How 000Webhost Proves To An Effective Hosting Solution For Beginners?
For anyone who wishes to set up a website on a tight budget, the first expensive challenge is indeed to get a hosting.
There is no shortage of hosting service providers out there, and indeed there are some cheap offerings as well that does not put a hole in your pocket. However, if you go with the cheaper web hosting providers, the features and convenience that you get for the amount you pay are the bare minimum and will definitely leave you desiring for more.
Well, today we are here with a review of the world’s best free hosting provider out there a.k.a 000webhost.com.
How free is 000webhost.com?
No, the term free hosting provider wasn’t a typo neither you read it wrong. 000webhost.com is indeed a free web hosting service provider and “000webhost” is kind of an abbreviation for “$0.00 web host” which makes sense.
Without even paying a dime, here are what users can get at 000webhost.com:
- 10GB bandwidth.
- 1GB disk space.
- Free hosting for the domain name.
- Free Cpanel.
- Auto installer for WordPress, Joomla etc.
- Complete support for PHP & MySQL.
- Free and easy to use website builder.
Sounds too good to be true?
Well, it’s nothing magical. The free 000webhost.com platform was launched back in 2007 and the resources to keep the free hosting up and going has been ever since supported by the loyal 000webhost users who upgrade from the free hosting and pay for more features.
What Kind Of Hosting Can You Get At 000WebHost.com For Free?
000webhost.com caters to all kinds of website requirements and the requirements can be divided into small-scale and large-scale.
Small-Scale Hosting
The small-scale hosting is for basic FTP (File Transfer Protocol) websites which require a bare minimum amount of background processing.
Large-Scale Hosting
Most of the websites other than FTP websites require considerable processing resources. Large-scale hosting includes such websites and can be further subdivided as:
Shared Hosting:
Shared hosting is more than enough for regular websites. In shared hosting, the overall resources of a hosting server are shared among several websites.
Shared hosting is also one of the most popular hosting services as it is not only budget-friendly but also comes standard will all prerequisites already installed.
There are a few limitations with shared hosting like if a website sharing the resources of your host server views a spike in traffic, it may affect your website loading speed due to increased load and you cannot block any port.
Dedicated Hosting:
As the name gives away, dedicated hosting provides clients will their own server and resources. This type of hosting is best for websites with loads of traffic and backend processing requirements.
Also, as the server is dedicated, security is high. However, as the server is completely dedicated, special knowledge is required to maintain the server. Moreover, as the server is dedicated, costs are also higher than shared hosting.
Collocated Hosting
Collocated hosting shares the features of both shared and dedicated hosting. In this type of hosting, even though the physical server is shared by multiple clients, the resources and web server control is dedicated to the individual client. Any scripts or apps can be run or installed as per the client’s requirement.
This type of hosting is also preferred by large websites as the resources are dedicated but only server space is shared, thus helping reduce operational costs.
Virtual Dedicated Server
In this type of web hosting, the server is split up virtually and then shared. The demand for resources for each virtual server is dependent on the requirement and the allocation of the resources and again dependent on the server itself.
Managed Hosting
For clients opting for managed hosting, they will be offered with a dedicated server, however, what is not provided is complete control over the server. The admin settings and contents will be restricted from the client to ensure quality.
Clients will be able to manage their information but only by using FTP.
Clustered Hosting
Clustered Hosting has a group of servers managing resources rather than individual servers. This ensures a high level of scalability and resource utilization at its best.
Clustered Hosting is best for clients who demand the best service that they can get.
What Are The Features Offered By 000WebHost.com?
Now that we have taken a look at the types of customers 000webhost.com handles, let us glance through the features that the customers get.
99% Guaranteed Uptime
For all hosting plans, including the free plan that costs $0.00, 000webhost guarantees 99% uptime.
Latest Version of PHP and MySQL
You are assured that the MySQL and PHP versions available to you are always the latest versions for the best possible performance.
Ease of Use
The “Auto-Installer” and “Free Website Builder” ensures that managing the hosting is simple not only for the tech savvy ones but also for regular website owners.
The Auto-Installer can let you easily install WordPress within a matter of minutes and the Free Website Builder can let you customize your website in 3 easy steps.
What are the premium plans offered by 000webhost.com?
The premium 000webhost.com plans are dead cheap in comparison to what competitors offer.
For $2.15/month, you can get a cheap and basic web hosting for 1 website with the “Single Web Hosting” plan. There is 10GB of disk space offered along with 100GB bandwidth.
The “Premium Web Hosting” plan costs $3.49/month and offers to host for an unlimited number of websites with unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. This plan is perfect for websites seeing a visible growth in traffic.
The ultimate “Business Web Hosting” is priced at $7.95/month and offers unlimited resources and hosting as the $3.49/month plan but with additional features aimed towards resource-intense and business websites.
Common Errors Faced by WordPress Users While Setting Up 000Webhost Hosting
Many of the webmasters will be using the free 000webhost to host their WordPress sites. When setting up a new WordPress site, site owners mostly encounter a variety of errors.
Below we have listed a few most frequent errors while setting up a WordPress site along with guide on how to fix them.
How to install WordPress using 000webhost Auto-Installer?
000webhost.com has prepared an amazing tutorial on how to install WordPress. Once you have signed up to the site and verified your email address, here is how to install WordPress on your site.
- Login to your 000webhost account.
- In the homepage, click on the “Build Website” option that is placed in the corner left at the top.
- From the page that opens up, click on the button that says “Install Now” below the “Build WordPress Website” section.
- The WordPress Website install page will now open. Here you can enter details like the username and password of the admin, the url of the site and the preferred language.
- Click on the “Install” button to the bottom right corner.
- Wait for the installation to complete.
- Use the login credentials you set in Step 4 to login to your WordPress site.
How to fix “Error Establishing a Database Connection” issue in WordPress?
The error establishing a database connection is also a very common issue faced by WordPress users.
To fix this issue, we will be making use of an FTP client named FileZilla.
- Start the FileZilla FTP client.
- Enter the login credential. The credentials to be entered are the one’s provided by 000webhost while you setup your hosting. Alternatively, you can find the same details by logging into the 000webhost admin panel and then under the “General” section in “Settings”.
- Once logged in, launch the root folder of WordPress.
- Now find the file named “wp-config.php” and right-click on the same. From the drop-down menu that appears, click on the option that says “View/Edit”.
- A new file will open in text editor.
- Find the line “That’s all, stop editing!” line in the text file.
- Paste the below code before the above line
“define(WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’.true);” - Save and close.
- Now launch the link “www.websitename.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php”. Replace the “websitename” part with your website name.
- Click on the option that says “Repair Database” and wait for the repair to complete.
How to fix the “Error 403” Issue in WordPress?
Another commonly encountered WordPress issue is Error 403 that mostly indicate a plugin problem.
To fix this issue, you can try disabling existing plugins and then re-launching the website. If the error is gone, then the disabled plugin is the issue. If you have too many plugins to manually disable, you can try using the FTP client to access all the plugin folders at once.
Final Words
In a market with no shy of hosting providers, what sets 000webhost.com apart is how much they care about their clients.
By offering a limited free hosting and then later charging customers when an upgrade of resources are required, 000webhost and letting people start up with their own websites within a tight budget and then later expand as and when required.