So, you found a great free hosting but couldn’t find a free offshore hosting? Here’s why there is free hosting but no free offshore hosting.
In reality, there is no such thing as free hosting, they all come with some hidden ways to make money out of you. You can still find a good free hosting provider but there are no free offshore hosting providers.
Let’s understand the differences before we move ahead.
Free Hosting vs Offshore Hosting
Free hosting means a hosting that is free. Too obvious? Well, it literally means the same. There are a few companies that offer a free plan with very limited specs or trials for their hosting service.
There are different catches for the same.
Some free hosting services place ads on your site which compromises your data. In the same way, some hosts don’t allow you to transfer your site.
So, eventually, you will have to pay for the hosting.
They have poor infrastructure with no support options. Either way, they are not reliable enough for any serious website. Free hosting is only good if you want to play around for a while and see no future for your website.
On the other hand, offshore hosting is a hosting service that has data centers in a country with strong privacy laws and complete freedom of speech. These countries have little to no restrictions on sensitive websites.
People who register for offshore hosting want to host a sensitive website with reliable performance. They also want freedom from government censorship. Offshore hosting has an excellent privacy policy.
So, people who want to protect their data often go with offshore hosting whereas free hosting is totally the reverse of this.
Some people even go with offshore hosting to gain tax benefits. These services even protect you from false copyright. For this reason, they are often called DMCA-ignored hosting services.
Now that you know about free hosting vs offshore hosting, let’s see why there is no free offshore hosting.
Why there is free hosting but no free offshore hosting?
If the hosting you get is free one, then you are their product. There are a lot of reasons why it’s not possible to offer completely free hosting, especially offshore hosting.
Below-mentioned are a few reasons why there are no free offshore hosting services. It’s even harder to find a free trial for offshore services.
Resource Costs and Use of Modern Technology:
The hosting service will need excellent infrastructure to provide proper performance. It includes data centers with servers, network equipment with ISP services, security tools, etc.
It’s not possible to offer services for free. As a matter of fact, a hosting company can’t even break even by offering free services, especially offshore hosting providers.
Abuse and Legal Concerns:
Free services means anyone can register and use it. You might want to use it for a good cause but there are millions of people out there who might use it for something illegal or against the host’s terms.
It becomes extremely difficult for companies to fulfill the legal requirements if there are tons of free users registering for an account.
Lack of Advertisers or Revenue Streams:
Any free service relies on other revenue streams such as advertising or sponsors. Offshore hosting providers are privacy-focused and take very less amount of data from the users.
Therefore, it’s hard to target the users for advertising.
Further, advertising or sponsors will destroy the entire concept of “privacy” hosting. It’s challenging to find advertisers who are looking to show the same ad to all the people.
It’s even harder to get enough money from such advertisers.
Technical Support and High-Level Maintenance:
An offshore hosting needs a good technical support team due to the nature of hosting sensitive websites. They need to take proper care of security as well.
Anyone working for technical support or as security staff will need a decent salary.
Without proper maintenance, staff, and support, offshore hosting can’t be reliable enough to host sensitive websites.
Bandwidth and Connectivity Costs:
Offshore means a location that doesn’t fall under a major country’s jurisdiction. These servers are hosted on the places where the government totally supports freedom of speech.
Bandwidth and connectivity costs are higher in such countries.
A free hosting model only works where bandwidth is cheaper and infrastructure is just “enough” to run a website.
Compliance and Legal Risks:
Offshore doesn’t mean you can do anything. The hosting provider has to deal with many legal issues for compliance.
Such compliance laws include data protection, copyright infringement (other than DMCA), privacy, and country-specific laws. Here are Impreza offshore hosting rules.
It’s not possible to safeguard from legal risks by offering free services. Therefore, if the host provides a free plan, the company will not be able to protect its paid customers from such legal risks.
Limited Competition:
There are hundreds of options for a good hosting provider but there are only a few for offshore hosting providers.
Free hosting providers often lure their customers to try their services and then start charging them after they have a specific number of customers. It’s a marketing strategy which is worst for the customers.
As offshore hosting has limited competition, none of the providers offers the services for free.
Conclusion
In conclusion, free hosting has a very low-spec plan with many limitations. On the other hand, offshore hosting has data centers in countries with strong governments.
The answer for “Why there is free hosting but no free offshore hosting” is that the offshore hosting services focus on privacy, and freedom of speech, and are one of the most reliable hosting services safe from even government censorship.
The concept of free hosting doesn’t comply with offshore hosting features. Therefore, you might find free hosting but there are no offshore hosting providers.
Instead, you can get cheap offshore hosting. There are even offshore shared hosting services.
The cheapest offshore host is Shinjiru.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
What is free hosting and offshore hosting?
Free hosting is where the hosting providers offer a free plan with a lot of hidden terms (usually sharing of your data) whereas offshore hosting is a service with data centers in countries where there are strong privacy-focused laws with freedom of speech.
Is there a thing such as free web hosting?
No, you might find free hosting but there are a lot of conditions regarding sharing your data and you might even lose your complete website once you start getting traffic. It’s not possible for companies to offer their hardware and software resources for free without getting anything back.
What are limitations for using a free hosting service?
Free hosting has a lot of limitations depending on the service you choose.
Some hosts have a condition to buy the domain from the same company (which makes it harder to transfer your site) whereas most sites compromise on your data which gives you very limited data protection options.
