Is it ok to use free hosting?

[happyhippo]

To save some money and be able to have more websites i'm considering using free hosting, How is this SEO wise? will having a domain like "mysite.freehost.com" damage my ranings to much to consider it?... i was also looking at the free co.nr domains - they are redirect domains - i can only host the domain on their server - not the website, is this bad for search engine rankings?

[incrediblehelp]

Sure you can do it, but ultimately you will never have full control of the website and it is essentially owned by the Free Hoster. I would never do it. If you cant afford hosting you may want to re-look at your business plan.

[happyhippo]

Thanks for that --- I'm considering free hosting cause it get's a tad expensive when owning 10 plus sites with .com domains, All my sites that i use lots of time on im using paid hosting and domain. But then there is the smaller sites i create in a day or two - and having paid hosting and domain get's expensive when i'm not sure if these smaller sites are gonna attract enought visitors to be cost effective.

[incrediblehelp]

Depending on size and bandwidth, you should be able to host 15-30 websites for under $50 a month. Look into www.hostgator.com

[nullvariable]

if you are experimenting with a new site and you don't want to pay for the domain name yet you could always use a subdomain to get started and then 301 it to a real domain if it does pickup some traffic. This can cause a slight issue with traffic but its a lot cheaper than buying a domain name.