In the world of websites and hosting, free web hosts such as wordpress.com, Blogger and Tumblr are treated with near-disdain and are frequently the butt of jokes.

To those who have hosting accounts to call their own, people who use such free services clearly aren’t serious about their sites, don’t care about their visitors and aren’t as technically-savvy as those who have “real” hosting accounts.

However, there’s a lot to be said for free hosting services, especially those that do it very well, and there are many reasons why someone who is savvy enough to run their own site might choose to host their site on a free service.

So here are six very good reasons why you might want to consider setting up your next site on a free host (albeit with possibly a few paid upgrades), and might even want to look at moving your existing site to such a host.

1. They’re Free!

The first and most obvious reason to consider WordPress.com, Blogger, Tumblr and similar services is the price tag. They’re free.

Even with a few paid upgrades, such as the ones provided by WordPress.com, it’s usually the case that these accounts are cheaper than even the cheapest traditional hosting plan, costing less than $40 per year.

These sites offer a price that can’t be beaten… and that’s just the start.

2. They Can Handle High Loads

One of the most popular blogs on the Web, PostSecret, is hosted for free on Google’s Blogger service. Good free hosting services are able to host sites with extremely high traffic loads and, due to the amount of power they have, are virtually immune to traffic spikes.

Much of this comes from the raw computing power these services have behind them, but, because of the homogenous nature of the services (hosting only one platform), they are also able to optimize and streamline their servers to ensure they get every ounce of power possible out of them.

3. They Are Fast to Set Up

Setting up an account on a free service is usually as simple as entering a few pieces of information and hitting submit. While you’ll still have to wait for the domain to propagate out (if you’re using one), you can have a site up and running about five minutes, much quicker and easier than it would be to go through a traditional web host.

This can be great for sites that might not need to be up very long, such as seasonal or temporary sites.

4. They Are (or Can be) Ad Free

Most free hosting services, at least reputable ones, don’t force ads down their user’s throats and, instead, either have an ad free existence, making money from add-ons, share ad revenue voluntarily earned or offer an inexpensive way to disable ads on the site.

5. They Have a Built-In Community

WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr all have great built-in communities that make it easier for a new site to find and grow an audience starting on day one. These communities ensure that people will find your site and makes it easy for them to follow it if they like it.

Best of all, such communities often place heavy emphasis on cross-linking and sharing, especially on Tumblr, and that that can lead to faster audience growth and help with search engine ranking.

6. They Are Very Reliable

Finally, these services tend to be very reliable with significant downtime being extremely rare. While incidents do happen (as they will at any host), many find their uptime is much higher on a free service than with a cheap paid host.

If you’re looking at just setting up the most basic hosting account possible, a free host might help keep your site online more.

Bottom Line

Is a free hosting account right for everyone? No. It’s probably not right for those who need to host multiple domains and it definitely isn’t a good choice for those who need all of the flexibility that comes with having control over your own account (plugins, unlimited uploads, etc.).

Still, for those who know what they need and realize they can get by with a free hosting account, there’s a lot of good reasons to consider making that jump. Even sites that are well-trafficked might do well on a free hosting service so long as the needs for running that site are more basic.

In short, a free hosting service may be the best tool to get the job done and smart webmasters will realize this and not dismiss a good possibility out of hand.

After all, one doesn’t get wealthy by turning down valuable free offers and one doesn’t run a great site by closing their mind to the best solutions for making it happen.

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