There are so many services out there that make it simple and easy to launch your blog with as little stress and effort as possible. You don’t need to know how to code, or even how to upload files on your computer.
Everything is taken care of for you. All you need to do is sign up, activate your account, give it a blog name and a title, add some content and you’re good to go! However, while this might seem like an amazing opportunity – and it can be – there are downsides that you should be aware of before making the decision to use someone else’s free WordPress hosting service for your blog.
In this post we’ll outline why using free services could actually have a negative impact on your blog in the long-term…
Why Using Free WordPress Hosting is a Bad idea
There are a few key reasons why using free WordPress hosting is a bad idea, some of which we’ve already outlined. We’ll go into more detail below.
WordPress, the CMS (Content Management System) that powers over 29% of the world’s websites, is free. There are a number of hosted services you can use to create and launch a blog with WordPress, but they all come with a paid hosting service as well.
This is important because the free hosted service is not going to be sufficient to grow your blog and help you achieve your blogging goals. You need to have sufficient space, a reliable up-time, and a fast page speed. These are the key metrics that make or break your blog, and they are only achievable when you use a good WordPress hosting company.
You Don’t Own the Content If you use a free WordPress hosting service, there’s a chance that you aren’t the only person using it. In fact, you may not even be the first person to use it. It may have been used for years by other people, and the people who created it may not even be around anymore.
That means that you don’t own the content that you’ve published. You don’t own the domain. You don’t own anything. You’re simply re-purposing the resources that someone else has kindly given you the right to use. This can lead to issues down the line when you decide to make a change, or when you want to move your blog to your own domain.
You may run into issues with content that is copyrighted, or domain names that have been registered for years.
Security Risks
Many free WordPress hosting companies actually use a shared IP address for all of their hosted WordPress sites. This makes it easy to scale and offer the service at a low cost, but it also opens up an easy way for hackers to break into all of the sites on the same server.
However, there are also other risks associated with giving away your login information, such as the host being hacked, or having your login details stolen by a disgruntled employee.
In addition, if you have a free WordPress hosting service, you’re most likely going to be running WordPress out of a free server environment as well. This means you may have very limited space, bandwidth, and functionality.
Conclusion
As you can see above, there are a number of reasons why using free WordPress hosting to launch your blog is a bad idea. You don’t own the content, you don’t own the domain, you don’t own the login credentials, and the level of service offered is likely to be sub-standard.
If your goal is to launch a successful blog, you need to be using the best tools for the job. Free WordPress hosting isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s likely to stand in the way of you achieving your blogging goals and being successful.
A better strategy is to use a reputable WordPress hosting company, and then use the money that you’d have to spend on hosting towards other blog-building expenses.
