Free Hosting

[Jayson]

Who uses it? Who has in the past? What is your take on it? How does it compare to paid? What kind of free service did you use? How did that company make money?

 

[Uncrowned Guard]

I used free hosted services like Invision Free for my first forums and such, but they clearly make money via ads. For true hosting plans, I always avoided free hosts as they were either terrible or offered so little that made you upgrade to an overpriced model as soon as the site went live. Most also like to trap you by offering poor solutions to pull your data from their service to move to a better-paid service or they charge you to release the data.

 

[zoldos]

Who uses it? Who has in the past? What is your take on it? How does it compare to paid? What kind of free service did you use? How did that company make money?

Way back in the day, I used ProBoards for a free, hosted forum. It was complete junk. No real Admin area, forced ads that you could remove by paying money, very limited moderator abilities, etc. I dropped that pretty quick and taught myself how to set up and host my own forum with quality, paid hosting.

Never looked back.

 

[Kyng]

I used InvisionFree/ZetaBoards from 2004 until 2018. They had their limitations (e.g. forced ads, couldn't export data), but they were free and they didn't require much technical know-how in order to run them.

I think they're a good way to get into forumming, but with hindsight, I probably shouldn't have stayed with them for 14 years!

 

[Jayson]

I used free hosting to make a static guitar lesson site in the 2000s. It was fun, but it was very primitive.

Way back in the day, I used ProBoards for a free, hosted forum. It was complete junk. No real Admin area, forced ads that you could remove by paying money, very limited moderator abilities, etc. I dropped that pretty quick and taught myself how to set up and host my own forum with quality, paid hosting.

Never looked back.

I learned how to self host around 2008. That was the first year I paid for hosting (aside from some silly "internet biz in a box" thing) Well, first I set up a blog, but at some point I setup a phpBB forum with Softalicious. It was a disaster, though, cause I couldn't understand spambot prevention.

 

[zoldos]

I used free hosting to make a static guitar lesson site in the 2000s. It was fun, but it was very primitive.


I learned how to self host around 2008. That was the first year I paid for hosting (aside from some silly "internet biz in a box" thing) Well, first I set up a blog, but at some point I setup a phpBB forum with Softalicious. It was a disaster, though, cause I couldn't understand spambot prevention.

I hear ya. My first wildly successful site was started in 2009, and ended up with 4000+ members. I don't recall it having a captcha challenge. Or maybe a simple one. I got into the templates and added my own.

 

[Roman]

When I started my first forum project 7 years ago, I made use of free hosting services and it was very efficient for me back then but later I had to stop using it. This is because I needed to upgrade on what I was doing.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I've used free hosting in the past, I think it's great for those who are new to owning a website and for those on a budget. However, if you want your community to grow you'll need to eventually make the move to paid hosting since you may exceed the limits set by free hosting.

 

[Nomad]

I don't use free hosting, however, I have used free hosting in the past for my test sites and testing clients' sites. I used 000webhost and I was really happy with the hosting performance. Despite being free, it really worked well. There were few issues but that was fine because I was not paying any money

 

[zoldos]

I've used free hosting in the past, I think it's great for those who are new to owning a website and for those on a budget. However, if you want your community to grow you'll need to eventually make the move to paid hosting since you may exceed the limits set by free hosting.

Yes of course. My very first site was actually hosted in a friend's basement on a 56k modem in 1997. I blew it up and quickly moved to paid hosting.

 

[Sevik]

It is more of a nightmare than a free service. It will drive you mad in no time due to very slow internet speed and downtime.

Another problem is they vanish forever one day and you will have no option to get it back.

 

[Monster Masterpiece]

I don't use free hosting, however, I have used free hosting in the past for my test sites and testing clients' sites. I used 000webhost and I was really happy with the hosting performance. Despite being free, it really worked well. There were few issues but that was fine because I was not paying any money

Free Web Host is for trial of the script in free mode before installation on a server. Of course, to avoid discontinue of the program you need to upgrade later to remove ads and having performant server otherwise it doesn't last hole life.

 

[Sevik]

Some big player bought out 000Webhost. It is an old website and was very useful once. Then all those scamsters starting misusing their service causing a lot of problems. Now it is another junk space on the internet.

 

[Monster Masterpiece]

Some big player bought out 000Webhost. It is an old website and was very useful once. Then all those scamsters starting misusing their service causing a lot of problems. Now it is another junk space on the internet.

It does not differ a lot if you are running free hosting or paid for hosting to run a scamster site. This belongs to the attitude of the owner if he is someone honest or someone grabbing some people investing to the project and run away with their funds.

 

[Nolan]

Free hosting isn't worth it because of the drawbacks in using it for your forum. Paid hosting will always be my first priority for my website.