Can you create a website for free?

Every freelancer, self-employed entrepreneur with a tight start-up budget or hobby website maker sometimes wonders: Can I create a free website? In this blog post, we will show you that this is indeed possible and how you can easily do it. But unfortunately there are a few catches, because putting a website online and keeping it online involves costs! We explain this in detail in this blog post.

Creating a website yourself is free

There are a whole range of options for creating a website, regardless of whether you program your website yourself. You choose a content management system or a website builder. In most cases, you can start designing and creating your website for free.

Program your website yourself

As soon as you have some experience in programming and finally want to start creating your website yourself, you can of course program it yourself. The tools available for this are almost all free, such as Visual Studio from Microsoft. SciTe, or simply Notepad++. After all, you don't need much to create a website, tools like Visual Studio are only good because they contain many tools that make the work easier.

You can also download ready-made templates from sites like Bootstrap, which you can then put together yourself to create your own website with minimal effort.

Content management system

A content management system is recommended in most cases and scenarios and can be used on a large scale. It is particularly user-friendly, even in cases such as WordPress and Joomla. And can also be used by beginners to create a website without programming. With a content management system, you cannot start locally without installing a tool like WAMP for it. With a hosting package, you can start immediately on the web.

Website construction kit

Another popular option for creating a website is to use a website builder. Website builders are platforms that provide tools and templates that allow users without technical knowledge to create attractive and functional websites. These builders are often user-friendly and do not require any programming knowledge. They offer a variety of templates and functions from which users can choose what best suits their needs.

These are hosted internally by the website builder and are closed source. In other words, they cannot simply be downloaded and transferred to another party. If you create the website with it, you are tied to the website builder for as long as you want to keep the website in that form. For some users this is not a problem, but you should take this into account. You can then register a domain name with us, which will then point to the Website Builder in the DNS.

First costs: The domain name

A unique domain name is essential for the online presence of your website. A domain name is the address where your website can be found, e.g. www.jouwbedrijf.com. While there are some services that offer free domain names, these often have restrictions, such as including the name of the service in your domain name (e.g. yourcompany.wordpress.com). If you want a professional appearance and full control over your domain name, you will usually need to purchase a domain name. The cost of this varies depending on the domain extension you choose (.com, .nl, .org, etc.), but can range from a few euros to tens of euros per year.

The second cost: putting a website online and keeping it online

In addition to the costs for the domain name, there are also costs for putting your website online and keeping it online. These costs include web hosting, i.e. the space on a server on which your website is stored and accessible to visitors. While there are free web hosting services, these often have limitations such as advertising on your website, limited bandwidth and storage space, and less reliable performance. If you want a professional look and feel and need more control and reliability, it usually makes more sense to invest in paid web hosting. At MijnHostingPartner.com, we have an affordable package for you that gives you sufficient and fast specifications for your website for every budget.

So get your own website up and running now at an affordable price! With hosting from MijnHostingPartner.nl.