Free vs Paid?

[Naiwen]

I personally prefer free and shared hosting because I can’t afford paid.

 

[saoussen5765]

You have to monetize your forums. I like the free version but once familiar I switch to paid.

 

[nana kwasi]

Due to my inability to afford paid hosting, I personally favor free and shared

 

[Nadiel sahmen]

Due to my failure to bear paid facilitating, I actually favor free and shared

 

[Garfiun]

While setting up my websites, I tend to use free hosting, then set them up with paid.

 

[Xilia]

The biggest con to most free version of sites is the lack of adult content allowed (important for some niche) and the sometimes terrible sub-domain website name you have to have.

 

[Cory]

The biggest con to most free version of sites is the lack of adult content allowed (important for some niche) and the sometimes terrible sub-domain website name you have to have.

Jcink allows adult content under one condition, paying for Premium. It's probably cheaper to pay for Premium than an entire forum.

I've never used a paid host seeing as it's all just a hobby to me and I've never used it as a business or anything equally important.

 

[Xilia]

A lot of forums I've had in the past had adult content so I had to pay. Otherwise I was up a creek without a paddle.

 

[Smokey]

With webhosting it's always a case of 'you get what you pay for' if you don't pay anything, don't expect the best of service or reliability. If the server owner isn't making any money off hosting people, no effort will ever be put in to keep the servers up and running, meaning, your site on a free host, could disappear at any time. Look at past free forum hosts: ZetaBoards, Invisionfree & IcyBoards.

 

[Nomad]

Instead of using a free-hosted site, you can also register to free hosting companies like 000webhost. While this is not a good option for building a site,k it is of course good for people who want to test sites without spending money.

 

[Cedric]

For majority of my webmaster time I have used free software like InvisionFree and ZetaBoards when that was still online. The community and resources backing up that software made it in many cases better than a paid software. I even used paid software like IPB 3.x before and always came back to the free service of IF/ZB. When that ended, there was no longer a great comparable free software, so I kept using paid softwares ever since. I've used IPB and XenForo mainly and would recommend XenForo to anyone now.

 

[Smokey]

For majority of my webmaster time I have used free software like InvisionFree and ZetaBoards when that was still online. The community and resources backing up that software made it in many cases better than a paid software. I even used paid software like IPB 3.x before and always came back to the free service of IF/ZB. When that ended, there was no longer a great comparable free software, so I kept using paid softwares ever since. I've used IPB and XenForo mainly and would recommend XenForo to anyone now.

Pretty much the same boat as me. Although I do have both an XF and IPS license. IPS is fine but I prefer XF. Although I am currently letting a friend of mine use my IPS license for a project of theirs they aren't sure if they'll be releasing to the public or not.

 

[Arantor]

I've always used paid hosting, and I've done stuff with both free and paid scripts over the years.

I've always operated on the view that it's a hobby that I'm allowed to spend a reasonable amount of money on as long as I can afford it, and that if I couldn't afford it, I'd do something else... I've always found too many catches with free hosting, and in the case of free software I've contributed back both financially and in time to the project afterwards.

 

[ZandraJoi]

Both have their pros & cons. For those just starting out, free is the way to go while you get your feet wet. Proboards doesn’t allow you to migrate over like other platforms do. So you’d have to start over. I wish I would have known that! I’d love to go to a paid one like Xenforo but I don’t want to start over.

 

[Arantor]

Note that there is an option in between these two things - the free-software-on-paid-hosting solution, where your costs are a few bucks a month just for the hosting infrastructure.

But alas you still have the 'can't export from ProBoards' situation looming over you.