This article focuses on the differences between ‘free’ hosts and ‘budget’ hosts, and helps the reader identify some important criteria in choosing a hosting provider for their personal web site. A personal web site could consist of a site for your family, a hobby, an online resume, but not for commercial purposes.Usually personal web hosting ranges anywhere from free to $10-$25.00 per month. You might be asking yourself why you would consider paying $25.00 per month versus free. You can’t go wrong with free, can you? Well, that depends whether free is TRUELY free. Most hosting companies or services that offer free hosting will plaster ads on your own personal web site, some of which can be quite aggravating (blinking and moving across your screen come to mind). Also free hosting generally entails many very restrictive policies on how much you can upload to your site (if you have a lot of family photos or any video clips this could be a problem). Free hosting also almost always comes with very low bandwidth allocations which if you have a large family that likes to visit your web site, or a lot of recruiters visiting your online resume, your site may be shut down if it exceeds bandwidth restrictions. As with most things in life, hosting is no different, you get what you pay for. That is why it is my recommendation to find a cheap/budget hosting company that will allow you the freedom of running your own web site without nasty little ads everywhere, or tons of restrictions which hinder you from building the kind of site you want. Your best bet when searching for this kind of hosting is to check out our Budget/Cheap category: http://www.itsallnet.com/budgethosting.php and sift through the many companies that are listed there. Some of the particulars you will want to note are as follows: 1. What are the bandwidth restrictions on traffic going to your site 2. What are the FTP restrictions (ie how much can you upload to your site) 3. Can you pay month to month or do you need to enter into a contract 4. How long have they been in business 5. How does technical support work (do you get to call someone or is the only technical support they offer available online or via email) If the hosting company you are considering offers a money back guarantee or at a minimum does not force you into a contract, if you are unhappy with their services you can always find another host. Moving your site is pretty easy, simply download everything to your computer and upload it to your new hosting company.

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