11 Reasons Free WordPress Hosting Is Not Worth It

Downtime for free WP hosting

I have been testing out some free WordPress hosting plans to see if they will fit for starting businesses. WordPress hosting refers to companies hosting the free WordPress.org software i.e. self-hosted WordPress. This post may sound like stating the obvious but considering the number of people who may better spend their time elsewhere, this may help convince someone otherwise.

I do endeavor to do a bit of research to choose from some of the better ones and tested or evaluated upfront at least 4 free hosting companies recently.

Preferable free WordPress hosting basic criteria:

  1. SSL included
  2. No Ads
  3. WordPress
  4. Low paid option

Following are some of my disappointing experiences with free hosting, and hopefully a lesson to others to learn from. For the purpose of not hurting their businesses, I will not be naming these companies, but they are the more popular ones out there.

WordPress.org

11 reasons free WordPress hosting is not worth it

  1. Possible missing application or require a registered business email
  2. May request too much personal information upon sign up
  3. Site can be suspended 24 hours for exceeding traffic limit even for low traffic of about 10 posts
  4. Possibly file transfer limit of 10MB or less that may result in migration file download fail.
  5. Hosting company site may look unprofessional and possibly no registered company address or contact numbers
  6. Possibly no SSL or One Click Install for WordPress
  7. Ads may be placed by hosting company on free site
  8. No or unhelpful email reply
  9. Sense of unreliabliity especially when uptime is crucial for profits
  10. May be based in a country with high fradulent rate or country not supported for signup
  11. Downtime detected even for a couple of days of low traffic as shown below.
Downtime for free WordPress hosting

When to avoid free WordPress hosting?

If you are serious about starting a business or blog for the long term, especially for-profits, use a paid good hosting provider. Save your time dealing with the free hosting problems and spend it on more productive matters including writing good blog content.

Any advise for free WordPress hosting?

I should have backup my WordPress site after some work on the free hosting before my free account deactivates for a day or so without prior warning. A good WordPress backup plugin can be All-in-one-migration. Then again, that free hosting limited the export download size so unless your file size is less than 10MB, you may face the same limitation.

Why good paid WordPress hosting is worth it?

  1. Fast support e.g. Hostinger usually replies quickly to my emails, within minutes or an hour.
  2. Stable and high uptime performance
  3. Cost is affordable compared to reasonable revenue derived from sales or advertisements placed with good content
Hostinger

Why use WordPress for business or blog?

There are many other blogging and site platforms but the flexibility and choices available for growth in WordPress may be unparalleled. For example, one may switch to another hosting company or ads network company or configure the website outlook or install any third-party plugins on a WordPress site.

With a self-hosted WordPress site, one is not restricted to a particular business or blogging site and its many limitations, including a fixed pricing structure.

Also, WordPress can be the most popular blogging platform out there, it is a good idea to follow the crowd in this case. There are more than 59K free plugins and 9K free themes with ratings and review features on WordPress.org

Another advantage of having a WordPress site is the ability to save backups of your site with a plugin or even draft a post on WordPress.com before copying over to publish on your own self-hosted WordPress domain.

Conclusion

I had to spend hours copying and reconfiguring a new WordPress site on paid hosting after giving up on free hosting sites.

For WordPress hosting companies, choose a good and reputable paid hosting company e.g. Hostinger, Namecheap, or NameSilo.

Popular Domains for just 99 Cents at Namecheap!

For free WordPress hosting without flexibility for plugins or external ads networks integration, WordPress.com can be an option.

Please backup your site with a plugin e.g. All-in-one-migration, especially a free WordPress hosting site.

NameSilo Web Hosting

More Information

How to get support for WordPress problems?

  1. Do a quick search on Google to see if there are any common quick solutions
  2. If you are on good WordPress paid hosting, fast support should be available for any WordPress problems
  3. If it is a theme problem or plugin problem, one may contact the developer directly or leave a review on its WordPress.org page
  4. Contact WordPress support forum
Good Passive Logo

Sign up to receive Good Passive content in your inbox.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Leave a Reply

x  Powerful Protection for WordPress, from Shield Security
This Site Is Protected By
Shield Security