Web hosting companies allow us to run our own websites without actually setting up our own computer and internet connectivity to serve the webpages. They usually provide uninterrupted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week hosting service. They do this by using multiple servers which are fault tolerant to minimize downtime.

Most Domain Name registrars, like godaddy.com where you register your website's name, usually offer webhosting services as an additional service. Also, most Internet Service Providers (ISP) have their own webhosting services.

Webhosts usually offer several webhosting packages from inexpensive five (5) dollars a month to 50 dollars a month, depending on the bandwidth and disk space storage.

Actually, you do not need a webhosting company to run your own website if you prefer webhosting the site yourself.

If you are using Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, it has a webhosting program integrated with it, the Internet Information System (IIS) program. Or you may download a free, open-source program, the same program that most webhosting companies use, the Apache webhosting program.

One of the big disadvantage of this, of course, is that you have to have your computer serving the webpages turned on 24 hours a day and have the necessary equipment to provide backup power in case of a power failure. You would also need make your computer fault-tolerant to have your website available on the internet continuously.

For single-page or personal websites, there is a multitude of free web hosting sites we can choose from. We can simply use the free blogging services and free article-writing websites that permeates almost every corner of the Internet.

But if you're setting up a more serious, multipage, business website or an e-commerce website, the way to go is to subscribe to paid web hosting companies.

Or use one of the free web hosting sites available.

Free? Is there such a thing as a free web hosting service?

Webhosting companies usually provide free, basic web hosting services, with the hope that when your requirements grow, such as the need for more disk space and more bandwidth, you may be better off upgrading to one of their paid services. You probably would not want to go through all the trouble of moving your fully operational, well-entrenched website to another web hosting site.

Some web hosting sites put their own advertisements on your website to finance their hosting of your webpages. This is somewhat unacceptable if you want to place your own ads on your website to monetize on the advertisements.

Here is the list of some free webhosting sites I have actually tested and currently use.

000webhost - my favorite, you get everything that they advertise as free.
Disk Space: 1500 MB
Bandwidth: 100 GB
PHP, MySQL, FTP, cPanel
Website Builder
Autoinstaller

110mb.com
Disk Space: 110 MB
Bandwidth: 10 GB
Dual Xeon & Opteron based Servers
Your Own Domain Hosting
Safe Mode OFF
PHP 5, SSI, IonCube & Zend Support
NO popups, spam or ads ANYWHERE
Template Driven Site Builder
Site promotion guides

mister.net
Disk Space: 250 MB
Bandwidth: 5 GB
Unlimited POP3 Email Accounts
Shared SSL
PHP, CGI-BIN, FrontPage
SSI (Server Side Includes)

freewebhostingarea
Disk Space: 1000 MB
Bandwidth: 5120 MB/day
No ads until trial period expires
Adds inserted after the trial period
$1/month to remove ads

bravenet
Disk Space: 30 GB
Bandwidth: 600 GB
Unlimited Email
Unlimited FTP Accounts
Free Templates
Advertising Credits
Hosting Affiliate Program

angelfire
Disk Space: 20 MB
Blog and Photo Album
Site Building & File Management Tools

agilityhoster
Disk Space: 200 MB
Bandwidth: 5 GB
Allows hosting of 2 Domains
Active PHP and MYSQL

freebesthosting

Free Webhosting with 000webhost - A few months back, I decided to try setting up my own website. I already know how to create a blog using a blogger service like blogspot.com. I wanted to test my ability. Am I smart enough to actually be able to run my own website, with my own domain name?

10 Great Free Web Hosting Services - Why pay for web hosting when there are places out there that will host your site for free? Actually, there are several good reasons. Free web hosting tends to be limited in MB space and services and also usually includes advertising on your website. If you're operating a professional website, you may want to pay to host it through an inexpensive company rather than through a free web hosting service. But if you're just putting up a personal website and/or you don't mind the limitations of free web hosting then there are certainly a plethora of web hosts out there that are happy to provide you services free of charge.

Free Web Hosting Sites: Have Your Own Website! - Have you ever wanted YOUR OWN WEBSITE? Well, today is your lucky day! (Or tomorrow is depending on when you make it.) In the process of finding a free web hosting site for my website, www.theparkinggarage.webs.com, I found a number of great sites that do what seems to be the same thing - give you free hosting for a website you can customize to every last period. However, I have tried two different free web hosting sites, and have gfound that now all are created equally.