Free Ecommerce Web Hosting

This tutorial is a no-brainer:



Class dismissed.


Seriously folks, if you're looking for free ecommerce web hosting, you're essentially looking for trouble (and you're starting off on the wrong foot). I've signed up with over 50 free website hosting services and I can think of many good reasons why it would be much better to simply pay for hosting than to waste time looking for some kind of free business web hosting setup.

Here are a few:

1. No banner ads or forum posting — You're going to need full-featured free web hosting (typically with Cpanel installed) if you expect to find free built-in shopping carts. Most free web hosts like this (the reliable ones anyway) will either force you to display their banner ads on your pages or will require you to post to a forum to retain your free hosting account. You don't want either if want to establish a competitive online presence. Free web hosting banner ads scream 'amateur' (and would you buy from an amateur?) while forum posting will blunt your creativity and chew up your valuable time.
2. No downtime — Free web hosts are not required to have any accountability to their clients with regards to downtime. If your site goes down, you are SOL. That's it, that's all. Picture this scenario: Somebody just completes a large purchase at your site and a few minutes later your free web host tanks taking your site down with it. Your website remains down for a couple of days (not uncommon for a free host) leaving your customer enraged and terrified that he just got ripped off by some fly-by-night internet scam. Does that sound like something that will help build repeat business or spread the word about your products or services?
3. A real website — It may be enticing to go with a service that allows you to set up an online store front without actually requiring you to have a website. However, a solution like this will deprive you of all the credibility that having a real website affords including an 'About Us' page, 'Contact' page, a privacy policy, a professional web design, etc. If you want to seriously compete with others in your particular ecommerce niche, you'll have to be steaming with credibility. You're not going to be able do this without a real website.
4. Your own domain name — Free web hosting solutions will not supply you with a free domain name. Once again this is an issue of credibility. Think about it. Which of the following websites would your rather buy from?
   
   http://www.bluewidget.com
   
   OR
   
   http://bluewidget.superfreehost.com
   
   Seriously.

And the bottom line is if you can't afford $5 a month for web hosting to have access to a variety of easy-to-install ecommerce solutions like Cubecart, osCommerce or ZenCart then perhaps locating some free ecommerce web hosting is not exactly your priority right now. You might want to consider spending a few hours brainstorming a more lucrative business model instead. Then start thinking about how you're going to set up your shopping cart.

*   *   *

And finally, assuming you want to take the plunge and dive into some 'real' web hosting, here is a list of common web hosting terms explained in plain English... :)