20 Reasons Your Business Should Never Use A Free Website

As a business owner, it’s easy to be enticed by the idea of having a free website. Sure, it will showcase your services, it will look ok, and it might even generate traffic. But, it’s important to educate yourself on the often unknown compromises you will have to make when opting for a free website rather than a paid web design service. It’s important to remember that your website is the online representation of your brand! It will be your main platform to make an impression on potential clients and customers. The downside of using a free website is that this first impression could be negative. In this article, we explain the reasons why you should consider hiring a website company rather than compromise your website by creating it for free:

1. Free websites are slow

Once your website has loaded, the average user will take half a second to form an opinion on its design and usability. Most free website hosting providers put thousands of websites on the same server. This makes their websites load at a very low speed. If there hasn’t been an impression made in that half-second, chances are your potential customers won’t return to your site.

2. They’re unresponsive

Most free website companies offer website designs that are dated and don’t work on mobile phones. Mobile users make up a significant portion of internet traffic. By not having a responsive design, you put yourself at risk of losing all those users.

3. You can’t set up automatic redirection

When you host your site, it is possible to retain the benefits of using an old domain by setting up a redirect when you move to a new one. This is not possible on free sites! If you move your site, you’ll have to include a link for visitors to manually click to direct them to your new site.

4. No customer service

Free websites offer no help or customer service to their non-paying customers. You will have to completely set up your website and solve any problems that may arise by yourself.

5. Limited SEO 

Since there is no access to the back end of a free website, any SEO you do will be limited to including keywords in your titles and content. Search robots also easily recognize free website templates, meaning Google will prioritize custom websites before yours.

6. Hidden charges

Nothing worth using, especially in technology, is ever free! Many of these free website services often turn out to be trials. After a certain amount of time, you are asked to pay for their services Like any other business, these free website companies need to make money too. Some charge their users for additional services like image hosting, email accounts, etc.

7. Free website companies can disappear

At any given time, a free website company can shut down. They could shut down their servers, and you would lose your website and all of its data. Interestingly enough, their terms of service give them full legal protection to do so.

8. No branded domain name

With a free website, you’ll likely get something similar to your desired website name, letters and numbers, and the name of the service you used to create your site. Put simply, you don’t get to use www.yourbusiness.com. Instead, you get the unappealing www.theircompany.com/yourbusiness or www.yourbusiness.theircompany.com. This looks extremely unprofessional on marketing materials, and it won’t be memorable to viewers. Google will also penalize your site in its search results – It considers websites with URLs like the ones mentioned above to be untrustworthy.

9. They will own your website

The free website company that provides the site is the actual owner of all the content on it. Yes, including all your content! Your content is stored in their databases and will never belong to you.

10. They can sell your information 

If you don’t have to pay for something, then chances are, you are the product! Free website companies need to make money too, so they supplement their margins by selling your email address and using your content for marketing.

11. Limited bandwidth

With a professionally designed website that you own, your storage options are unlimited. This is not the case with a free website. This means that only a certain number of users will be able to visit your site within a certain period. If you’re limited to a certain amount of bandwidth per month, it will stop responding after users have loaded that bandwidth worth of data from your site. If there’s one reason why you should avoid a free website, above all others, it’s probably this one. Your website will stop responding should be enough to make you think twice about a free website.

12. You can’t run advertisements or make money from them

Even though your free website company runs their ads on your website, they do not allow you to run ads or make money from your website on your own.

13. No backups

There is no concept of backups when using a free website company. They do not back up your data, and if something bad happens to your site, there is no way for you to restore your data.

14. No support for mobile devices

According to Google, 53% of mobile site visits leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you miss out on many potential clients and customers. You also cannot update your website from your mobile or hand-held devices. Free website companies have their dashboards designed for desktops. This will make it harder to update your site from your mobile phone

15. No branded email

As you don’t have your domain, you also don’t have a branded email address. This looks unprofessional and will give you less credibility against your competitors.

16. They can shut down your website

As you don’t own your website or its content, you have no control over it being live. Your host can decide to pull your site at any time without warning. The terms and conditions of these free website companies state that they can shut down your website anytime without providing you with a reason. If they shut down a website, they typically don’t give your data or provide a way to save your content.

17. You will be a target for hackers

Free website hosting companies are notorious for distributing malware. They are extremely large targets for hackers, spammers, and malware distributors. This could be due to their poor security, or they could be doing it to make money. In either case, it hurts your website’s reputation.

18. Irrelevant advertisements on your website

The most common business model for these free website companies is advertising. They advertise products and services to prospective customers on your website. They are also in the business of making a profit, and one way to do this is by putting advertising banners in the premium space on your site.

19. Limited site-building tools

Unlike a real web hosting service, these free website-building companies offer limited tools and services to their users. This can hinder your ability to do business or create things like a user-friendly e-commerce webpage. You want to optimize your experience and what these tools can do for you.

20. No contact forms

Every business with a website needs a good contact form! These free website companies do not have a way for you to add custom contact forms. Your only option is to settle for a generic template contact form that doesn’t include email forwarding.

In Conclusion

Attempting to develop your website in-house is admirable. However, if you and your team members lack the necessary skills and resources, this could be a huge risk for your business. Professionals have the right tools, knowledge, and experience to get the job done and do it extremely efficiently and effectively. Hopefully, this article will encourage you to hire a professional web design company. If you still have doubts about getting professional help, contact us today to see how our team can help make your web design dreams a reality!