A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported and of limited functionality. Free web hosts will either provide a subdomain (yourname.example.com) (e.g. 50megs, Byethost, Netfirms) or a directory (www.example.com/~yourname) (e.g. GeoCities). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a Second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Some free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains. Rarely, a free host may also operate as a domain name register, but their registry services are usually more expensive than others. Source : wikipedia