Free web hosting service
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| Types of Internet hosting service |
|---|
| Full-featured hosting |
| Virtual private server · Dedicated hosting · Colocation centre · Cloud hosting |
| Web hosting |
| Free hosting · Shared · Clustered · Reseller |
| Application-specific web hosting |
| Blog (comments) · Guild hosting · Image · Video · Wiki farms · Application · Social network |
| By content format |
| File · Image · Video · Music |
| Other types |
| Remote backup · Game server · DNS · E-mail |
A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported. Free web hosts will usually provide a subdomain (yoursite.example.com) or a directory (www.example.com/~yourname). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Many free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains. Rarely, a free host may also operate as a domain name registrar. There are also some free domain companies which may provide free 3rd level domain names free with dns and other facilities.
[edit] File hosting on free webhosts
Many free web hosting services discourage the use of their free web hosting services for file or image hosting only in which no web page is established or setup resulting in the use of bandwidth due to hot linking of files with no revenue gain to the service provider in the case of advertising supported services. As a result, hot linking or remote linking or inclusion of many image, media and download file formats is disabled or not permitted on many free web hosting services.
Other common limitations on file hosting limits on free hosts are limits on file size, for example no files over 5 MB or file types such as programs or large media files such as MP3.
This has resulted in the growth of free hosting services dedicated to image hosting, video hosting and general file hosting which permit remote hotlinking of files and larger file formats.
