Paid web hosting: (+) You can host your own domain. If you decide to change web hosting provider in future, you easily transfer domain to new provider and don't loose your traffic. (+) Most paid hosts offer 24/7 support via email or live chat and some of them provide toll-free phone support. (+) You can expect better uptime then on free host. Some paid hosts offer uptime guarantee. (+) Paid hosts usually offer enough disk space and bandwith. Futures like PHP and MySQL are standard. Even if you are not programmer you can download plenty of free PHP scripts from internet. (-) Paid hosting coast money :o)

Before you make decision if choose free or paid host you should answer this question: How big ambitions do I have with my website? If you are starting small personal page for your friends consist of a few *.html files then free host will be sufficient. In case you plan to run serious business website, need PHP, database and don't want ads on site I recommend to look for quality paid host.

As well as sharing server resources, all websites also share same IP. This can be important in some cases as some websites can get banned by search engines for improper behaviour such as SPAM or illegal activities. When a website is banned, search engine will block IP address which means all other sites on web server may also be affected. It is therefore important to ensure that web hosting company careful monitors activities of websites they host or state what kind of sites are appropriate for that server.

Summary

I hope that after reading this you'll have a better idea about what kind of web hosting plan best suits your particular needs. Remember to look around. There are lots of very good companies out there but there are also a lot of bad one's. It pays to do some research about company you choose before purchasing your web hosting plan.