Web hosting in simple terms means publishing a website that can be accessed by anyone connected to the internet. A website is a collection of related pages linking to each other. These web pages are created on a personal computer, then copied to the host’s server which is connected to the internet 24/7. This storing of web pages on some servers which is accessible to all on the internet network is known as web hosting. You can have your own servers. But, this is not always possible, so there are some agencies (read websites) called web hosts which allow storing your web pages on to their servers for a cost. This is what Web hosting is all about.

Now-a-days there is a trend fast catching up. This is the free web hosting. Web hosting is done by some hosts at a cost for websites dedicated to commercial usage, but for non-commercial usage which requires less space and bandwidth, hosting is done for free by many hosts. But, in free web hosting there is limitation on the file size, available memory, and bandwidth. So this is not for commercial usage. The quality of hosting is also poor. Some free web hosts give unlimited bandwidth but the quality is poor. And, some free web hosts are not exactly free, in the sense that they require you to insert their ads on your web pages.
Further, free web hosting comprises of two types that is domain hosting and sub-domain hosting. Let us look at them in detail.
You would have come across various websites like yahoo.com, google.co.in etc, The extension .com or .co.in is a domain, yahoo.com is a domain name. There are many other extensions like the .org, .net, .in, etc. Owning a domain name requires registration. You have to register a domain name, which is not free. The rates may vary but it is about rs.500 or $6-10 a year. Hosting a website with a domain name is domain hosting. This is usually done at a cost, but there are some free hosts as well. These are generally ad supported.
To eliminate the cost of registration and to make free web-hosting completely free, some hosts provide sub-domain hosting. All sub-domain hosting is free, some ad supported, some not. Now, let us see what exactly a sub-domain is. A sub-domain is a branch of a domain. For example, mywebsite.yahoo.com is a sub-domain. Here, yahoo.com is a domain under which ‘mywebsite’ is hosted. Generally, domain name hosting comes with the ability to add ‘n’ number of sub-domains. That’s why they are free.
The updated and reviewed list of free web hosting sites are available at www.freeweb-hosts.com. As far as my experience is concerned, 501megs.com is the best free sub-domain hosting website, which is ad supported and awardspace.com is the best for free domain hosting which is ad free.
These web hosts not only allows you to upload your web pages but also allows you to edit with their editing softwares. If you know HTML or the using of hosts editors you can create your web pages or edit them on hosts website itself. If you have created your web pages you can easily upload on hosts servers. Ideally uploading your own web pages is recommended.

Whatever impact free web hosting would have had, but it is not for commercial use. Paid hosting is only solution for commercial use. But, for non-commercial website creators free web hosting is a boon.
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