There are pros and cons for just about everything and web hosting is no different. You have the good, the bad, and the ugly!

There are several sites that offer free websites like Zoomshare, Angelfire, and Rakoservers. These are actually subdomains that they allow you to develop, such as yoursite.zoomshare.com or websitetraffic.rakoservers.com.

Some others like 20m.com and will let you host a domain for free if you buy it through them or you can point your current domain to their hosting service. 150m.com will let you host your existing domain with them for free.

The trouble with some like 150m.com is that, with the totally free service, your website is plagued with banner ads and pop-up ads. You need to upgrade to get rid of them. 20m.com is the same, although it costs only about $5 a year to disable the ads. I have signed up with both and I can't really seem to get to a decent control panel to work with my websites. I also work with CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer and cannot upload files to their server. I will keep trying to figure out both of them, to see if I can post a sample site to show potential clients what they can get with the programs.

One Free host that I have had a good history with is www.rakoservers.com , they allow you to host a subdomain and I set up websitetraffic.rakoservers.com just as an experiment and practice site. They have an outstanding cpanel (control panel) that makes it easy to work with the website. One thing that surprised me with rakoservers was that when I first established the account, I had some questions and they were able to help me out very quickly. Usually with free hosting, timely response to questions and support issues is normally reserved for paying customers.

The website I put up on rakoservers receives a lot of traffic even though it's not much of a website. So, instead of abandoning my old practice site, I have put it in the queue to redesign and republish it with a better look and fix all those flaws that I have since identified.

Now, to clarify, I'm not affiliated with Rakoservers and get no commission for touting their service, so when I say I've been happy with it, I really mean it! I'm even considering using their paid service in the future when I am ready to start on a couple of other projects. They have done a great job of providing a free service that highlights their hosting capabilities and it makes for quite a selling point when it comes time for a webmaster to make a decision about who to pay for hosting services.

If you are new to developing websites and want a good place to hone your craft, I would recommend Rakoservers because you get the experience of working like a normal paid hosting service without all those ads that the other guys put all over your site without regard for your design and organization.