Free Hosting vs Paid Hosting w/Domain

Merry Christmas everyone !

Anyway, I have a question...I just got enough money from relatives to afford paid hosting for 1 year ! Now my question to you all is what would be the perks of putting my vBulletin that already has a domain on paid hosting?

Although I have read much....I want to see personal opinions from fellow vB customers, and webmasters . Originally, it was either paid hosting with a free forum solution, or paid forum solution with free hosting....so I picked the obvious and leased vBulletin . So...now that I have purchased a domain....what would the perks be for paid hosting ? Of course...I'm not counting the bandwidth and space increments...which I really don't need, since all my space is outsourced....and I don't need much bandwidth since my site is rather small and unknown.....and I can almost guarantee you that it won't get very big.

Any replies are appreciated .

Sincerely,
cfitzarl

[Yours]

I would never recommend Free hosting for anything other than a static site to be honest. Free hosts have a server that is overloaded by about 200 times, and payed hosting doesn't do that. I currently own my own webhost and we refuse to put any more than 100 clients on a shared server, where free hosting would put hundreds of people if not thousands on it. vBulletin is server intensive to the point of if it was on free hosting you would most likely overload the server due to all of the OTHER applications running on other free client's accounts.

Let alone a free host could dissapear at any time. I see free webhosts disappear after days, weeks, or even months. Most payed webhosts rarely just "disappear" let alone if they had to shut down they would atleast give you a heads up and a backup of your files.

[cfitzarl]

Ok, thanks for the response .

[Yours]

If you need suggestions/help finding a good host just let me know =)

[Beermonster]

I wouldn't host a forum or anything else on a free host, and neither would I get a hosting package with a free domain, I would always buy my domains seperate to have full control, I once had a bad time with someone that had registered a domain for me when my hosting with him ran out he wouldn't transfer my domain back to me, I had to get Nominet involved and it still took a ages for me to get it back.

Since then I decided to setup my own hosting company and get a nice dedicated server for myself, I only provide hosting to people I know or word of mouth but it pays for my costs, maybe you should think of doing the same? you can start of with a good reseller package then upgrade as you start making more money, I can always help you out if needed

[cfitzarl]

Thank you for the advice and help . My domain isn't free...I paid for that . It's just the hosting that is. I am looking into a host right now .