Free internet hosting is offered by innumerable companies. The service allows the most simple of web pages to be uploaded and available online within minutes. It’s a great deal if your site isn’t particularly important to money-making endeavors but, for professional sites, shared hosting is usually a better value, even though it requires a payment.

Free hosting usually comes with the inclusion of advertising on the page. This advertising is selected by the hosting company, not by the user, and this carries with it the possibility of inadvertently advertising competing sites on one’s own site. Shared hosting is something of a compromise between leasing one’s own server and ad-supported hosting.

On a shared server, there will be other sites on the same disc as yours. They won’t be accessible to anyone visiting your site, however, by any means other than directly visiting the URL or by following a link. Surfers have no way to tell that your site is hosted on a shared server.

These hosting plans are more technically complex than free hosting, but their technical aspects are usually reduced to selecting options on a web interface. One need not be a programmer or a network engineer to set up their shared hosting account.

These programs are also typically bundled with technical support as the users tend not to be IT professionals. Between the technical support, the control over content and the low prices, shared hosting is usually the best choice for small businesses.