1. Content Ownership – You might not own space, but it is your content. That means that you should expect some sort of notice if service is going offline so that you can make alternative arrangements or save your information to your computer.

2. Tools – Surprisingly many free web hosting accounts come with lots of tools that you can use to enhance your site. The larger hosting provider or hosting community, more tools you will have in your control panel.

3. Free domain names – Usually you are getting a subdomain or even a subfolder for your files. Typically free domain names only come with a paid hosting account. The reasons is that bandwidth is very expensive and no one wants to build up a free web hosting service unless they have access to cheap resources.

Choosing a hosting company for your web site can be very confusing given multitude of companies available on Internet today. Do not choose a service by price alone. The very cheapest is not necessarily best. You can get a good hosting service for under $10.00, but first determine your requirements.

Before going into any more detail, let’s look at some definitions:

Hosting service - A hosting service or company is an Internet company that provides hundreds or even thousands of computers like yours with service by “renting” you space. With this service your web site is now on Internet and can be viewed by millions of others. Sure you could be your own host, but it would be very expensive because you would need to buy a server, house it in proper environment, maintain it 24 hours a day, and put up with all other headaches that come with hosting. Wouldn’t you rather concentrate on selling your product? Server A server is a large computer, which can service many other computers. Sometimes a large software package on a host’s server (like a mail software package) is also referred to as a server. Have you seen scenes on TV which show rooms wall-to-wall with big computers busily working and flashing their lights? These are servers.