Choosing a web host is not easy, and you will have to consider the background of your website in the process. The characteristics of a free web host and a commercial web host are not entirely similar. A free web host is good enough if your website is more of a personal or experimental site without commercial basis.

There are different categories of free web hosts, such as those with PHP support, free domain hosting, free sharing hosts or free video hosting. Your choice of a web host depends on the purpose and requirements of your website.

For a free web host, the characteristics are:

Advertisement- most of the free web host is providing their hosting service free, but with some conditions applied. They require some amount of space on your website for advertisements or pop-up windows to advertise the sponsors. Thus if you are signing up for a free web host, be prepared to sacrifice some of the space for advertisement.

Amount of web space-there is a limited amount of web space for your website. The needs vary according to the types of media used, such as images or video clips. Usually, websites use less than 5MB of web space. If you are using simple designs, it is unlikely that you will use up this limit.

FTP access- this is an important must-have element. It is the ability to upload your pages vy browser or email. There are some free web hosts that only allow designing your website with their online builder. Although this is really helpful for beginners, it is the barrier for advanced expansion of your website. They might not be providing facilities for experienced users.

Types of files and size- free web hosts might impose a maximum size of each of the files or the types of the files to be uploaded.

Speed of access- you risk of losing your loyal visitors and traffic if the website is always down or very slow in page-loading. It is very frustrating when visitors have to wait for such a long time before your page can be fully loaded. Worse still, if the host is unreliable, your website may be inaccessible and one who is intending to visit your website will have to look for other websites.

Bandwidth allowance- most of the free web hosts restrict the amount of traffic your website can use daily and monthly. Once the limit is reached, your website will be disabled and you might receive a bill for that. The bandwidth that your website uses varies according to its usage and the number of traffic.

PHP or CGI-BIN access- there are a lot of free cgi hosting services such as search engines, forms, polls, mailing lists or counters for your website without the need for you to do these yourself. But if you want to do it yourself, you require either PHP or CGI-BIN access. However you must know the kind of environment that your scripts are running under.

You must be very careful while choosing for a free web host. Read thoroughly for the offers, limitations and even reviews by the experienced available on the Internet. If the offers and terms are not what you need, go for other web host with better offer. Again, free web host is most suitable for personal websites and not commercial websites.