AdSense and Free Web-hosting

First... Google AdSense rules

For sometime Google didn’t want their ads competing with any other types. It also didn’t want their ads been unduly ‘influenced’ by other ads. So any free web-hosting service that required that you displayed their ads on your site was a no-no. Google however, has recently relaxed its policy on competing ads sites so there is a small possibility that you might get away with using free web-hosting services that includes ads to host AdSense content... but it could be risky.

But not all free web-hosting services demand that you display their ads on your website, anyway. Therefore there is a possibility that you could actually use a free webhost service to host your AdSense site without risking rejection by Google.

About free web-hosting

Web-hosting has become a very competitive market in recent years. In an attempt to attract more customers, some have decided to offer free web-hosting services.
But these companies still have to make money and so many of them have had no option but to offer the most basic web-hosting service available.

 

Every free service has restrictions

No matter how attractive a free web-hosting service may seem there’s always going to be some kind of restriction on the quality and level of service they provide. For example free web-hosting services usually don’t provide you with own domain name.
Meaning that even though you might be seeking your own specific URL, you might be lumbered with one also containing your web-hosts name.
The presence of you web-hosts name in your URL does not give a good first impression to the people that visit your site. How can you expect people to take your AdSense business seriously if it looks like you’ve been cheap? Nothing gives away a websites background more that an attached web-hosts name to its URL.

 

Limits your capacity to expand

Free web-hosting providers also tend to have very tight bandwidth restrictions. They allow only a certain number of people to visit your site. Another major restriction is that they often restrict the amount of web space available to you.
You may be able to tolerate and overcome these restrictions but they ultimately affect your capacity to expand. What about if your site was successful and you wanted more people to visit your site? What about if you wanted to add more pages to your ever growing AdSense website?

Most free webhosts services lack advanced features

While it is possible to find the odd service that provides reasonable web space and offer generous bandwidths it is unlikely to have enough advanced features. Often necessary features like MySQL databases will probably be missing as well as any support for scripting languages such as PHP and Perl.
First it may not matter much, but if you’re thinking of ever expanding (and all successful business have to expand sometime), then the lack of features of free web-host providers is going to hurt you. But if you are willing to compromise you may just find a good deal.

Here's a table showing some of the best free web-hosting services around:

Package & URL	Space	Bandwidth	Adverts?	Own Domain name?	Comments
X10Hosting http://www.x10hosting.com/	500MB	1GB	No	No	Small company, risky if chosen.
Bravenet.com http://www.bravenet.com/	50MB	1.5GB	Yes	Yes	There are ads on free sites
Mysite.com http://www.mysite.com/	50MB	1GB	Yes	Yes	Another with ads on site
One.com http://www.one.com/	3GB	Unlimited	No	Yes	Site looks poor. Have to pay setup fee.
NX Serve http://www.nxserve.net/	1GB	10GB	No	Yes?	Free .co.cc domain? Small company, risky.
Freespace http://www.free-space.net/	200MB	2GB	No	Yes	Need to buy own domain name
Google sites http://sites.google.com/	10GB	N/A	Yes	No	Can’t get to the code. Don't own domain name.