First of all, you need to know that nothing is free in web development. Neither the webserver, hardware, software is free nor the domain and maintenance. For all these services you have to pay every month or year according to the billing policy of the service provider. It sounds good to hear that "Free Website". But in reality, nothing is free.
So now, the question comes that if this is all paid then how and why somebody gives you a free website? The answer to the question is very difficult for those who don't know anything about the websites. Once you read this post till the end, you will come to know why even a small company does not want to create a free website.
Please check some points that describe, why creating a free website is a foolish decision.
Unprofessional website URL
Most free website providers will give you subdomain names. That means the URL will be your company name plus the service provider's domain name like yourcompany.freewebsiteproviders.com. It can get you into two problems. The first one is that it will become a very large URL, which will be very difficult to remember. Secondly, these URLs will look very bad and unprofessional to your customers or viewers.
It may be not free forever
Many providers allow you to create a free website on a trial basis. They charge after the trial ends and that's neither free nor cheap. Others are those who don't give you a website for a short duration. But you can't give guarantee that, they will not change their strategic plan. And you can't even guarantee that, their site will never shut down.
Not owner of your own content
They will store all the data in their server and will not give you any backup option nor any connectivity option. You can only edit or update the frontend design using a website builder. You will get no option to view or store the real coding, which is the most important part. Because of this, you can't move your website to anywhere else. Another thing is that they can run advertisements over your website and can manipulate your design.
Extremely slow performance
Due to having so many subdomains, your website may run very slowly. Many free website providers give you limited bandwidth. Your website may also be stopped after the bandwidth is over. If you are interested to place some videos on your site, the free service providers may close your website without giving notice to you. And there is one thing for sure that, you can't optimize the coding and images of your website, nor can delete the unnecessary elements.
Not SEO friendly
As you know in free website services you can't update the coding, it means that you also can't do SEO. It is very important for SEO to update the base coding. Google Analytics and other tracking codes can't be implemented in such websites. Just search any keyword in Google and check, you will not find any subdomain url in search results. Basically they are marketing their domains, not yours.
Work with limited features
Page builders have very limited features to edit or update websites. You can't add anything other than that. There is a big possibility that your website will look very similar to any other website.
So is it completely useless to create free websites? The answer is NO. It is good for those who are practicing or who want to build a personal portfolio type website. Basically it is good for students.
