Finding the ideal web hosting company can be challenging, especially if you’re on a tight budget but you’re looking for a provider who will give you the reliable service that you need to keep your website up and running 24/7. To give consumers yet another option, Google has sort of entered the web hosting marketplace and has begun offering a free option to individuals and businesses.
But is Google’s free web hosting really good enough for most businesses, or are you still better off purchasing your web hosting from professional, paid companies like bestwebhosting.co.uk? Continue reading to learn more.
Free Web Hosting with Google Drive
By using Google Drive, you can gain access to free website hosting. Basically, all you have to do is store HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files, as well as image files, into one of your public folders and then make sure that you set the sharing settings so that it is viewable by the public on the web. In this way, everyone has access to the contents of the folder.
A More Recent Offering
Even though businesses have been able to take advantage of Google Drive for free web hosting services for a few years now, this year, Google announced a new option to small businesses, in particular.
Basically, Google is teaming up with a hosting company named StartLogic in order to provide small businesses with free domain name registration, along with a free website and free hosting for a year.
This may sound like the perfect offer to a struggling small business, but read on to learn about the catch.
Is It Really Enough for Small Businesses?
Google’s seemingly perfect free web hosting offer certainly comes with a lot of limitations. For example, it only comes with three webpages, which means if you wanted to have a website with more than just three pages on it, you would be extremely limited and restricted from connecting with your visitors the way that you really wanted to.
On top of that, you also only get 5GB of bandwidth per month, along with 25MB of space, which may not be enough for a website that has a lot of content, images, and videos, and that gets a lot of visitors every month.
Most importantly, though, this free offer is only good for one year. After that, you will have to start paying the standard annual rate for that type of web hosting, along with a yearly fee to maintain ownership of your domain name. So even though this offer starts off free, in the end, you will end up having to pay, and you may not be able to afford the prices after all.
If you are a serious business owner and you really want to develop a strong presence online through a great website that has reliable hosting, it is probably best to search for alternatives to Google Drive and Google’s recent free offer. With so many web hosting companies available, you can find an option that suits your needs and budget surprisingly easily.
