February 24th, 2008

For the first time in business history, entrepreneurs have been afforded the luxury of hanging a shingle without so much as the first red cent to their names. It’s an unbelievable opportunity for small businesses to get a foot hold in previously cash-dominated markets, but there is a difference between “free” and “affordable,” and your customers can tell.

Disadvantages to free web services may not be readily apparent or may not seem like a big deal, but they can make all the difference in closing a sale.

Free Hosting –
First of all, it never is. Free Host sites may put ads on your site, but will always restrict the server space you get to place your site as well as the monthly bandwidth you get to let readers access your site. If you go over the limit on either one, you’re going to end up paying inflated prices to get your site back on line.With free hosting, you may not even have the ability to upload a custom site, meaning you’ll be stuck with one of a limited number of design templates.Free Templates –
There are a number of really interesting free templates available on the web, but they are not a substitute for a unique, professionally designed site. Many have browser compatibility issues (so they’ll look good on one computer, but terrible on another), and none have any form of support included.Guys can’t understand how girls feel when they show up to the prom and another girl is wearing the same dress. We think the fact that we’re all dressed alike is a sure sign we did something right. Imagine your customer comes to your web site and recognizes the template from somewhere else. They’ll know you got it for free, and they may judge your professionalism by it.Free Domains –
Unless these are included as a promotional add-on to a paid account, which is fairly common, a free domain will always come back to haunt you. Beware that you may end up paying hundreds of dollars in the future to keep it, once you’ve built the reputation of your site and business at that URL.

Free Blogging –
The big drawbacks to free blogging are that you don’t get to use your own web address, you may end up showing ads on your blog (for other companies, maybe even your direct competitor) and you’ll never get to make it look like it’s truly your own.Getting a custom blog interface professionally installed and integrated in to your site is affordable, and some companies even offer it as its own separate package.This isn’t to say that everything free is automatically bad, because that’s just not the case. There are many great programs and services available for free, and many things you pay for ain’t all that great.

The caution is to get sound advice from someone with experience before jumping in, and always be wary of anything that’s free. The money has to come from somewhere, and if you can’t see where it is, that may be all the red flag you need to run the other direction.

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