8 reasons not to build a free website

Most businesses prefer to build their site on a free platform rather than a paid one.

Today, we explain in 8 points why it is better to create a site on a paid CMS if you want to grow in the market and achieve your goals.

1. You never own a free website

You may have created all the content on your site, but be aware that it does not belong to you. It is in fact the property of the hosting provider — that is the condition for not paying for your site.

And if the hosting provider ever goes down, you will lose all your content. You will have no recourse, because your site contained only professional data.

2. An unprofessional image

A free site does not have particularly sophisticated tools like those found on paid CMS platforms, and most are not responsive — meaning the sites do not display correctly on smartphones and tablets, which is an enormous handicap. There are also numerous template coding errors that result in slow page loading and poor display quality. In other words, you risk losing a great many visitors, as loading issues are simply unbearable for internet users.

Presenting a site built on a free platform to your clients does not give a very professional image. You lose all credibility and can be sure that most clients will not have enough confidence in you to purchase your products or use your services.

3. A free site is never entirely free

When you decide to use a free platform, the logic is that you will not pay anything. But be aware that when using this type of site, obtaining even a minimum of useful tools will still require spending money — most often through a monthly subscription. The only worthwhile features are either limited or paid-for.

4. No backups possible

Unlike a paid site, a free site does not offer the ability to make backups. There is no need to spell out just how inconvenient this is: if something goes wrong one day and you lose all your content — your client files, your overall brand identity — you will not be able to recover any of it and all your work will need to be started from scratch.

5. Very poor search engine rankings

Indeed, the SEO of a free site is no match for that of a paid site. The tools made available to users of these platforms are not as developed and do not allow for proper SEO optimisation.

You cannot improve your SEO with this type of platform — it forces you to start from a subdomain and traps your SEO within its own directory. You can bid farewell to Google for good, as it grants no credibility to these sites and has no regard for them.

Do not forget that SEO is a key driver of growth for your site — without sufficiently impactful rankings, you will not be able to develop your online presence and get noticed by most search engines.

6. Very few features

With a free site, you do not have the ability to keep as much content as you wish — at some point you will hit the storage limit and be forced to pay. You only have access to a few basic tools, and because the platform is very limited, it prevents you from performing certain actions that would allow you to improve your site. Consider that there are few or no modules that allow you to generate leads. Yet, as you know, this is the most important part if you want to achieve your goals and grow your business.

7. Unlimited advertising

Nothing is more irritating for your visitors than finding themselves confronted with a dozen adverts on your site. All free sites insert advertising on your pages in bulk in order to generate revenue. Once again, this practice is completely unprofessional, annoys visitors and can lead them to leave your site before even reading the content.

8. A significant financial loss

Using a free site will only bring you complications. Remember that at the outset you chose a free site to avoid spending money — but in the end, to obtain all the features available on the platform you still have to spend a certain amount, and on top of that you lose out significantly through all the problems you encounter during its use. Every error requires professionals to help you fix it, and these services cost far more than paying for a good, reliable site from the outset. All the reasons we have seen above prove that you will never be able to acquire clients this way. You take on considerable risk and waste a great deal of time.

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The 8 reasons you have just read prove that it is wiser to use a paid site rather than a free one. It will bring you security, comfort, independence, the capacity to grow your business, and professionalism. Make this initial investment by creating a site on a paid CMS, and your choice will pay for itself very quickly.

Updated 9 September 2018

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