When my website first went live I had it hosted on my main Github link as a cheap and easy way to host it. This was great, no monthly hosting fees, I had custom domain emails set up that I didn’t have to pay for. Great, or so I thought.
That was until I realised that it took up to a minute to load the homepage of my portfolio site. This was not good. No one wants to wait for a minute for a website to load, I know I would close the tab if that happened. It was at this point that I realised that I needed to get actual paid hosting. I went with Big Wet Fish as this was a local company recommended by lecturers and students.
It was at this point that I saw what I had been missing out on. My portfolio site was loading in less than a second, I had proper email integration and I could add sub domains. On top of this, the support provided to me was unparalleled, I had responses and fixes in under 30 mins on most occasions.
It also turns out that some very important emails regarding placements had not come through either so this as well added to the problems from ‘free’ products. I say ‘free’ as as you really are paying for what you’re getting and it’s definitely not worth it. There’s a saying in computer science, GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out, this pretty much means whatever you put into something is what you’ll get out. We can apply that saying to this situation. This is my future and an attempt to score a placement with a company for a year, if I put ‘free’ products(nothing) in, I’m going to get ‘nothing’ out, at least nothing of good quality. Whereas if I invest in opportunities to pay for hosting and emails, I’m going to get a whole lot more out of it. It’s all about seeing things like this as investments as opposed to something you have to buy, this isn’t the case everytime of course, you just have to be smart and wise.
I have definitely seen the worth of investing in hosting and professional email services. This is something I won’t be going without in the future