In other words, we like saving. But we would also really appreciate the opportunity to spread our research to a wider audience. For this and for other reasons free web hosting for students is an excellent way to start a personal academic website where you can showcase your work so far and present your biography.

You are most probably already suspicious about how one could get a web hosting completely free of charge and this is why we’ve prepared this quick guide to free web hosting for students.

Choosing the free web hosting for students

Making the right choice of a provider is key to a successful website. To make the right choice, make sure you investigate the provider’s common practices in both premium and free web hosting. Many providers have unexpected limitations applied to free hosting users which are often unreasonable and overly restrictive.

When choosing free web hosting several features must be considered. First of all, even though you might not be paying for the service, you still want a sensible amount of disk space. 1 GB of disk space is more than enough for a beginning website that will only contain a small number of pages and files.

The monthly traffic allowed on your chosen free web hosting for students is also of crucial importance. Even though, your website will most probably accumulate limited and narrowly targeted traffic, considering an option where you have about 5 GB of traffic might be wise as you start attracting a larger audience.

Finally, while your uni e-mail looks really professional in your academic correspondence, you might also like to have the option to register an email account on your domain. To do this, make sure the free hosting you pick has this included in its plan.

Register a domain and install a CMS

Yes, free web hosting for students does exist and not only it does, but it is also for an unlimited period of time. Nonetheless, as an academic representative, you will likely wish to have a professional-looking website to showcase to your community. Two are the main aspects that will help you on this journey: the domain name and the web design of your website.

To start with the domain, it is much preferable to purchase a gTLD like .com, .net, .org, .info., biz, .us, and co.uk. This is mainly because you are most like to want your website to rank on search engine result pages, to be shareable, and solid-looking. In all of these cases, a free domain will not do the job.

If you are, however, set to not spend money on this web project you’ve embarked on, the free domain you choose must still have a representable look. Make sure to include your name as the SLD, e.g. firstnamesurname.com. This is not only to make it much easier to recognize and memorize but also to rank higher when a search on your name is performed. After all, this is your main presentation online.

As for a CMS to visualize your website, we highly recommend choosing WordPress. While I will not be going into the advantages of choosing WordPress as your content managing system, I will quickly mention how to install it. If you’ve chosen free hosting from AwardSpace, the steps to go through are the following:

1. Go to your control panel.
2. Hover over the Hosting tools drop-down menu and choose Zacky Installer.
3. Select the preferred content managing system and click Next.
4. Choose your already registered domain as the home for your CMS and put in the name of your future website and your admin credentials.
5. That’s it! Now you’ve not only registered a completely free domain on a free web hosting plan but also managed to install a CMS for under 3 minutes!

Bring your website to life with content

Now that the foundation of your prospective website is laid, it’s time to think of all the content you would like to include on it. As an academic website, it will most probably be visited by other fellows in your research area but also by people who look your name up, people who are simply curious about any of the many topics you’ve worked on, and many more. In other words, your website will not be a private domain of your choice but an open book for anyone that stumbles upon it. And the content on it must reflect that.

To begin with, start collecting a full list of all of your publications. Do not forget the ones you’ve written in a group or with a partner. Next, make sure you own all of them on a PDF file which you can later upload to your website. You could also link your works to the respective journals, if applicable. Including this full list of your academic writings will be the core of your whole website. This is why making it as comprehensive as possible will help you have a nice representation of your research so far.

Do not forget to also add an “About me” page. Many visitors will be interested in your previous academic history and your biography in general. Being able to read through your achievements will let your audience comprehend better your background and the framework you’ve worked in. And this is what will turn your website into a really personal one.

More digital marketing tips:

• Digital Marketing: The Trends That May Change The Game in 2019

• How to Write SEO Content Articles in 2019

• WordPress SEO: What You Need to Know

The post Free Web Hosting for Students: A Guide to Starting a Website appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

This is unequivocally true when it comes to contemporary web businesses where the digital realm is all that one has. This is why creating a website is a priority to any newborn enterprise looking to embrace the new age of technology and remain relevant meanwhile.

Websites, however, might seem to require quite an investment and when just starting, this might seem like something you could afford. So how much does web hosting cost and is it possible to get the best service without breaking the bank?

When to Consider Free Hosting?

Free hosting is a web service that provides the most foundational necessities of hosting a website. The features offered by different providers vary with many of them imposing restrictions on resource usage or uptime.

Usage restrictions are typically imposed on the resources a web hosting client has such as their disk space and monthly traffic. These are often the factors that affect all the users on the free shared hosting server and limitations are required to maintain the well-being of all of them. This leads us to uptime restrictions. Uptime restrictions usually mean having your website sleep for a certain period of time during the day and thus, not being up. To be honest, this is not a very common practice and is mainly imposed in order for users to have incentives to upgrade to premium plans.

Whether you are a small business or a blogger just getting started, there are multiple reasons to consider free web hosting as your trampoline to success. Some of the main necessities of any small website are reasonable disk space and customer support. Looking into these with respect to your future usage will help you decide whether you can fit into the offered resources or you expect your project to get larger.

At first, it might be difficult to measure the prospective resources your website will require once it’s up and running. To do so, you will need an overview of the expected traffic driven to your website, the storage space you will most likely need, and the number of MySQL databases you’ll use.

As you can guess, this is information that even the largest web projects cannot predict precisely. Because of this, free web hosting can provide an insight into the expected resource consumption

At AwardSpace, the safety of our users remains a top priority for us. Furthermore, the care we invest in free users does not artificially restrict the features included in our free hosting package. This is what helps us evolve as our customers do and learn as we go together.

Which Premium Hosting to Choose?

‘Premium’ hosting is an umbrella term for all web hosting services which are paid. These include shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting. As different as they are from each other, each of them has inner divisions into plans which providers prepare for their customers’ needs.

Shared hosting, for instance, varies immensely from basic plans to more advanced ones, both in terms of price and features.

For instance, our Basic Shared Hosting plan includes the following features:

• Two websites
• ~ 15 000 visits monthly
• Unlimited disk space
• Unlimited monthly traffic
• Free SSL & HTTPS
• 24 х 7 Support
• 1-hour response time

These are the basic characteristics of the service which will not change or be interrupted as your contract remains valid. Because of this notion, a user can be confident that when purchasing a cheap web hosting plan, he’s actually able to detect and monitor the performance of what he has paid for. And this is a quality that a 21st-century consumer needs to obtain.

For comparison, semi-dedicated hosting is oriented towards providing a more resourceful, faster, and stronger service to customers. Because of this, users get much more processing power, fewer usage limitations, fewer accounts on servers, and much more resources. This, of course, comes with a price. Features include:

• Unlimited domains
• Unlimited visits monthly
• Unlimited disk space
• One free domain for life
• Free SSL & HTTPS
• 24 х 7 Support
• 1-hour response time

On the other hand, VPS hosting is a completely self-controlled service where the user has all the power they need to regulate their resources. In this case, the web project that needs hosting is usually a huge number of websites with multiple subdomains and large files. Our Starter VPS plan includes:

• 1 vCPU, 100% CPU
• 1 GB RAM
• 25 GB Disk Space
• 2 TB Monthly Traffic
• 50 Mbit/s Bandwidth
• 1 IP address

We, however, do not typically recommend getting VPS hosting for small businesses for two main reasons. The most obvious is that beginners’ websites do not require the resources that are included in the plan and thus, this would be an unnecessary investment. Also, VPS hosting requires some technical knowledge which can be applied mainly by coding. Unless you would consider yourself as having a coding bone, VPS hosting might appear intimidating to a beginner.

In conclusion

Web presence is an essential requirement for the contemporary transfer of information. Almost all human behavior has a digital alternative duplicating our communication, patterns of trust, and desires.

With free hosting, all of the necessary resources are available completely free of charge. There are, however, cases where users need to develop and grow websites which result in successful digital projects requiring the necessary resources.

Any financial expenses that will follow are simply part of the process of growing and prospering as a small business and its digital presence makes the whole endeavor worth it.  And that’s the actual investment needed for creating something yourself.

More web hosting tips:

• How to Register a Domain Name: The Right Way
• How to Create Your Own Email Domain in 3 Easy Steps
• How to Increase Domain Authority: Best Practices

The post How Much Does Web Hosting Cost for a Small Business? appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

You can be starting your personal blog, creating a WordPress portfolio, or your business website. Whatever it is, you need the best web hosting services to make sure it will be an as good experience for your users, as it is for you.

It’s no secret that web hosting services are the first thing that matter in creating the perfect website. Sure, there are lots of others – like web design, web presence, content marketing, and everything else that helps to get you closer to your goal.

But when it comes to web hosting services, there are a lot of different providers, so a few things have to be considered. That’s why I’ve collected for you here some tips to help you in your journey of creating a website and choosing a web hosting provider.

Free Website Hosting

The truth that stands behind free website hosting is simple. It is free for all beginners. Actually, it’s free for everyone, but once you start growing you will need another hosting plan. However, for all those who are starting their blog, website, or portfolio now, don’t worry-free website hosting will be perfect for you.

The advantages that come with that hosting are enough to convince you that it’s really easy to start. Okay, now straight to it. The price is off the list of things to think about since it’s free. But what you should keep in mind is – how many websites you can host, what kind of installer you are going to use, how much your disk space will be, the monthly traffic, and all futures that come with it.

The good thing about a website with this kind of capacity is that it’s controlled very easily. AwardSpace’s Zacky Website Builder helps everyone create their website in the easiest and fastest possible way.  Also, when you are just starting your website your mind is occupied by a lot of other things, different from the database storage or the availabilities to website traffic.

You might feel like you don’t want to think about that because you are just starting and you want to focus on presenting your desired story. That’s why free hosting is a great chance for that. Everything you do is completely risk-free. Your only loss would be if you didn’t try.

Although we all love free web hosting, we have to admit that the possibilities that all the other hosting plans provide are way greater. The opportunities you’d have are also a lot more. So, even though you would probably decide to start with free hosting, just know that you eventually will have to grow to another plan.

Shared Hosting Plan

If you feel more confident about what you’re starting and you know you can invest a small amount of money in order to get closer to your goal, then the Shared hosting plan is the best choice for you. The price of it is not high like the rest of the plans. Even more, right now we have Christmas Promotion with a great discount – you can get the basic shared hosting plan for only $1.99 per year. (for new sign-ups only).

The main differences between free web hosting and shared one are the unlimited disk space, unlimited monthly traffic, domains, databases, email accounts, and backups. The combination of a low price and good features can be great for websites for newborns to teenagers. So, if you need web hosting services for your medium site, then this is the one.

Semi-Dedicated Hosting Plan & VPS Plan

These two plans – Semi-Dedicated and VPS Plan are of those web hosting services that are really not for everyone. However, they are the best of the best. Both of them are providing your website with much more power, fewer limitations, and a lot more resources.

Usually, it’s used by businesses that are already known on the market, and they are just late for the web. Or, if people are fully confident about what they are able to create and provide as a website. We can also call them the future of modern hosting. They provide excellence and “work” just for you. The prices are not high for everything they can turn your website into.

Considerations for Web Hosting Services

24×7 Operating and Supporting – one of the most important considerations is having a web host that operates 24/7. Uptime should be not lower than 99.5%. AwardSpace’s is 99.9%!

Server Upgrade – be sure that even if you decide to start with free hosting or shared hosting, you can upgrade later when you grow to Semi-Dedicated or VPS Hosting and get the best possible web hosting services for your website.

Domain Names – doesn’t matter if you are in eCommerce, owning a few brands, or just a blog. The possibility of having multiple domain names is a must. You’ll see for yourself how much you’ll need it.

Refund Policy – another very important thing to pay attention to is what kind of refund policy is provided to you regarding web hosting services. Ours is a 30-day money-back guarantee!

Conveniences – one-click signup, easy website builder, understandable C-Panel, and cost-efficiency.

To Conclude

Choosing the right web hosting services, and provider, in general, must be one of the first steps to take before you create your dream website and tell your story. Determine what the essence of your website will be and what are the purposes for you. After that choose your plan and at the end – look at the considerations to guide you into choosing the right web hosting company for you.

The post What to Consider When Looking for Web Hosting Services to Build Your Website appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

For most of the trade history, the correlation between cost and value was truly solid. Items would cost not their demand but usually, their material value in relation to their physical amount.  And this is why, as a society, we’ve grown to allow prices to set the level of excitement and endorsement we have for goods and services. The higher the price, the more unique the item is, we’re made to believe.

Moreover, a variety of cultural implications have been built around low prices and cheapness. Metaphors and irony reveal our linguistic and cognitive inclination to render the lack of value or integrity – cheap. What is it about low prices that throw us into a panic and cause such a dissonance between our desires to appear glamorous and yet to remain rational?

When it comes to digital services, the exact same patterns of behavior can be observed. As a cheap shared hosting provider, we’ve received a number of inquiries on the value of our services and their legitimacy. After all, living in a world of doubt and distrust in contemporary commerce has thought us something. Buying cheap is rational but disgraceful – excitement comes only with high prices. Exclusivity and worth are not characteristic signs of cheap shared hosting, for instance. Or are they?

What Does “Cheap Shared Hosting” Mean?

Web hosting, just as any other digital service industry, has recently been flooded with fresh new providers with alternative values and aspirations. This oversaturation of the market calls for a constant renovation and reconsideration of companies’ philosophies and missions.

All of that content that is being poured into the mold of a simple digital service has the capacity to higher the price based on values such as consciousness and dignity. When these are the manifestations of a customer’s personal beliefs, he’s willing to pay the additional cost provided through an emotional experience recognized as valuable.

And that’s what makes it exciting. Will cheap shared hosting do the same?

Cheap shared hosting is what AwardSpace has been proudly advertising for over a decade for one simple reason. It makes sense.

The nature of shared hosting means that multiple users are utilizing a single server, thus, only consuming the resources they actually need. Because of this, the price of shared hosting is significantly lower than that of a dedicated one. Nonetheless, providers manage to include additional value through a number of techniques.

What needs to be said, however, is that cheap shared hosting means that you aren’t paying more than you should. Moreover, you might be paying less than the value, given that your trusted web hosting company has ensured to provide you with the best possible service. And this is what we’ve done.

What Do You Get When You Buy “Cheap” Shared Hosting?

For us to be able to talk about cheap shared hosting in terms of a positive quality, we had to develop a comprehensive view of the service provided and its quality-price ratio.

First of all, most web hosting companies charge more for the second year. The reasons for that have been thoroughly discussed in our blog. This will usually mean that during the first year of your cheap shared hosting, you’re actually paying way less than the cost of the service which the provider covers for you. This is sort of an investment that companies make into new customers with the perspective to obtain them as they grow and build a loyal customer base.

Also, prepaying for services provides a stable and fixed bandwidth. This, combined with the features included in each of the plans offered under the shared hosting family, ensures that customers are well-informed when making a choice.

For instance, our Basic Shared Hosting plan includes the following features:

• Two websites
• ~ 15 000 visits monthly
• Unlimited disk space
• Unlimited monthly traffic
• Free SSL & HTTPS
• 24 х 7 Support
• 1-hour response time

These are the basic characteristics of the service which will not change or be interrupted as your contract remains valid. Because of this notion, a user can be confident that when purchasing a cheap web hosting plan, he’s actually able to detect and monitor the performance of what he has paid for. And this is a quality that a 21st-century consumer needs to obtain.

Final Thoughts

As we’ve tried to discuss here, price tags have an immense power on our thoughts, excitement, and overall attitude toward value. With the oversaturation of markets, the new era of advertising comes to show that we pay much more for experiences and beliefs than for the products themselves.

Because of this, what we would consider cheap today would be something which we doubt provides those experiences. When it comes to cheap shared hosting, however, we might want to rethink that.

Cost/value efficiency is a number one priority in the fast-paced industry where every innovation is rendered irrelevant in a matter of seconds. To distinguish between the valuable and the costly, one needs to be informed not only of the product itself but also of his own needs as a customer. And while expectations and requirements vary among people, one thing remains persistent. Value is what we’re all looking for. And, sometimes, if we’re incredibly lucky, it can come at a cheap price.

We offer a special Web Hosting for Students plan. It is a premium shared hosting plan, that students get for free. To apply for this discount you need to be an active student from a known university or educational institution. (Check out AwardSpace’s Student Web Hosting Plan).

More website hosting tips:

• How Free Website Hosting Services are Boosting Creativity and Entrepreneurship
• 3 Free Online Tools to Track Your WordPress Hosting Performance
• How to Choose a Web Hosting Service: The Essentials

The post Cheap Shared Hosting: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

According to the report, email is the second-best performing acquisition channel right after referral. Moreover, with a 5.32% conversion rate, visitors who typically generate traffic from email are already existing customers.

And this is the greatest perk of having an email strategy for your brand. Once you’ve built a community of trust through your e-mail list, you will always have easy access to communication and feedback.

To realize such an enterprise in a professional way means establishing your brand identity through a personal email domain. In other words, instead of communicating with your visitors through a generic username@gmail.com domain, it seems way more appropriate to set up a username@yourbrand.com domain.

The benefits of this are numerous.

Benefits of Having Your Own Email Domain

Some of the most prominent advantages of creating your own email domain are related to situating your brand on the market. This is also the reason why big companies use domains owned by them.

Whether as a blogger or as a small business owner, being able to patent your email correspondence with a personal domain is invaluable.

The benefits include but aren’t limited to:

• Brand credibility. This is the leading reason large companies create their own email domains. As a brand that expects its users’ trust, your credibility is an essential aspect to work on. A personalized domain inevitably has a positive impact on the audience’s perception of a brand.

• Recognizability. Another important advantage to consider here is the increased recognizability of your brand through your email strategy. Seeing your brand’s name all over your correspondence will definitely lead your audience to recognize you better.

• Teamwork. Having multiple team members create personalized email accounts on your domain is another great benefit. You can set up separate emails for your Customer Support, Sales, and Marketing teams, having them all marked under your brand with your email domain.

How to Create Your Own Email Domain

Now that the benefits are clear, it’s time to find out how to create your own email domain. Contrary to the popular belief, technical knowledge is not required in this endeavor. In fact, only a couple of steps are on your way to branding your emails and skyrocketing your marketing strategies.

1. Choose a Web Hosting Provider

While the web hosting provider might seem like a marginal issue when creating an email domain, it can actually be decisive. Aspects of the service such as uptime and customer support are the answers to how to choose a web hosting service.

Web hosting plans vary in their offered features, including disk space and monthly traffic. The email features offered in the different plans are what you should keep your eye on in this case.

Let’s take a look at some of the email features offered with the three Shared Hosting plans: Basic, Web Pro Plus, and Max Pack Plus:

First of all, it is worth considering that the Basic plan does not include a free domain for life, meaning you will need to purchase the domain separately. The other two offer 1 or 2 domains, depending on the plan.

Next, the amount of email accounts you’re allowed to have varies among the plans. For example, 1000 accounts are probably more than enough for anything between a small business and a huge company.

Finally, mailing lists and aliases can also be a decisive factor if you have specific requirements for the service. While the basic plan does not include any mailing lists, the Max Pack Plus has up to three lists included.

2. Register a Personal Domain

Now, that we’ve sorted out the web hosting question, it’s time to focus on the domain. The domain is what will shape your brand’s digital presence and create your actual online identity.

The domain contains two parts: TLD and SLD. TLD stands for Top-Level Domain and is the end of your domain. For instance, in the domain name awardspace.com, the .com is the TLD. On the other hand, SLD means Second-Level Domain and represents the beginning of your domain. In the example above AwardSpace is the SLD.

There are a number of practices and advice on how to register a domain name but the essential one is keeping it relevant to your work and identity.

3. Create an Email Account

Once the domain is registered, you can proceed to create an email account based on your chosen domain. This is the key point of the process we’re describing and in order to do it, you’ll need no more than five minutes.

Your control panel includes all of the tools you need when fine-tuning your hosting. Under Email manager, you’ll find four icons in total. The one we need now is the Email accounts.

Type in your desired name next to your E-mail, this is the name@yourbrand.com. The password is what will allow you personalized access to your mailbox.

NB! If you would like to receive your messages in your Gmail box, for example, you’ll need to create an email alias. You can do that by simply choosing the Create E-mail Alias button under the Create E-mail Account one. This can be useful when you manage several email domains and would like to have all of your correspondence in one place.

Email Marketing in the Future

One of the greatest aspects of email marketing is that you can build an email list that will eventually grow into a community. Once you have this, you can easily generate email traffic to your website with personalized offers and newsletters.

This trend is expected to further grow as the other acquisition channels’ powers seem to decrease. Moreover, email’s functionality far surpasses any other channel’s, thus making it a preferred part of any marketing strategy.

Having a personalized email domain will inevitably increase your credibility and recognizability as a brand. Other great advantages include the coherency of correspondence and easy team access to personal emails.

As the web seems to be heading towards a much more personalized communication with the audience, the power of email keeps growing. Meaningful interactions are the central objective of large companies as this is what actually converts today. How wonderful is that?

More domain management tips:

• How to Claim a Domain Name? All The Best Practices Explained

• How to Register a Domain Name: The Right Way

• 5 Reasons Why Big Companies Use Domains Owned by Them

The post How to Create Your Own Email Domain in 3 Easy Steps appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

Several years ago, when the digital service market was still not as flooded, only a handful of companies were offering certain services. The high demand and the low supply suggested less competition and therefore, higher prices.

However, just like with every other aspect of digitalization, the saturation of web services and the pluralization of the providers induced a fall in the price.

Naturally, well-established companies offering competitive prices have become the number one choice of web users. Today, when it comes to web hosting, a number of aspects play a crucial role in its overall quality with cost-efficiency being a leading one.

So, what is the cheapest WordPress hosting and what can you expect?

The Cheapest WordPress Hosting Out There

In order to fully comprehend the value of WordPress hosting, we should turn to the requirements of maintaining it. How much work does actually go into providing a service like that?

First of all, the nature of WordPress hosting suggests shared servers. In other words, several users are located on a server, thus sharing it. Respecting this cohabitation principle means that the provider makes sure that each user is complying with its rules. These include 24/7 monitoring for any malicious activities detected on the servers. Thereby, the security of all the users is ensured by the efforts of the provider.

Also, WordPress web hosting requires a number of parameters to meet the demand of the contemporary user. This includes disk space, monthly traffic, backups, and databases. All of these are a subject to constant maintenance and their usage determines the performance of the whole server.

Because of all of this, the importance of cost-efficiency when it comes to choosing the best WordPress hosting far exceeds the one of it being simply cheap. Happily, there are providers who manage to combine efficient service with low prices.

The Cheapest WordPress Hosting Costs Only $0.17/mo!

What if we told you that your yearly expenses on your WordPress web hosting can be lower than the price of a single coffee?

That’s right. WordPress hosting is only $0.17/month for the first year with AwardSpace. This makes it the cheapest WordPress hosting out there. And most importantly, the service has proven the be of exceptional quality since we first introduced it back in May 2017.

What Does the Cheapest WordPress Hosting Package Include?

Even though by now, it’s clear which the cheapest WordPress hosting is, considering the parameters of the service is essential when choosing a provider. While the price might seem like a priority at first, soon it becomes clear how important a reasonable price/quality ratio is.

WordPress Optimization

Wasting resources such as time and efforts on figuring out how to configure the desired CMS on your hosting is now a thing of the past. Thanks to the WordPress-optimized plan offered by AwardSpace, one can install the CMS in a couple of clicks.

Furthermore, the optimization is mainly related to the features introduced in the plan. Due to the nature of WordPress, there are several crucial aspects that need to be present in the web hosting plan for it to function as planned. This is why, most of the users looking to develop a WordPress website, put their trust in WordPress web hosting as opposed to other plans.

Disk Space

The disk space is a subject that has been discussed over and over throughout our blog. The main reason for this is the juxtaposition between the unlimited disk space offered by most providers and the natural limitations that are to be applied nevertheless.

The unlimited disk space means that the provider does not limit the users’ storage. Thereby, one creates the website you’ve wanted they want without worrying about disk space usage.

Web hosting services, however, usually take the nature of shared hosting into account. This sometimes results in additional guidelines on using the provided disk space which is available in the Terms of Service.

Monthly Traffic

Whether your plans for a WordPress website include large traffic to a blog page or a simple presentation of a business, monthly traffic is a parameter to consider when choosing a service.

The monthly traffic offered with the cheapest WordPress hosting plan amounts to ~15,000 visits monthly. While this is a number most of the beginning websites should fall under, a larger website visited by thousands of people daily might find it restricting. Consider the expected traffic for your future website and make an informed decision on the plan best suits your needs.

In Conclusion

In today’s highly competitive web market, pricing is everything. While users, in general, are looking to invest only in brands that are well-known in the industry, at the end of the day, the price has the final say.

This is why, in order to maintain our leading position in the web hosting market, we have incorporated a number of strategies to provide the best-quality-for-the-price service. This includes 24/7 monitoring and supporting customers, reasonable resource limitations, and carefully crafted WordPress optimization.

This is what makes AwardSpace not only the proud provider of the cheapest WordPress hosting out there but also a premium quality web hosting company focused on the users’ needs.

More WordPress hosting tips:

• 3 Free Online Tools to Track Your WordPress Hosting Performance

• How to Choose a WordPress Hosting in 2018

• 5 Reasons to Use WordPress Hosting Service

The post What is the Cheapest WordPress Hosting in 2018? appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

But why is this? How did WordPress manage to become the number one choice of both, amateurs and professionals?

We’ve always been persistent on why you should use WordPress and the reasons are numerous. From comprehensibility to customizability, from responsiveness to creative liberation, almost every aspect of the CMS allows users to develop their ideas as precisely as possible.

Moreover, WordPress is suitable for virtually all web users who can either cautiously wade into the water or dive in head first. Whichever their choice is, learning is inevitable.

Nevertheless, when it comes to creating a WordPress website, a question usually arises. Do I need web hosting for WordPress or can I do without it?

Difference Between wordpress.com, wordpress.org, and WordPress web hosting?

First of all, prior to answering this question, we need to clear out the difference between using actual web hosting and using the platforms of wordpress.com or wordpress.org.

WORDPRESS.ORG

When using wordpress.org you can launch a website by directly downloading software which enables you to host it with your own server.

This means that from their website you can download free software helping you create, customize and simultaneously add and integrate plugins. All of this, however, comes with both benefits and drawbacks.

Upsides: Two are the main upsides of using this option: it’s free and you can even monetize it.

Downsides: The downsides, on the other hand, are a little more complicated. Since the whole responsibility of downloading and configuring the website is on you, you will need to take your time to get your website online. This also means that you will still need a separate hosting plan in order for your website to be hosted online. Combine this with the technical knowledge in HTML and PHP required to configure and integrate the website and you’ll see where this is going.

WORDPRESS.COM

When it comes to wordpress.com, there’s a slight difference in the creative process. While you still get the CMS for free, your website is hosted on WordPress’ servers. This may lead to some expected hiccups.

Upsides: There is no need for looking for separate hosting as wordpress.com will host the website for you.

Downsides: The free plan provides users only with a subdomain such as mywebsite.wordpress.com. While this might be fine for some, there is a reason why big companies use domains owned by them. Also, when using this service, you lack complete ownership of your website. This also results in limited resources and most importantly, annoying wordpress.com advertising on free websites.

WORDPRESS WEB HOSTING

What differentiates web hosting companies from the two options mentioned above is their focus. With hosting providers, the main aim is to provide as many resources as their users could ever need for their web projects. This includes disk space, traffic, and customization. And all of this needs to be served with a hot price. 

Upsides: With free web hosting you can create your WordPress website with zero investment. Meaning that you enjoy all the required resources for a beginning website without having to break the bank. Moreover, installing the CMS can be as easy as clicking a button when you use the Zacky Installer. All of this provides a much more consistent and facilitated experience to both, beginners and professionals. Once the website has grown and has begun driving larger traffic, you can easily upgrade to premium WordPress hosting. With WordPress hosting being specifically optimized to host WordPress websites, users can enjoy a large number of features suiting their needs.

Downsides: Here again, you will only receive a subdomain when using the free plan.

Do I Need Web Hosting for WordPress?

Now that we’ve arrived at the planned destination, we can easily find the answer to the question “Do I need web hosting for WordPress?”. And the answer is yes. 

With the three options for creating a WordPress website we’ve mentioned, it has become clear that whatever you go with, you will need to have a hosting space. While this is quite self-evident, the question of which hosting alternative to choose can be decisive.

A web hosting provider has the responsibility to take care of the well-being of your hosting service and will, therefore, apply measures to protect your security and privacy. Going with a web hosting provider usually ensures the best price-quality ratio as it will offer a wide range of plans suiting the diversity of your prospective needs at a reasonable cost.

Final Thoughts

Even though WordPress has become the leading choice for web users, when it comes to creating and maintaining websites there is still a lot of misunderstanding. One of the leading questions is whether one needs web hosting for WordPress.

While the numerous options for creating a WordPress website overflood users, there are some clear benefits of trusting a WordPress-optimized web hosting plan. Web hosting providers usually offer a cost-efficient service that aims to tailor the features

Once the plan is chosen and purchased, creating a website is a couple of steps ahead. And therefore, the digital journey you’ve embarked on is just about to begin.

The post Do I Need Web Hosting for WordPress? Everything You Need to Consider appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

But why does free web hosting exists?

Let’s find out together!

What is Free Website Hosting?

Private web hosting providers are the main reason the Internet is what it is today. If there were no private providers, it would be virtually impossible for the end-user – people like you and me – to create their own websites. And if we weren’t able to vivify our ideas, projects like Google would be not only unthinkable but needless as well.

Without the private initiative, made possible thanks to the first web hosting providers, we were never to seen the millions of cat videos, but also projects like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Khan Academy.

And of course, the first web hosting services were paid for. And pricey.

Which is understandable. The technology was new. And to maintain servers and a team is expensive as well. Customers were scarce due to the lack of people with access to the internet and the low knowledge of this brand new technology.

With time, things started to change. Now the access to the web is more of a human right than it is a caprice.

And while in the western culture, this is the way we perceive the web, there are still places in the world, and even people in our part of the world that are dreaming to have to build a website, but paying for a hosting is just not possible.

This is what made the Free Web Hosting services necessary.

Free Web Hosting is a service that provides the customer with most, if not all, of the features of the Premium Web Hosting services. Free of charge.

How Free Website Hosting Services are Boosting Creativity

There are more reasons for you to exist on the web, than not to. Frankly, I can’t find any reason for someone not to be presented online with his art, pieces of work, business, e-commerce shop, or another web project. Yet, if you are still on the defense about the importance of the web presence of your business, check out our article featuring 5 Reasons to Build a Website for Your Business.

When AwardSpace pioneered free website hosting, the impact that these services were about to make, was way out of sight. We were unable to perceive how much such a service could boost creativity, entrepreneurship, and how it inspired people to show themselves, to learn how to create a website.

Having the opportunity to build your website, without paying a dime, is making it easier for people to get on the board, to decide that it is already time for them to build their web presence.

And honestly, most of us are a bit late. Yet, the as vast the number of websites is, there is always room for yet another one. The users of the internet will be always more than the webmasters. And even webmasters are visiting other websites. Thus, you will always have an audience for your website. Even when everyone has its own.

The availability of a free website hosting service is not only helping you to make the decision to be online. It overcomes all of the objections that may occur. And once that happens, you have nothing more to do, except to vivify your ideas.

If the capacity to overcome all the objections of you not to start your web project, by making it absolutely risk-free, is not boosting creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t know what will.

Here is what you need to know if you are Creating a Business Website.

Is Free Website Hosting Safe?

I agree, the possibility of your web project to fail, and thus for you to lose money is one of the main objections you may have in order not to start a web project. Yet, you may be scared of how long will the company be alive, and ergo how long will your website live.

There are many reasons to be cautious when you get something for free.

Is it secure? How can I trust a brand that gives something for free?

Often, when mentioned in online media, the free website hosting services are accompanied by the assumptions of limitations and/or disadvantages.

Still, AwardSpace is here for you since September 2003. The company was started with the intent of offering free website hosting. We never pushed our customers to upgrade, and we never will.

What we offer is a reliable partnership. A reliable home for your website. A free website hosting service with no ads. And the best part? It is forever yours.

Do you still ask your self ‘Is Free Hosting Safe?’

Yes, it is!

Can You Monetize a Website by Free Web Hosting?

You may want to just share your art with your friends. Maybe you are a writer or a photographer. If so, you may want to skip that part of the article.

On the other hand, if you want to monetize your website, you find out if you can monetize a website using free web hosting.

Start Web Presence with Free Website Hosting

Do you have an idea? Are you passionate about something? Do you want to share it with everyone else? Or you have a business and you want to bring more color to it. Then maybe it’s time for you to create your own blog or website.

What’s just around the corner can actually turn out to be something good. Do you want to miss your chance? I don’t think so!

Creating a website is easier than you might think. Having an idea means you’re halfway there. Here is how to start a blog for free.

Once your web project is up and running you can easily get absorbed. You get too excited, you are enthusiastic and sometimes this leads to forgetting important matters. Once you get to this point, make sure you keep a track of your results so far.

Check out this list of 7 signs that your website is performing better than you think.

Alternatives to Free Website Hosting

Of course, free hosting is more or less narrowed. If you are using free services, it is impossible to create a huge business website, which gets tons of traffic. Yet, for your startup ideas, personal sites, and other small to medium web projects, free hosting is the perfect partner.

Yet, once your web project grows up, and starts to pay its expenses, you will be able to get a more suitable service. Like, say, Shared Hosting. But if your website is way too large, or gets too much traffic (which is the final cause of creating a website), you may want to check out our Semi-Dedicated or VPS Cloud Hosting services.

Speaking of our premium services, you may have noticed and want to know why we charge more for the second year.

But until the time for you to upgrade comes, feel free to use our free website hosting.

Final Thoughts

The free website hosting service is available. What you have to do is to take advantage of it. To prove yourself and your friends and to all of us that there is indeed an ingenious idea inside of you. Tell us your story, help us understand your worldview, your beliefs.

Stand up straight, and show us that what you are standing for is worth not only for you to lead, but for us to follow.

Success is 50% platform, the possibility to express yourself where people will see you, and 50% efforts in the direction of actually crafting something meaningful and valuable to say, show, or sell.

It takes two to tango.

We are giving you the opportunity to express yourself.

Show us what you are capable of!

If you are to use Free Website Hosting services, here are a few articles that might interest you:

• How to Backup a Website

• How to Make an Online Portfolio

• “What Should My Blog Be About?” 5 Ways To Decide!

• 4 Ways Your Website Can Get You A Job

• How To Start A Lifestyle Blog In 10 Simple Steps

The post How Free Website Hosting Services are Boosting Creativity, and Entrepreneurship appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

Pioneer financial institutions were offering online banking services all the way back in 1994. This meant that people would not only look to the web to find information but would also put their trust in it to deal with their finances.

Twenty years later, however, people are still hesitant when it comes to online payments.

This is usually due to the natural distrust in the reliability of the prospective service. How would you know if something is worth the investment before testing it?

Because of this hesitation, many web users postpone their online presence wondering “How much does it cost to start a website?” And the answer to this is that it could be completely free of charge.

We have collected everything you need to know about free hosting in order to start a website right now.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a Website?

To start a website, one might not need to be tech-savvy but being acquainted with the logistics of the process helps undoubtedly. Furthermore, there are some incredibly useful guides on how to make a personal website, the steps of which take no longer than twenty minutes.

On the other hand, inspiration and motivation are the two engines that drive creation. And website creation is not much different. That’s why coming up with the theme and the general tone of the website could turn out to be the most essential aspect of starting it in the first place.

Once all of this is available and the stars have aligned perfectly, it’s time to start a website. You have got the idea, you are prepared technically, and you have chosen the topic and the web design trends to follow… But wait! An abrupt wave of doubt hinders your readiness. How much does it cost to start a website and will it break the bank?

Initial Investment and Free Hosting

To start a website can be a risky enterprise and when you are a newbie, it’s almost dreadful.

To avoid any possible mistakes and to test the waters before taking any further action, it’s highly advisable to start with free hosting. While once your website grows, a financial investment will be necessary, having the option to test-drive your website might be a good idea.

Getting comfortable with a web host is an aspect just as important as anything else in your web journey. In other words, working with a provider and having the chance to communicate with their customer support will give you the required confidence to further your growth.

Even though free plans are usually more limited than the premium ones, at AwardSpace users can enjoy high-quality service and exceptional features completely free of charge.

Required Resources

At first, it might be difficult to measure the prospective resources your website will require once it’s up and running. To do so, you will need an overview of the expected traffic driven to your website, the storage space you will most likely need, and the number of MySQL databases you’ll use.

As you can guess, this is information that even the largest web projects cannot predict precisely.

Because of this, free web hosting can provide an insight into the expected resource consumption. It will also prepare you for any prospective expenses related to your web hosting plan and might serve as a guide on how to eventually perform a WordPress performance optimization.

The free web hosting plan offered by AwardSpace includes some notable features allowing almost any kind of website to kick-start with ease. These included but are not limited to:

• WordPress/Joomla Installer

• 24/7 customer support

• 1 domain + 3 subdomains

• 1 GB disk space

• 5 GB monthly traffic

• 1 MySQL database

All of these are essentially the basic necessities for starting a website. Thereafter, once these resources have been used or even exceeded, it will be time to upgrade to a more advanced web hosting plan.

When to Upgrade

Even though the question is how much does it cost to start a website, the expenses following the start are also worth mentioning. Just like a plant outgrows its pot and needs moving to a larger one, a user might outgrow his plan to upgrade to a more advanced alternative.

Host providers usually inform their users once they have used up the resources distributed for their plan. This is followed by the possible steps one can take to preserve their website and upgrade to a premium option.

This is the short answer to the question of when to upgrade. From the beginning, it is clear to all of our free users that if they plan on growing and expanding their websites, they will need to acquire plans with premium features.

Upgrading, however, does not need to be either hard or expensive. At least not with us. Offering a wide range of pricing and packages, AwardSpace’s web hosting plans are diverse and you will usually find something that suits perfectly to your needs with ease.

In Conclusion

Web presence is an essential requirement for the contemporary transfer of information. Almost all human behavior has a digital alternative duplicating our communication, patterns of trust, and desires.

This is also the reason why, in 2018 it is almost mandatory to have a website for your business, blog, portfolio, or any other aspect of your life you wish to share.

Motivated and prepared, people often stumble upon the inevitable worries of how much it costs to start a website. Even though many people are comfortable with making large investments right away, a larger portion of the users needs to have a safe start before diving deeper.

This is the portion for which we have created our free web hosting plan. With all of the necessary resources available completely free of charge, users can develop and grow websites which eventually result in wonderful web spaces.

Any financial expenses that will follow can simply not be comparable to the passion and inspiration which is put into a website one is proud of. And that’s the actual investment needed for creating something yourself.

More web hosting tips:

• How to Register a Domain Name: The Right Way
• Can You Monetize a Website Using Free Hosting?
• 3 Free Online Tools to Track Your WordPress Hosting Performance

The post How Much Does It Cost to Start a Website? Free Web Hosting Explained appeared first on AwardSpace.com.

On the other hand, I am obliged to share a secret with you:

Every website that gives something invaluable to its users will become famous and successful. That is what happened to YouTube, Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Quora. All of these websites gave people something they needed.

I am not claiming that we, web users, knew that we need such services, but once they were offered to us, we quickly understood that the way we use the web will never be the same again. Some of us, I am sure, even asked ourselves how we used the web prior to these websites emerged.

Even though the probability of you investing in a website that will become the next Reddit or Quora is close to zero, buying a ready-to-go website is still something you better think of, before disregarding the idea as not worthy of your time, money, and efforts.

Here are the 3 simple rules of investing in a website that you need to know, before going out to spend your hard-earned buck!

Before You Invest in a Website be a Webmaster

That one should go without saying. Yet, I figured it deserves the first place because it is so obvious that people often are missing it.

If you are about to start investing in websites and you never had one, you will surely fall into a trap.

The thing is, we humans tend to value the things that we own high, and the things we created even higher. I hope you are able to foresee where this tendency of ours goes.

The person you are about to buy your first website from will probably evaluate his creation way higher than the market itself would. Thus, you may end up paying what is hardly perceived as a righteous price.

And the reason for that is not because someone will try to deceive you, although that may also be the case, but just because you and the seller were unable to evaluate the website for its value, but for what is perceived value.

In other words, what the seller thought his website is worth, is not necessarily what is its real value.

And there is at least one more advantage of you being a webmaster.

You will have a web hosting service at hand. And you won’t have to start looking for one when a good opportunity for you to invest in a website emerges. And, let’s be honest, that is definitely an advantage. It will surely save you the trouble of you only now finding out how to choose a hosting service.

Even more, you can get a free web hosting service, and play around with our WordPress Tutorials just so you learn how to use the CMS, and not face any administrative troubles ahead of time.

Get the Budget Ready

This rule should as well go without saying, but hey, I promised simple rules!

It is a day like any other. You were at work from 9 to 5. Afterward, you got the subway, thinking of what you will get for dinner. You called a friend or two and offered them to grab something outside. It is Friday after all. You arranged everything. Got out with your friends, and got some food and some laughs. It was a nice night and a nice end of the week. What you didn’t expect was that once you got home you saw that someone has answered your announcement that you are looking for a website to invest in.

And everything would have been fine, if only you got the money and were ready to buy it right away.

The market for websites is not a steady market. Websites get bought and sold all the time. And if you don’t have the money to invest in a website that deserves it, someone else will have them and will do it. Instead of you.

It will be much easier if you saved the money prior to publishing the announcement that you are eager to buy. That way you won’t have to put up with the resentment of someone else buying what you wanted for yourself.

And if you already have one, here is how to monetize a WordPress website, just so you get your budget in time to invest in another web property.

Invest in a Website That has Potential

Yeah, yeah! Of course, you will do that. But how do differentiate the web properties that could be a monetization bomb from those who will simply sink into the void?

There is no simple answer to that question. Yet, there are a few questions that you should ask the to-be-previous-owner.

Traffic

How much traffic does the website get? What channels does it get the traffic from? How much does the traffic cost the owner?

The traffic if there is any, could be beneficial or harmful. If the traffic costs money but doesn’t bring any it obviously is harmful and unnecessary. Yet if the to-be-previous-owner missed it, you may want to bring more traffic from social media, or by implementing the basics of search engine optimization.

Monetization 

Does the website make any money? If so, how? Could you continue making money from the website without changing anything about your life (in other words, will you have to start selling products which will be related to keeping, packing, and sending them. And moreover track whether or not you have the products in stock)?

This could be the start of a business. Yet, it could be just another responsibility that may or may not be worth your time. So, you need to consider how the website gets monetized.

On the other hand, if there is no money coming from the website you are about to invest in, try to figure out whether you will be able to monetize it by, say, becoming the best in affiliate marketing. Everything else will result in you investing in a website that will never repay you. Beware!

Final Thoughts

To invest in a website could be really fun and profitable endeavor. Yet, there are some simple rules that you need to follow when you are about to invest in a website that you know nothing of. Moreover, you probably won’t know the person you are buying from.

Yet, while you know how to maintain a website, and how to migrate a WordPress website, once you obtain it, you have the budget ready and ask the right questions and look for the right signs of the website’s potential, you are good to go.

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