Free web hosting

Free website hosting plans" are a type of web hosting service where you get free web space on their hosting server to create and host your web site free. Free web page hosting has several advantages, but mainly that it costs nothing (no money and no credit cards needed). Free web site hosting services also often have several disadvantages (though a few actually surpass some of the cheapest paid hosting servers in some features), such as limited webhosting features and forced ads. Usually in exchange for these free hosting services, the free web hosting company places advertisements on your free web pages of some sort (banners, textlinks, popups, etc.) to cover their costs, and hopefully make a profit. However there are some free website hosts that provide free bannerless hosting (no ads, no popups, and no advert of any kind), so they make money in other ways, such as displaying ads for the webmaster to click in their control panel, sending email ads, or requiring forum posting (which of course displays ads, as well as causing you to create free website content for them). Other free web page hosts offer very limited services (such as limited web page space, bandwidth limit, and no scripting) to attract users and hope that many people upgrade to a paid webhosting service. Many free website hosts provide a subdomain or sub-directory of their own domainname instead of (or an option to) allowing its users to host their own top-level domain name free. Most of the free webpage hosting providers over the years have proven to often not be reliable servers, but most of the free hosts listed on this web site have been in service several years, so are more reliable than most newer free hosts

Free Host Reviews :

000Space Review
5,500 Mb
NONE
FTP, Web
PHP
Domain or Subdomain

007Sites Review
700 Mb
Banner-Top
FTP, Web
PHP, SSI
Domain or Subdomain

100Webspace Review
100 Mb
Banner-Top + TextLinks
FTP, Web
CGI, PHP, SSI, FrontPage
Domain or Subdomain

110mb Review
5,000 Mb
NONE
FTP, Web
PHP, SSI
Domain or Subdomain

123BeMyHost Review
5,500 Mb
NONE
FTP, Web
PHP
Domain or Subdomain

125mb Review
150 Mb
NONE
FTP, Web
CGI, PHP, SSI, FrontPage
Domain or Subdomain

1AspHost Review
100 Mb
TextLink-Bottom
Web
ASP, SSI
/you

1Free Review
256 Mb
NONE
FTP, Web
PHP, SSI
Domain or Subdomain

250Free Review
250 Mb
Banner-Top + Bottom
FTP, Web
Subdomain

50Megs Review
50 Mb
Banner-Top + Popup
Web
-
Subdomain

Tips in choosing a webhosting company

Tips in choosing a webhosting company:Google is your friend, search there first.You will find a lot of websites that present top hosting companies, please keep in mind that some of that lists are made by hosting companies, or are ads, not real reviews.After you've choosed a hosting company verify if it has support for PHP and MySQL.Usualy all hosting companies supports CGI, so if your script is written in Perl it will work.If you are planning to build multiple webistes please verify if you can setup multiple domains on a single account.A golden rule: cheap webhosting do not means also reliable hosting. Nowdays many hosting companies offers you 2-4 GB of disk space and 20-40 GB monthly traffic. This is a lot of traffic, a lot of resources, when you start an Internet Business you will not need so much traffic. Only high trafficed website will need 40 GB of monthly bandwidth. Also I've deal with problem when a webhosting offered me 40 GB of webspace but they had so many customers so their webservers were high loaded and from time to time my website could not be accessed.So you do not need all this web traffic, you need instead a high availability of your website, your website must be accessible anytime. If your website is down, you will lose money and also reputation with your business.Another golden rule: after you've decided at a hosting company, do a Google search for "hosting" "forum" words and that company name to see if other people had problems with this company. This is important.Keep in mind that most of the times cheap hosting means bad hosting.Is good to know that all hosting companies have support for web log analyzers (statistics), email severs, so this will be default, do not worry about that extra options.So you found the company, you have multiple domain support, you have php and mysql. You did not choose a 5$ / month hosting (cheap=poor quality). What's next? First time you read web hosting plans and prices you will see that every hosting companies have cheap plans. But when looking carefuly you'll see that even if you buy a 10$ hosting you have to pay for 3 month, also for short period payments on many hosting companies you must pay a setup fee. So when is time to pay (at signup time) you must pay more than 50$, sometims more than 100$. This is the trick some hosting companies are doing, sometimes they offer free setup if you pay for an year. So you must decide carefuly because if you pay for an year and you do not like the quality of hosting? This is the method used by some hosting companies to keep customers. Who pays for an year will stay an year. Also if you pay for 3 month you must pay a setup free, so if you cancel the account you lose that setup fee also. Because of that is good to choose carefuly a hosting company.So, you will be lucky to find a 5$ host plan and also a free setup of the account, and... a lot of traffic. What does this means? Most of the times it means the web hosting is poor quality, many people are hosted there, your customers will load slow your website and sometimes they could have problems loading your website.This are things you must consider when choosing a web hosting company. Also please do not forget, as I've told you earlier, do a google search for that hosting company name and words like forum, to see what other people say about choosen hosting company, is easy to learn from other's problems.

How to choose hosting company

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hosting companies out there. They come in all price ranges, and with all kinds of bells and whistles. Here are some things you may want to look for in a hosting company, especially if your website is part of your overall marketing plan to sell products or services.
Money Back Guarantee - I put this first, because if you are unhappy with your hosting site, you'll want assurances that you'll get your money back.
24/7 Customer Technical Support – This is critical. Find out if they mean "there’s voicemail or email 24-hours-a-day" or if they mean, "we will answer the phone and help you 24-hours-a-day."
Control Panel - The Control Panel where you control all aspects of your account, such as managing email accounts, reading statistics, and configuring autoresponders. Make sure your hosting company has a centralized control panel for your management needs and make sure it's easy to use. (Some of them are so poorly designed, its a wonder that a hosting company would have the nerve to even show it to their customers.)
Website Statistics – From a marketing perspective, it’s important to know who is visiting your site and what pages they read. Your hosting company should keep track of all of this information for you, and present it in an easy to read format. Make sure your statistics are updated on a daily basis, and that you can configure the display to show you by day, by week, by month or by year.

CGI - CGI stands for the "Common Gateway Interface" and is a protocol through which web pages interact with scripts on a server. Your hosting company should allow you to install and run CGI scripts your account. They may also offer you some pre-installed CGI scripts for free as part of your hosting package, such as a message board or email forms.
POP Email Accounts - A POP (Post Office Protocol) Email Account is an email account hosted on your site. Your hosting company should allow you to have more than one POP account, so that you can set up email addresses for all your needs. For example, clients requesting information about a workshop can send email to workshop@mydomain.com, while clients can send their homework to homework@mydomain.com. Also make sure your hosting company support email forwarding.
Autoresponders - Autoresponders allow a visitor to send an email to a specific email address and automatically receive a reply. For example, if you have a FAQ, people can send an email to faq@mydomain.com and automatically receive the FAQ list in their email inbox.
SSL Secure Server - SSL stands for "Secure Socket Layer". This is a protocol that allows for encrypted transmissions on the web, and is especially useful if you are collecting private information from visitors, such as credit card information, or running a shopping cart from your ecommerce site.
Shopping Cart - If you plan on having a catalog on the web, like selling your ebooks or audio tapes, a shopping cart is a must. It lets people browse through your “store” and pick the items that they plan to purchase. When they are done, they proceed to the checkout where they can review their order and pay by credit card. If your hosting company does not offer a shopping cart system, there are plenty of stand-alone shopping cart systems you can use with your website.
Password Protected Areas – If you want to create a "members only" or "students only" section of your site, you will need to make sure that your hosting company supports password protected areas (folders or sub-webs).
Mailing List Software - Keep your users informed by offering to put them on the mailing list. Make sure your hosting company supports double-opt-in mailing lists, where the person signs up and receives a confirmation email that instructs them how to officially sign up for your mailing list.
Multiple Data Center Locations - Does the hosting company have backup sites around the country? If not, and the power goes down or a hurricane floods their data center, what happens to your site?
Hard Disk Space - if your site is extensive and have lots of audio and video files, you need to be sure that you can store all them on the hosting server. In addition, bandwidth may be an issue if you're streaming audio or video, so check that out as well.
As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider. While some of these may not be important to you now, you’ll also want a hosting company that can grow and support you as your business grows.

The artichle was taken from http://www.passionforbusiness.com/articles/choosing-hosting