedly applies to web hosting, as well. Furthermore, we at AwardSpace apply a number of practices when it comes to ensuring the data protection of the users, be they free or paid.
Our system detecting potentially harmful malicious attacks monitors and detects unusual activity in both, the web hosting admin panel, and WordPress login pages. Blocking IPs attempting to enter the pages numerous times using wrong passwords is only one of the security measures applied by our team to ensure the security of sleep time.
Pro Tip: Take care of you free hosting’s security by being extra cautious when it comes to your behaviour online. Take a look at the internet security trends that you absolutely need to know about in 2018.
Uptime
Lately, we had a disturbing observation of unnecessary up-time restrictions for free users in other web hosting providers. This demonstrates the desire of companies to limit the freedom of their unpaying customers.
The free hosting sleep time phenomenon is a symptom of the mentality in the industry aiming to merely convert free to paid.
We, at AwardSpace, have stated on multiple occasions we do not intend to unnecessarily restrict free hosting users with the mere goal of forcing them to upgrade. Rather than cooperating with users, helping them grow and develop websites they are proud of, our company has managed to stay on the market for 14 years so far.
And while free hosting companies came and go throughout that time, we have succeeded in keeping our customers satisfied and evolving. Witnessing the trust and loyalty of those who have grown out of their free plans is far more rewarding than pushing them to upgrade at any cost.
A policy as simple as ensuring the highest uptime possible for both paid and free users increases the safety of the hosting plans offered. Furthermore, it can also affect positively the continuity of our customers’ SEO efforts.
Because nobody wants their website sleeping when Google crawlers arrive.
Backups
Making backups is just as important as any measure your web hosting company can take to ensure your server’s security.
That is why automatic or manual backups are an essential necessity for paid and free customers. The nature of free hosting does not allow automatic backups on the side of the provider. Ensuring such, however, can be as easy as downloading a WordPress plugin.
Backing up a website allows you to restore your website to a reasonably recent backup in case of an accident. And this can truly be a life-saver.
Pro Tip: Learn how to backup a website both automatically and manually to protect your files and secure the safety of your website just by practicing a few basic steps.
FTP Safety
Even though regular backups cannot be provided to free web hosting users, we take the safety of their personal files extremely seriously ensuring careful care for them.
Using RAID1, AwardSpace takes care of the files of all of our users by saving them on numerous different disks. By this, even in cases of a disk failure, the end-user will not register any disturbance in his personal files thanks to this disk mirroring.
Disk mirroring, also known as RAID1, is the replication of data to two or more disks. This ensures the high performance and the high availability of our users’ files securing their websites and applications.
Free web hosting users, just as our premium ones, take advantage of this feature and can enjoy the advantages of having their files secured for them at any time.
Conclusion
Anything that comes labeled free can either turn out to be a blessing or a nightmare. While offering something with no prospective profit involved seems discouraging to many, the investment in the human capacity to evolve and grow is much larger than any income can be.
This becomes quite apparent when faced with the hundreds of free web hosting companies that emerged and disappeared not able to maintain the trends and requirements of the market.
At AwardSpace, the safety of our users remains a top priority for us. Furthermore, the care we invest in free users does not artificially restrict the features included in our free hosting package. This is what helps us evolve as our customers do and learn as we go together.