Free Forum Services

[jyy1]

Contrary to what some think, there are still quite a few still around. Nonetheless, a major one, IcyBoards, went out of business and ZetaBoards was bought out by Tapatalk. Anyway, though, the reason for the failure of the two I believe was ad-blockers. In other words, people are simply blocking out the banners making the ads unprofitable.

 

[Martinsx]

The question is what free forum services would fetch for your site compared to what paid forum services would fetch for you as well. Also, the cost of paid forum services should be considered as well with one's financial capabilities.

Free forum services are good especially for new websites owners who are still trying to get their site up and running, but paid forum services would offer the best services that would make your site reach its peak.

 

[Timothy]

Oh, I went that route and never got much from it. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

 

[Alex]

prophpBB also went out of business (so I have been lead to believe). prophpbb.com now is forwarded onto tapatalk.com, they offered free, phpBB hosting until TapaTalk took over. You get the service you pay for, even if it's nothing so therefore you have to make the right decision on what suits your needs. Free Forum Hosting is okay for new webmasters starting out and want to get there discussion board or even website up and running, but paid would be the way to go if you noticed a significant increase in activity.

 

[Martinsx]

Oh, I went that route and never got much from it. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

If you are using free forum services, it only indicates that you don't have any long term plans for your online business because such services would never give you the best help in getting your site to mean anything to Google.

 

[bharath]

Although many of them not using such forum services because of cheap domain and hosting companies have came forward for better experience.
Big forums only died out then what could you tell with these small forums which are created by us.

 

[Martinsx]

Although many of them not using such forum services because of cheap domain and hosting companies have came forward for better experience.
Big forums only died out then what could you tell with these small forums which are created by us.

Exactly, when you have a long term purpose and plans for your forum or blog, you must have plans to invest money on it and not use free hosting services and other free tools to help you get your business going. Such free services will end up killing your business.

 

[bharath]

Exactly, when you have a long term purpose and plans for your forum or blog, you must have plans to invest money on it and not use free hosting services and other free tools to help you get your business going. Such free services will end up killing your business.

Exactly, when you have a long term purpose and plans for your forum or blog, you must have plans to invest money on it and not use free hosting services and other free tools to help you get your business going. Such free services will end up killing your business.

It doesn't meant for money to host, but it really sucks the mud using free services. I tried so many and they keep something into the host or with their scripts.
Tired out using so many free forum hosts and never to use in life, including blogging or subdomains.

 

[jyy1]

It doesn't meant for money to host, but it really sucks the mud using free services. I tried so many and they keep something into the host or with their scripts.
Tired out using so many free forum hosts and never to use in life, including blogging or subdomains.

It probably depends on how serious you are. I mean, many people running a hobby site won't mind ads..

 

[bharath]

It probably depends on how serious you are. I mean, many people running a hobby site won't mind ads..

Well everyone is serious about their services, but these free hosts comes with good things in the beginning, but later they go worse as people rises in their database.
Ive used my domain with free hosting, but it never worked for a long time and atleast 6 months would be horrible.

 

[Alex]

Adding to my post earlier, averagely speaking I have now had a years using of TapaTalk as prophpbb merged into TapaTalk Community. My favourite hosting provider has now changed to TapaTalk, you can do an awful lot for free that some other free hosts don't provide. Check the features out below.

However, reading through this topic, I agree with Timothy. You recieve better service, hosting and customer support depending on what you pay for.


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[Ash]

It was sad to see IcyBoards go down because they have been around for a while and they were a great service to those that wanted free hosting for a forum. It's easy to see why they had to close down though. Like you said, ad-blockers aren't great for business. And they definitely did not have the funds to compete with some of the bigger free forum hosts

 

[WhiteHouse]

They should enlighten people or send some kind of memo to people not to enable ads blocker, or what do you think?

 

[Claraviolet]

I didn't know that Icyboards is no longer working. They offer free MyBB hosting and I feel bad about this. Well, based on the same concept, we have createmybb now. It's a good alternative and they have been online for almost 10 years now.

I won't be able to opt for such free services as you won't be having the entire control. So, I prefer to stick to my own paid hosting for now.

 

[Kane]

What am I missing here. What do you actually mean by free forum services, do you mean free hosting for forums or free forum scripts? I have tried a couple of free forum scripts and I really liked them. As far as free hosting is considered, I have never opted for free hosting.

 

[Spicywilfred]

Free forum services is not strong or really standard hence it can short down at anytime. But some people have testified to enjoying free hosting.

 

[Patrik]

it could be avoided by simply installing an anti adblocker plugin, pushing people to either see ads or find another website, i'm pretty sure lot of people will understand that ads are one of the main reasons for an income for websites

 

[Ralphjoe]

It will be very interesting for their to exist on free from services whereby anyone can go there and set up your free forum without any charges whatsoever to them.