In this article, we are not suggesting any free WebHost (webspace providers) like 000webhost.com or InfinityFree.net. You can opt for these services. But, we have a reason for not promoting these.
Our readers are serious bloggers or wannabe bloggers who want reliability in the bandwidth of the free WebHost services. We have read many feedbacks about these mentioned services. Hence, we are going to suggest you two almost never-heard free WebHost services.
Have you heard of GitHub Pages and Google’s Blogger as viable free WebHost? Yes, WebSpace provided by these should be the most trustworthy Free WebHost Service for your website/blog. Let us learn about these rather non-conventional free WebHost options though they do not explicitly call themselves free WebHost.
Google’s Blogger as Free WebHost
Well, Google does not present its Blogger platform as a free WebHost service. In fact, they are the most reliable free WebHost service even if they do not admit it. Let me argue clearly why is it so.
Blogger has been the world’s most popular free web publishing service since the mid-2000s. While one publishes a weblog, or electronic media through Blogger, s/he first has to be familiar with Blogger as a platform. For convenience, one can easily log in to Blogger using his/her own Gmail account, write in the WYSIWYG editor, add images or videos and publish. It is as easy as that.
The person who writes on Blogger, or recently emerged WordPress (or even modern – Ghost) platforms is regarded as a blogger. In fact, not many people not-a-days say “I have a website”. In fact, many say “I have a blog” if they do anything similar to publishing on the internet.
If they have to choose a free service, why do many people opt for free blogging platform over the conventional free WebHost? The answer is simple – bandwidth. I have read many reviews on the free web host services provided by InfinityFree.net. Many said they exceeded the bandwidth limit even when installing WordPress in their accounts. Damn! Then what is the utility of such ‘so-called’ free WebHost service to the bandwidth-intensive publishing-and-reading reality of today?
Similarly, people who had been enjoying services from 000webhost complained that they have the forced advertisement placement at the bottom of the web pages.
Google’s Blogger platform does not limit its users and the blogs with bandwidth caps. When you are present online with Blogger-based blogs/websites, you will not be worrying about bandwidth limits. They do not forcibly put advertisements on your published pages. In fact, Google’s Adsense program can be implemented in your Blogger-based blog/website so that you have the freedom of making income for yourself.
You can connect your own custom domain to Blogger-based websites/blogs. This means that you can brand yourself or your organized effort with an already Google-powered Blogger platform.
Many experts also said that you get the advantage of the Gmail account’s 15 GB web space shared by the Blogger platform as well. So, if you limit the space used by Gmail, Google Drive, and so on, the rest of the space can be used on the Blogger platform.
Another thing is that Google has multiple servers across the world. I hereby confirm that you do not need to use CDN for Blogger-based websites/blogs.
Many Blogger templates/theme designers have been working hard to enable the Blogger-based websites/blogs to rank high in Google SERPs. In the past, this was not a reality in front of WordPress-based blogs. Now, it’s really different scenario. Blogger is back with a bang! SEO is possible in Blogger-based websites even if they remain satisfied with a free sub-domain provided by Blogger – *.blogspot.com.
Finally, to be honest, there are some limitations in Blogger. You do not have the advantages of compatibility with PHP, databases, etc. Well, as a blogger, you do not desperately need these when you can enjoy almost unlimited bandwidth, and an improved SEO opportunity provided by Google’s Blogger platform.
GitHub Pages as Free Webhost
GitHub pages have been offering free publishing services for individuals and organizations. They have their own approach to web publishing. As GitHub has remained an open-source-friendly and community-strong service, it is more reliable than everything else on the freedom of the internet.
You can create GitHub pages, publish the number of pages, and even blogs. You can even connect the custom domain with GitHub pages.
Let me share how we hosted a BootStrap website (with HTML, CSS and JS) on GitHub pages. First, we downloaded a nice template from Free-CSS.com. Then we created a GitHub repository where we uploaded the BootStrap files using GitHub desktop. We then propagated our Freenom domain to GitHub Pages by editing a CNAME record and 4 A records in the DNS editor of Freenom. Lastly, we validated the custom domain in GitHub pages. We also pushed HTTP to HTTPS. We are now live!
[Let us not reveal which test Freenom website it is!] You can even install WordPress in GitHub Pages. As promoted by GitHub themselves, you can opt to install Jekyll which has been emerging as a static site generator for GitHub Pages.
Okay, now I am coming to GitHub limitations. GitHub Pages have made it clear that the limitations are max. 1 GB webspace, 100 GB monthly bandwidth, and 10 builds per hour. However, these limitations are nothing compared to the disadvantages of other so-called freedom of free WebHosts.
If you feel that you can make it through Blogger and GitHub, we will be more than exalted. Otherwise, you can put your issues through the comment below. We will try to help you.