If you’re hosting a blog, going with free WordPress blog hosting is a tempting option. If you’re simply hosting a blog to keep family up with your day to day life, it might not be a bad option, but if you ever plan to monetize your blog in any way, opting for a hosting provider is a very worthwhile investment. Free WordPress blog hosting has plenty of pitfalls, and what you could be left with is a whole lot of effort invested into a blog that isn’t always functional, doesn’t attract the audiences you’re looking for, and doesn’t provide any sort of return.
If you’re planning to write a blog following your family vacation to show your handful family and friends back home, by all means, free hosting can work for you, but if you’re in affiliate marketing, looking to drive large audiences, or planning to monetize in any way, it’s smarter to stay away from free and make the investment instead.
The Disadvantages Of Free WordPress Blog Hosting
Free WordPress blog hosting has several disadvantages spanning several different categories. To break these down more specifically, the disadvantages of free WordPress blog hosting include:
Free WordPress blog hosting is unreliable – Free WordPress blog hosting is notoriously unreliable. When offering “free” hosting, what many of these providers actually set out to do is get their own name out there, not benefit your blog. The result is often poor quality hardware, way too many users competing for the same server space, and rampant overselling. Not only does this run the risk of taking your blog down when servers are jammed, but it also severely impacts your blog speed. When visitors come to your blog to read your content and see your affiliate links, and your blog takes more than 7 seconds to load, they’re like to simply hit the back button and go someplace else that won’t make them wait. Slow blogs are also blogs that won’t make it far in search engine rankings, making it more difficult for your to garner organic traffic in the first place.
Lack of customer support – When your blog goes down, a casualty of the over-packed servers of your free hosting provider, you’re going to have a difficult time getting things up and running again. Unfortunately, proper customer support and service aren’t covered under a $0 price tag, and when things go wrong, the consequences are on you. If your WordPress blog is down for days at a time, that’s days of lost readers, and for affiliate marketing blogs, days of lost potential sales that you can’t get back. For bloggers with little technical experience, you may find that updating and putting effort into your blog is more work than its worth if your blog is hardly visible or working properly.
Monetization trouble – If you plan to monetize your blog in any way, that’s usually not a possibility with free WordPress blog hosting. Most free hosting providers to not allow any type of ads to be run on your blog, and running third-party plugins or scripts is also prohibited. If you wish to make money from affiliate marketing with your blog, low search engine visibility will prohibit your desired audiences from finding your blog in the first place, leading to fewer visitors and thereby fewer sales or conversions. If a person ever wishes to make money from their blogging efforts, free WordPress blog hosting is always a bad option, and making the investment in quality WordPress blog hosting is always worthwhile.
Limited control – The free WordPress blog hosting provider you choose will retain some control over your blog, and this means that your blog won’t truly be able to be your own. We see this in the limitation of third party scripts or plug-ins, as well as limited ad availability, but that’s not where it ends. If you wish to add in widgets or apps, the free WordPress blog hosting provider might not allow you to do so.
Delayed notifications and confirmations – If you plan to open your blog to comments, or you’re looking for other notifications, they could be delayed using a free WordPress blog hosting provider, as well as e-mail confirmations. Due to bogged-down servers, you may wait as long as a few days to get the notifications you need. For bloggers who are looking to actively interact with their audiences, or answer any questions one may have regarding the products they’re supporting in their affiliate marketing efforts, this is simply too long to make your readers wait.
Invest In The Right WordPress Blog Hosting
Have your blog work for you from the start when you invest in the right WordPress blog hosting. WordPress blog hosting with WPengine offers not only benefits to counteract the disadvantages of free WordPress blog hosting, but so much more on top of it. Some of the features and benefits you’ll experience by investing in a WordPress blog hosting provider like WPengine are:
24/7 customer support – Whenever you need it, the professionals are there to help you with any troubles your blog may be experiencing.
Content performance tracking – Using simple Google Analytics tools, you can track the performance of your content, and know what you need to know to ensure your content keeps working for you and your blog.
Page performance tracking – You can always stay on top of how your blog is functioning using built-in page performance tracking. When you begin to see a problem arise with the speed or function of your blog, you can use the 24/7 customer service to fix it right away.
Full security – Phony visitors and requests won’t bog down your blog, and your content will be kept safe and secure from hacking or data breaches.
Servers that support visitors> – Free WordPress blog hosting providers don’t support large audiences, but the best WordPress blog hosting like that provided by WPengine does. Not only will your blog be kept searchable, but it will be able to handle all of the new organic traffic.
