4 Downsides of Free Website Builders |
Posted: May 25, 2016 |
There are hundreds of free website building services letting you create a website without spending a penny. This may sound tempting for many start-ups or small business owners who do not expect much profitability from a website. Though technically they let you create and host a website for free, there are many downsides to using free website builders. No own domain name The main downside of free websites is that they do not let you have your own domain name. You will only get a subdomain with the main domain name being that of the service provider, which will be something like yoursite.freesites.com. Now everyone with some knowledge of the internet will immediately identify that you built your site for free using freesites.com. Do you really think this is a good thing from a business point-of-view? Probably not. Visitors are likely to assume that you are not really serious about your website and you have made one only because everyone has a website. No Search Engine Rank You probably know by now that most visitors find a website from search engines like Google. But search engines do not rank free websites well. This means that your site will not be listed anywhere near the first search engine result pages. Only those who know your URL will get to your website. But prospective visitors who are searching for products or services you offer will hardly ever find your site. You should also know that people use search engines to check the authenticity of a business. So, if your company’s name is My Cute Company and a google search for “My Cute Company” does not list your company in the first page, people will assume that you are a phoney. Advertisements Free website builders earn their bread by placing ads on all websites made with them. These ads will neither be relevant nor appropriate. Imagine visitors seeing the ad of a dildo in the website of your ‘Cute Company’ that sells toys! It is also possible that the free service provider may go out of business anytime and your website will be irrevocably gone forever. Functionality & Design Usually, these free website builders will have a few templates that you can choose from. Apart from that, you will not be able to do much, in terms of design and layout. This is a major drawback as far as functionality is concerned. Also, you will not be able to make much change to the original site once it is made. Free websites are also highly vulnerable to hackers. In short, you should know that anything that comes free comes with some catches. Buying your own domain and hosting your site on a reasonably reliable service is not very costly these days. The main expenditure will be in hiring a developer. Indigenous developers may break your bank but if you opt for a company that outsources web design and development work to countries like India, you can have a great website at a fraction of the cost.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|