Mike came barging into my room one Thursday afternoon. “Mark, man, you gotta help me. Geocities is closing!” I tried my best not to laugh, especially when I saw the genuine look of worry in his face. I failed.

I’ve known Mike since High School, and we’re pretty close. He’s a really talented artist and his drawing skills are nothing short of extraordinary. In the morning, he works as an Events-Coordinator for a small Manila-based marketing firm. But at night, he releases his inner artist by taking on freelance illustration jobs for various magazines and print-related projects.

Unfortunately, Yahoo’s decision to take down Geocities meant that Mike’s portfolio will disappear in a few months. I like Mike, but I never really understood why he kept using such a crappy hosting site for his portfolio. So after a few minutes of laughing, I told him to get a seat and relax.

Thus, the “Hosting Quest of 2009” began.

A Long Way to the Goal

Mike was adamant about one thing: he didn’t want to shell out cash. I frowned at that.

In the early days of the web, having a website was seen as a luxury. Domain names and web hosting weren’t cheap, and to have your own place in the web was a badge of honor. Free hosting sites, like Geocities and Angelfire, were seen as godsend: a way to have web presence without breaking the bank.

The trade-offs were high of course: banners, popups and unwelcomed advertisements. That was the price you had to pay for getting some free hosting. To many, it wasn’t a big deal—a website is a website after all, banner ads or not, and the aesthetics of the early web was still forgiving towards ugly advertisements popping up all over your screen.

But times have changed. The web is becoming more and more beautiful, and the prospect of having ugly GIFs appearing on the top and bottom of your meticulously designed layouts is enough to kill any designer via cardiac arrest.

The good news though is that hosting is cheaper, and getting a domain name and a good web host is more affordable than ever.

I explained all of this to Mike, who nodded and said, “But where do I get a free one?” I sighed and decided to humor him.

We spent two hours perusing the web, looking for a free web host that didn’t suck. It was disappointing to say the least. Finding a free hosting site that didn’t suck is a hard task, and sometimes it’s close to impossible.

I’m no noob when it comes to free hosting. In fact, I’ve used several of them in the past, and you could say that I know most of their modi operandi. Of course, there are a few gems on the net, the ones which really outshine the pack—but they’re exceptions, not rules.

The Real Deal with Free

There are a few principles you should remember about free web hosts:

1. There’s really no such thing as a free web host. Each site that claims to give away free web hosting has a price. Some sites will put advertisements, whether you like it or not; some sites will ask you to put in a credit line—which doesn’t look really good if you’re trying to convey an image of being professional (which is what every designer or developer should do); some sites ask you to do weird things before giving you a hosting account, like sell things or post on their bulletin boards for points. In other words, you’re gonna pay a price for hosting—in one form or the other.

2. You’re gonna be stunted, in more ways than one. Whether it’s about limitations on basic features like bandwidth or disk space, or more problematic things like not allowing some common file formats or using older versions of common technologies like PHP or MySQL, there’s always gonna be something that will keep you from bringing your website to its full potential. Most free hosts try to sell you their higher plans by giving you free hosting that’s less than capable. If you won’t be able to use a company’s hosting without paying, why even bother with the free version?

3. There won’t be any guarantees. Need Tech Support? Please wait while we take care of our paying customers. Your site is down? Well, too bad—you could wait until we fix the issue or upgrade to a better plan that’ll guarantee uptime. You broke something? Well it’s your problem. Because there’s no real incentive for free hosting sites to help you (ie. you’re not a paying customer), you’re gonna get stuck when you have problems. Just take a look at Geocities.

We were looking at our seventh free host, which had good storage and bandwidth offers, but didn’t allow media files, when I voiced these points to Mike. He looked at me and sighed. “Okay, so what are my other options?”

The Other Big Problem

Let me tell you a secret: even if you’re looking for paid hosting, finding a really good web host is hard. In fact, it’s even harder than finding a free web host.

Part of the reason for this is that with paid web hosts, you have to take a risk. With free hosting, you sign-up, check out the features, give it a test drive, and if you’re unsatisfied, you can turn your back and never use it again.

But with paid web hosting, you often need to shell out some cash. Sure, there are some hosts that offer you a money-back guarantee, or free test-drives for a limited time period, but there are more that don’t do this. So if you’re not careful, you might end up spending your hard earned money for something you’ll end up regretting.

Helping Hands

Thankfully, the internet has brought about a massive revolution when it comes to sharing information, especially when it comes to consumer concerns. In the old days, sharing your opinions about a product are limited to how many people you could talk to. But now, you could publish your reviews and be heard anywhere in the world.

And fortunately, users are more than happy to share their recommendations (or their bad experiences) with certain web hosting companies. And their are whole sites devoted to doing just that.

That presents another problem: most of these review sites suck.

While Mike was making some coffee, I did a quick Google search for web hosting review sites. There was something eerily familiar about most of the results: they’re all badly laid-out, the reviews look like they were made by ten-year olds and the advertisements for some of them were so ridiculous, it was almost funny.

That’s when I came across this little gem: Web Hosting Search. If you’re looking for a web hosting review site, then look no further than this site—I highly recommend if only for the following reasons:

1. Clean layout and consistent navigation. Seriously, it’s hard enough to find a good web hosting: trying to navigate through a review site that’s poorly laid-out and badly designed is worse. So seeing something like Web Hosting Search was a pleasant surprise.

2. It doesn’t sugar-coat user reviews. I came across several hosting review sites before that sorted the reviews so that negative reviews came in last. I didn’t like that, because I tend to look at the bad reviews first before the good ones. It’s the criticisms that really show you how good a web host is—the less angry customers, the better. I actually smiled when I saw how Web Hosting Search did it: the unpleasant reviews weren’t tucked away, but instead, big red letters with the words “ DOES NOT RECOMMEND ” were displayed.

3. It goes beyond just reviewing sites. Aside from the hosting reviews, there are a tad load of great articles and videos regarding web hosting and web development featured on the site. It makes the site more useful, something that you’ll visit even though you already found the perfect web host.

I also liked Web Hosting Search’s Hosting Finder tool. It’s a nifty little app that helps you find the right host. Answer a few questions, click the button and voila! It’ll showcase suggestions that fit your criteria. And if you’re looking for a more robust search tool, they also have one on their site.

Happy Mike

Within a few minutes of browsing Web Hosting Search, Mike and I narrowed it down to three candidates. I was actually quite happy with the recommendations we got from the site, and I didn’t even frown when Mike chose the one with the lowest price—because I knew that his site will be in great hands, even if he’s being stingy.

Free web hosting is a great way to get web presence without spending a dime, but its era is coming to an end. So if you’re still using one, take my advice: don’t be a miser and invest. It’ll be worth it in the end.