It really depends on what your needs are and what you are trying to accomplish. There are advantages and disadvantages for both paid and free web hosting.

Free Web Hosting

Advantages:

- The most obvious benefit is that it's free.

- You can use your free web space to practice programming. Not many, but some free web hosting plans support a programming language such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Coldfusion or JSP.

- A free web hosting plan is great for creating a small personal website.

Disadvantages:

- A bunch of free web hosts place their banner and text ads on your website.

- With a large number of free hosts, your website is placed in a sub-domain or a folder (www.yourwebsite.freehosting.com or www.freehosting.com/yourwebsite) which sometimes results in poor search engine rankings.

- Because they are offering free hosting, the majority of free web hosts can not afford to offer 24/7 or any support.

- Very few free web hosts offer a control panel with their plans.

- Another flaw with free web hosts is many don't allow FTP access which is an obstacle if you have many files to upload.

- Free web hosting plans don't offer much disk space or data transfer. This could be a problem if you have a lot of large files or if your website generates a lot of traffic.

Paid Web Hosting

Advantages:

- With paid hosting, you will now have any unwanted text or banner ads placed on your website.

- Your website will not be placed in a sub-domain or folder. You will have your own domain name (yourwebsite.com) which will not only result in better search engine rankings, it also looks more professional.

- Most paid web hosts offer 24/7 support.

- A lot of paid web hosting plans offer a control panel such as cPanel, Vdeck, Plesk or Ensim which offer features like web stats, the ability to password protect directories, and the ability to create web based email accounts.

- Most paid web hosts offer FTP access.

- The majority of paid web hosting plans support a couple programming languages such as PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, Coldfusion and JSP.

- With the more disk space and data transfer you get with paid hosting, you can add more files to your website and it can handle more traffic.

Disadvantages:

- The only disadvantage here is that it's not free.

Brian Shoemaker is the owner of the web hosting directory Find-A-Web-Host.com (offering free script installations) with web hosts offering affordable web hosting.