Many people are surprised to learn about Google web hosting, and how simple it is to use. Google has had some sort of site hosting capability for several years now, starting out with Google Pages, which has since morphed into Google Sites.
This is a free site building platform hosted by Google that enables you to build a simple web site in minutes with many features that you’ll be eager to use, like videos, photos, calendars, and others. They have oodles of interesting templates you can use to give your site a unique look, and in a variety of formats as well, such as wikis, small business, organization, personal web pages and more.
They are hosted on Google’s clouds, so the reliability and uptime is high. You could even attach your own domain name if you wanted to, though this can be something you may want to think twice about.
This is easy web hosting for those who may be very new, or just need a very simple, free site solution quickly. They are very easy to create, and also very simple to edit. There is more to the story though and there are a number of disadvantages that should be discussed here as well.
No server access – You have no access to the server, so if you had wanted to perhaps use an application on your site that pulls from a database, you’re out of luck in that regard.
Size limits – There are fairly small space limitations on this site builder. It may well be enough for a small, personal site, but anything nearing or over 100mb could be in for trouble.
Many unsupported file types – They have quite a few file types that are not allowed or supported. This can limit you in a number of ways.
Lots of code no-nos! - They limit severely the types of code and programming languages you are allowed to employ. This also can be very restrictive.
To their credit, they do have an upgrade available, which does take you to another level of functionality, but this is where the “free” ends.
Another aspect of Google web hosting that needs to be discussed is why you would want to host a site there in the first place. Easy web hosting doesn’t have to come with so many shackles in place. Hosting a site on Google Sites (or any other free hosting site) comes with a price. Not always a monetary one, but one associated with the freedom to set up your site or blog as you would like.
Even a very cheap web hosting package that might run you $4 a month would afford you the ability to set up a far more robust site or blog, with plenty of room to grow. Not to mention all the extra bells and whistles you’d be able to employ very easily. (Especially if this was a WordPress blog, with all their amazing plugins!) It just begs the question why would you want to limit yourself going in?
The answer, at least for some, is that they want to start small, simple and free. If that’s you, then go for it! Google Sites are very easy to set up, and you’ll have a site in no time. If you have bigger plans, look into setting up a site or blog on a domain you own.
