Safaricom offers free web hosting services for new clients. The package is called Lite and lasts for one year. But one has to purchase a domain in order to get the free plan. Normally, the Lite plan costs Ksh1,300 per year.
The free plan has the following features:
- 50 MB Space
- Free Email Security
- 5 Email Accounts
- 3 Sub Domains
- 2 FTP Accounts
- Free Website Builder
- Unlimited Bandwidth
From the available features above, traffic of 20,000 page views per month can be sustained. I always advice that instead of someone going elsewhere to pay Ksh2,000 per year for hosting a new website, he can buy a domain from Safaricom and host for free for one year. A new domain is not capable of getting more than 5,000 visits per year.
To buy a domain name, here is the amount it will cost you at Safaricom.
.co.ke domain—Ksh1,300 per year
.com domain—Ksh999 per year
.net domain—Ksh 999 per year
.org domain—Ksh999 per year
.info domain—Ksh999 per year
.co.ke and .com are the most popular domain names. To start hosting, visit Safaricom web hosting page and select Shared Hosting, then select on Lite Package.
One advantage of free hosting is that it gives you time to look for money to pay for premium hosting. The one-year grace period is enough to get enough funds to pay for up to 5 years of hosting. In addition, you will never be stressed on how to pay for a website that does not generate money—new websites often don’t generate cash because their content take time to be indexed or rank below authority sites.
Finally, free hosting will give you enough time to know how good a particular web hosting company is. If by the end of the expiry period, you are not convinced by Safaricom’s services,you can migrate to another hosting company.