Top Five Reasons You Need a Professional Web Host
by Peter Stoermer
http://www.totalhosting.com

No one will ever remember www.somefreehost.com/subsection/yourarea (don't click that.)

2) Your email address is as important as your phone number.

3) Why should you advertise someone else's site on yours?

4) Support. It's like insurance. You may never need it, but when you do, you're glad you have it.

5) A website isn't a luxury for business, it's a necessity.

MASTER YOUR DOMAIN

Your domain name is your link to your company. It helps brand and identify you and your goods or services. Trying to "fake it" with a free web hosting service is just making your business looking unprofessional. It says to your visitors, I don't care enough about my business to invest less than $20 a month in it, but I want you to trust me to deliver what you need.

BRAND YOU

You can use a free or ISP provided email address for your personal email. But this is your business we are talking about, right? A professional web host will provide you with email addresses based off of your domain name. This adds a huge amount of credibility and polish to your identity. It reinforces YOUR business, not that of your ISP or free email provider. It also allows for consistency, if you have multiple employees (or just want to look like you do). BillSmith@MegaPortalFreemail.com is probably taken, and FunnieBonez@YourISP.com may be fine for your college buddies to contact you, but do you want potential customers to see that handle? Having YourName@YourCompany.com on your business card and your website makes you look as established as any other business you are competing against. Even if you are a small start-up running from your kitchen table, your web host can provide a level of service that makes you look as big as the mega-corporations.

SLEEP BETTER

Free web hosts make their money from advertising. Or so their model goes. No advertising, no business. Do you want to rely on that model to ensure YOUR web site is still up and running tomorrow? If you put in a modest amount of effort into your website, and host it with a free web hosting provider, you should be the one to benefit from the fruits of your labors. Why should you HAVE to have ads that are annoying, irrelevant or, in the worst case, directly competing with your company on YOUR website placed by your free web hosting provider? For the few bucks it costs a month, you can have complete control (and complete ownership) of your content. And you'll know your web site will be there when you wake up!

SUPPORT MATTERS

If there is something wrong with your web site, you want to be able to contact your web host and have your questions answered or your issues addressed. Hopefully you never have to contact anyone and everything will work smooth-as-silk. But if your web site needs technical support, most free web hosts do not provide it. Or if they do, it's in the form of a bulletin board or something equally impersonal. You want to be able to pick up the phone, or at least send your web host's tech support an email that gets you the resolution your web site needs.

NEVER SAY NO

One of the first rules of business is that you never want to say "No" to a customer. How do you act when you are asked, "Do you have web site?" Do you stammer and mumble something about "fads" or "not necessary?" Today it's an expectation of customers that they can find out more about your business (your phone number, your location, your products or services, your hours of operation) on the web. Even if "eCommerce" is something you are not ready for, establishing a relationship with a web host and having a simple brochure-style web site can establish your credibility and identity. It also opens up new opportunities to reach your existing customers as well as new ones. Can't afford print advertising, like direct mail flyers? Send your customer-base an email. It's free and can drive business back to you, creating dramatic increases in ROI.