Have a Web page It is a basic necessity for any modern business. And it is no secret that a good website requires a good investment. Especially if you want to have A professional website that gets clients.

Depending on the design and specifications, the price of each website varies. Even if you don't pay for the design and do it yourself, you still have to pay for hosting and domain.

It's a fact: if you want to have a website, you have to incur some costs. However, there are some companies that allow you to “create a website for free.” They offer you design templates, free hosting, and custom domain names. But as tempting as this offer may sound, you should think carefully before accepting it.

A free website could cost you a lot more than money. It could make you look unprofessional, put your information at risk, and cause you to lose clients. A free website could be the worst deal for your company. And while it may seem like you're saving money at first, time will prove otherwise.

It's understandable that as a company you do everything possible to keep your costs to a minimum. But on the Internet you have to be careful, because cheap things can be expensive.

But what is a “free website”?

Many of the companies that offer free websites assure you that you can make them yourself. They provide you with hundreds of templates and images so that you can make a “custom website.” They claim that you don’t need money to make your company’s website, much less professional web developers and programmers. Why? If you have all the tools of the best designers at your fingertips.

Many companies, either to save costs or due to poor advice, have fallen into the temptation of a free website. And they have regretted this decision.

The obvious: a website is “free” when you don’t have to pay for it. The not so obvious: You don't have to pay for it with your money. You will soon realize that you have to pay with other things. With your clients, your time, your image, your good reputation, etc.

There is no such thing as free… it’s the parents.

As a general rule, when you are offered something for free, be wary. This is especially true with websites.

Creating a website takes a lot of time. Planning, designing and developing are just a few of the stages of a functional website. So why would a company offer to create a website for you for free?

The reasons for each company vary, but a common reason is make money in the process. Usually, the free website is the product that the company offers you as bait. And once you make your website free, the company's efforts to generate revenue begin. This company is not doing you a charity. Your free website is your business.

We repeat: creating a free website is not a good idea. But if you still have doubts, these are the most common problems with free websites:

1. Your company will look unprofessional

If your website address is wix.com/mybusiness you're not going to make a good first impression.

If you don't have your own domain, your visitors will have a hard time taking you seriously..

Additionally, you will not be able to have corporate emails with your company name after the @. These personalized emails help build trust with your visitors and future customers.

All companies that offer free websites also offer custom domain names. At a modest price ranging from $$4 to $$16 per month. Meanwhile, in real life, a domain .com can cost between $$10 and $$20 per year.

2. Your website will be slow as a turtle

Have you ever tried to access a free website? Even with a good internet connection, it takes forever to load.

The loading times of these companies do not meet the minimum standards of the market. And the reason is that these companies put thousands of free websites to share the same server. Which translates into thousands of slow websites.

A slow website will bring you a lot of problems. It is proven that A visitor will leave your website if it hasn't loaded within 3 seconds.

As if that were not enough, the delay also affects search engine positioning. So if you have a slow website, forget about appearing on the first pages of Google..

3. You will be very limited in doing SEO

It's all bliss when you want to create a free website. Until you realize that you can't access the administrative interface to do so. SEO positioningThis limits you to trying to position yourself solely by using keywords in titles and texts. That means goodbye to the rest of the on-page SEO techniques.

But not being able to access the administration of your website for free is not your only SEO problem. Search engines give lower priority to free domains.

4. Very limited design options

It is true that some companies allow you to make your own designs. Usually through “intuitive editors” with elements that you have to drag and drop. The bad news is that these designs will be limited in functionality. (see point 3).

If you have WordPress on your own server, you will be able to choose from thousands of templates. But if you are going to create a web page free you will find very few templates. And they are poorly designed.

The problem with these free templates is that many people will also use them. So if you decide to go with a free template, Don't expect your website to look different from the rest.

Free templates are not only pretty common. They are also the perfect example of bad web design. Add in some ads you never agreed to and you have a website that is just plain ugly.

5. You won't have a mobile-friendly website

Usually, these free templates are outdated and don't work well on mobile. This will cause Google to penalize you in search results on mobile and tablets. And since mobile users make up the majority of traffic, you'll be left with only the minority.

Do you want to create a free website that works well on mobile devices? Good luck with that.

6. You will get a lot, a lot of unwanted publicity

Most of these companies are funded through advertising. You can create your website thinking it's free, but they will charge you through advertising. Usually, with ads placed in the most noticeable parts of your website.

These ads may not contribute to making your website look ugly. But they may be advertising for your competition on your own page. That is: you could unintentionally sabotage your business!

7. You could disappear at any moment

The company may decide to stop offering the service or shut down your website. If this happens, you will lose your website and your domain name. Although it was not very professional, it was your only presence on the Internet.

On the other hand, you will not be able to ask these companies to let you recover your website. Their terms and conditions legally protect them in these cases..

8. Your data could be the bargaining chip

If you're not paying for a company's products, then you are the product. These companies don't just make money from advertising on your site. They also sell your personal data, your email and your domain name to other companies..

Again, their terms and conditions give them complete immunity. The same terms you agreed to when you decided to create a free website.

9. You will not have computer security

Free websites are more vulnerable to cyber attacks. This is because companies They don't invest in computer security... unless you pay for it.

There have been reports of hackers gaining access to user lists. These lists contain information such as names, email addresses, and credit cards.

Also, if you are hacked, it will be very difficult to recover your data or your website. See point 7.

10. Technical support? Don't even dream about it

Are you confused while trying to create your free website? Do you have a problem with the template you chose? Do you need a feature that you can't find? Pray for a support forumTechnical support is expensive and would increase the expenses of these companies.

A common trick of these companies is to offer premium support for a monthly fee. This way, you will be “safe” in case something goes wrong or you need help.

11. You may be a victim of unethical practices

Some companies that offer free websites are known to distribute malware. This could be due to poor computer security or for various financial gains. These practices affect your website's reputation and your search engine rankings.

Another common practice of these companies is to make link farms (link farms). They sell links on thousands of user-created pages to unscrupulous advertisers. Your website could contain links to gambling sites, scams, and spam emails.

12. You won't have statistics or data from your visitors

To grow your website, it's important to know how many people visit it and where they come from. With a good hosting, you can have statistics on your visitors for free. You can even install Google Analytics or any other analytics service for your website.

On free websites you cannot install any data analytics service. They have their own analytics system and you usually have to pay extra for it.

13. Deleting your free website will be very difficult

Remember, these companies offer free website creation services as a business. It's in their interest to have thousands of user-created pages. The more, the better.

That's why they make the process of deleting the website especially difficult. This means that your website will remain on their servers forever and ever.

Conclusion

Creating a free website may be fine if you're 12 years old and doing a school project. But it's definitely not a real alternative for your business.

If you want your company to be on the Internet, you need to think about what the objectives of your website will be. Do you want your visitors to register on your site? Do you need to increase your list of potential customers? Are you going to sell products in an online store? Don't improvise: Hire specialists in web page design.

If you want to know more about the topic, you might be interested in The 5 steps to create a professional website.