Free Hosting Advantages

[Hoosierhunter]

For those who offer free hosting for websites, what do you get out of it? I was seriously considering setting up a personal website, and I am curious how free hosting services make money to stay up.

[monaghan]

Free hosting is generally

• by placing ads on "customer" sites
• by requiring you to join and contribute to a forum with ads (post to host)
• good will from the owner (usually doesn't last for long though)
• subsidised by paying customers

Many free hosts don't make enough to stay up for long and simply vanish overnight when their reseller account is terminated though non-payment

Personally I don't like the idea of the post to host as you are required to join a forum and contribute to it and be exposed to the host's ads. Many of these seem to imply (but don't state outright!) that you have to click the ads (which of course would be click fraud) to keep the site running.

My personal opinion is that given the low cost of hosting these days (you can get a reasonable web hosting account per month for less than a pint of beer / packet of smokes / gallon of petrol), then why spoil your web site with ads or why spend your time contributing to a forum full of ads that's been setup just to create revenue for your host when you could be on a forum of your choice (or even doing something better) ?

[MasterMind]

In my personal experience as admin to a large free hosting service online (for 4 years now), what they get in return are the numerous links to the mother company, not related to hosting/domains services but social venues and endorsing fully featured PHP/ASP websites for a single, non-intrusive text link in the main page of a hosted domain that every user ads manually at their convenience.

[paperclip]

Many offer the freehosting with non intrusive ads that pretty much blend in with your own site. Most free hosted sites are personal sites that paying for hosting would be rather dumb, I think. Mine for example I just have it because is free, and therefore wouldn't have one if I had to pay for it because is unnecessary.

I'm planning a useful website to hopefully generate clients, therefore, once built it will go into a reliable paid host to get a clean domain name, etc.

[kelkat]

I can promise you that they are getting something out of it. Very few people do something for free these days!

[rox]

i wonder how much does it cost and how much do you get paid back when you host free websites for people..anyone have an idea?

[saubryn]

If you're certain you want to use a free host, I'd pick one thats been around a long time so you can have some confidence that they won't disappear and leave you with no site overnight.

Post to Host sites are growing in popularity these days - people don't want ads on their sites, and posting a few times a month is a small price to pay for some free server space in my opinion.

I'd recommend BuiltToLearn.com - they have been around a long time, and their requirements aren't excessive.

[webme]

I think it is the free advertisement that you got. Paying for advertisement is quite expensive and ads can only last a month. If you offer free hosting, people will talk about your hosting and spread the word, use your site and until they are using it, you are getting free ads. You can get paying customers from there if your services are OK.

[parise]

You have to weigh out whether or not the advertising on the site is going to be obtrusive to your site. If it's a personal site, probably not so much. If you are selling something, it might be an issue. Of course, many of the free sites do not allow commercial sites.

[sam]

So should I get a free hosting site before i get a paid one? Im not sure if thats a great idea

[monaghan]

Originally Posted by sam

So should I get a free hosting site before i get a paid one? Im not sure if thats a great idea

See my earlier reply and make your own decision

[Dave White]

IMO, you should always go for a paid hosting service instead of a free one. You learn a lot of things when interacting with the technical support staff which you won't learn in free hosting. There are very cheap hosting plans available in the market.

[HostQuack]

They make revenue from advertisements. They can also make the site bigger and put their paid hosting plans in it.

[brian]

It's not so easy to monetise via ads, though - I've seen a lot of people buy into hosting free services, and then sell out, because the revenues just were not there.

2c.