000WebHost is the first company that offers free and quality web hosting service. Ad free, payment free! How can they manage to do this? Actually, they are supported by their donors. Besides, they are engaged in paid hosting, too.
Currently, 000WebHost has two Joomla hosting plans — Free Joomla Hosting and Premium Joomla Hosting. It is said that their free hosting service is even better than paid ones from its rivals. Yet, our editors take a leave to doubt this. As we all know, there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
To understand whether 000WebHost is playing some kind of a trick here, we have done a thorough research related to the prices, features, performance, and technical support of their Joomla hosting. Hopefully, this will be useful for those who are selecting a Joomla host.
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Reputation
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Feature
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Reliability
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Speed
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Support
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PriceFree Service
Price and Features
You get what you pay for. That’s why the difference between a free hosting plan and a premium hosting plan is poles apart. After all, not much should be expected from something free. The table below makes a detailed comparison between the two from a feature angle.
| Features | Free | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Disk Space | 1500MB | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 100GB/mo | Unlimited |
| Domains Allowed | 5 | Unlimited |
| FTP Accounts | 1 | Unlimited |
| MySQL Databses | 2 | Unlimited |
| Free Domain | No | Yes |
| Control Panel | Custom | cPanel |
| Ruby on Rails | No | Yes |
| Perl | No | Yes |
| Python | No | Yes |
It is obvious that Premium Joomla Hosting is far superior to Free Joomla Hosting. The free plan has but the most basic features required by Joomla hosting. With Joomla versions being upgraded over time, those who are going to choose this Free Joomla Hosting may not have a pleasant experience.
Performance
Uptime and speed are two major indicators of web hosting performance. Most web hosts guarantee 99.9% uptime. 000WebHost, however, guarantees only 99% uptime for its free plan users. No UPS, no SMTP server, or automated weekly backups. This means your website may break down anytime. However, some affordable hosting providers guarantee 99.99% uptime without downtime issues, like BlueHost.
The speed of 000WebHost Free Joomla Hosting can not be guaranteed, either. For one thing, the servers must be shared by multiple users. And the speed may go extremely slow if you add too many things on your site (cause you want to make it more content-rich). For another, the servers are located off-site. This will definitely affect the speed.
By comparison, Premium Joomla Hosting runs more stable – 99.9% uptime, timely backups and better servers. The speed may also be faster with high-performance servers and more advanced features. In a word, Premium Joomla Hosting normally delivers better performance than the unpaid one.
Technical Support
This has become an increasingly important factor in selecting a web host because problems are inevitable – the server may breakdown, the software may not be compatible or need upgrading, etc. When these problems occur, you need fast and informative technical support to help you out.
Users of Free Joomla Hosting receive absolutely no help in developing their websites or in installing scripts. In fact, they can get no interactive help at all but find answers in FAQ pages. Since building a website can be very complicated sometimes, a plan without informative support may not sound attractive to beginners.
Of course, this may not be a problem if you are willing to pay. In the case of Premium Joomla Hosting, users are promised to get helpful reply through live chat and phone. But we’d like to remind you that technical support is not guaranteed 24/7, at least not on their website.
Conclusion
To do justice to the free plan, it can be a choice for newbies since it has all you need to start a website. When your business goes bigger and needs more room, you have to pay to get everything upgraded and choose the premium Joomla hosting. That’s the way the company works. A smart move!
As usual, 3 other reliable Joomla web hosts are listed here and we hope they may be of help to you.
| Rank | Company | Highlights | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
 BlueHost
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Learn more at http://www.bluehost.com/
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$2.95/mo |
| 2 |
 InMotion
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Learn more at http://www.inmotionhosting.com/
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$3.49/mo |
| 3 |
 HostGator
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Learn more at http://www.hostgator.com/
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$3.82/mo |
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