"Free" is a word that makes people understandably cautious, especially when it comes to something as important as where a business website actually lives. So it's a fair question: if hosting is free, what's the catch? The honest answer is, for a site built the way this one is, there genuinely isn't one, but it's worth understanding why.
Why hosting can actually be free
Traditional hosting charges a monthly fee because you're renting space and processing power on someone else's server, running full time whether your site gets ten visitors a day or ten thousand. A modern, well built site doesn't need that kind of setup. Platforms like Cloudflare Pages host static and modern web content across a global network at no cost, because the resources needed are genuinely minimal compared to older, heavier website platforms.
This isn't a discounted introductory rate that jumps up after twelve months, a pattern worth watching for with some hosting providers. It's simply how the platform is built to work.
What you're actually getting
A proper content delivery network, meaning the site loads quickly wherever in the world someone's viewing it from, a valid SSL certificate as standard rather than a paid extra, and hosting reliable enough that genuine downtime is rare. None of these are compromises made in exchange for the hosting being free, they're standard parts of the platform.
Worth checking: if a hosting provider is charging a recurring fee for a straightforward business site, ask exactly what that fee covers. Sometimes it's genuinely justified. Often it's simply the default price, whether or not it reflects what's actually being provided.
What actually costs money
The one ongoing cost that doesn't disappear is domain registration, typically under £15 a year, paid directly to a domain registrar rather than through a web developer or agency. That's a separate thing from hosting entirely, and it's worth making sure you're the one who owns it, registered in your own name, rather than in an agency's account where it could become a problem if that relationship ever ends.
What to check before switching
Not every existing site can move to this kind of hosting without some rebuilding, it depends on how the current site is built. It's worth having someone look at the current setup honestly before assuming a straightforward switch is possible, rather than finding out halfway through that more work is involved than expected.
The bottom line
Free hosting isn't a gimmick when the underlying platform is genuinely built to support it at no cost. The real question worth asking about any hosting, free or paid, is whether you own your own domain and code, and whether you're actually getting what you're paying for, whatever that price happens to be.