Beware of Starting up a ‘Free’ Website
One of the most common things I hear from people wanting a website is that they can jump online and launch one for free.
Yes, this is true and I don’t deny that but there are many hidden pitfalls to launching a free website that many hosting or digital companies won’t tell you.
Judging from experience, there are many people that come to ADG shortly AFTER they’ve attempted to get their free website off the ground and ultimately we’ve had to rebuild them from scratch.
I have come up with some of the more common drawbacks for these free sites below:
- poor domain name
- hidden charges
- no rights over your data
- crappy advertising on your site
POOR DOMAIN NAME
One of the things businesses offering free websites won’t tell you is that you cannot get the domain name you want. Domain names cost money – both to purchase and to renew – and the general public these days, are far more savvy than they were a few years ago. Cheap looking domain names ending in things like freewebsite.com or freebie.site simply won’t cut it.
HIDDEN CHARGES
No one does anything for nothing. So if a company is offering to launch you a site for free, chances are it is too good to be true. These business generally have many hidden fees for things such as hosting photos, setting up email accounts, building extra pages etc.
NO RIGHTS OVER YOUR DATA
Most of the time when you have a free website you don’t actually own your content. If, say for instance, you wanted to go to a paid service because of the limitations of a free website, you more than likely wouldn’t be able to easily take that content and data with you. In fact, it is more likely that you would need to redo everything from scratch.
CRAPPY ADVERTISING
At the end of the day, these companies offering you a free website need to make money somehow and that is usually through advertising. Don’t be surprised to see your website have a whole bunch of irrelevant and poorly designed ads clogging up the screen. And no, there is nothing you can do about that.
Overall, if you are looking at launching a website at very minimal cost then it’s probably best you teach yourself the basics through a popular platform like WordPress or Wix. Chances are if you are even a little bit tech savvy that you will do a far better job and be in a far better position doing that than going through a company offering these services for free.
Alternatively you can contact us today and get an obligation free quote for your website in no time. You never know – it may be far more affordable than you think.
