How do you all feel about free hosting?

[jyy1]

Myself, I think it's a good deal for a site which isn't at the level of heavy traffic yet. I mean, why pay for something you don't use? Anyway, though, another free option is the ads thing. In that case, the hosting would be as fast as paid, but you'd have to deal with ads. Would you mind that? I'd rather stay away from third party ads.

 

[Claraviolet]

I would never trust free hosting.
Well that's because of my experience with 000webhost and I sure my opinion is a little biased now. Unless you pay something, people wouldn't give you reliable hosting service. That is what I believe now.

Free hosting will have limitations, always. It can be anything like traffic, concurrent connections or something else. So, I would never trust free hosting again and I will never opt for it, as long as I live.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

With my previous experience with strictly free hosting, is that, it is always hard to find the right service that provides top notch service, even for those free accounts. I rarely find a place that gives care for the servers that host the free accounts on them. Since I haven't been testing out web hosts in awhile, I cannot give an accurate impression on what quality is currently available.

 

[jyy1]

With my previous experience with strictly free hosting, is that, it is always hard to find the right service that provides top notch service, even for those free accounts. I rarely find a place that gives care for the servers that host the free accounts on them. Since I haven't been testing out web hosts in awhile, I cannot give an accurate impression on what quality is currently available.

I think they should care, assuming they're making money off the ads or the paying members. I mean, if the free hosting stinks, then how are they going to attract enough people to make the ads worth it or get upgrades? Well, it's just Marketing 101.

 

[Oblivion Knight]

It was hard enough finding good free hosts for vBulletin back in the day.. Finding one for XenForo would be almost impossible, I'd imagine?

If you're really strapped for cash, you're much better off asking friends or friends of friends, to see if they have a bit of resources they can "donate" to you.

However, if you can afford your own hosting even if it's a shared host to get you started (this is what I'm on!), this is always the best option - and there's some reasonable deals out there to be had. I honestly don't even notice the money going out of my account at present.

 

[jyy1]

You normally get what you pay for, assuming there are no ads present. If there are ads, then they have a responsibility to provide standard hosting at least.

However, though, the non-ad free hosting can't be "that bad" I don't think. Well, it would probably depend on how complex the site is and how much traffic. I mean, some starter site with few visitors should be able to handle free hosting.

 

[Grant]

Yeah, you're better of skipping free hosting. There is essentially no support around it, and you're prone to a lot more issues and even site attacks. As well, you probably won't have any security when it comes to someone doing a ddos attack on your site.

If your site is important to you, do not use free hosting. Trust me on this, you're better paying for a legit hosting, because you will encounter problems, and when you do, you will want the help. With free hosting, you don't get that.

 

[jyy1]

I'm on free hosting now - cause my site's bill before was nearly $200 a month and hard times have made me create a new forum on free hosting. However, I regret things. I mean, I don't think I can get my old forum back, cause I'd have to pay $200 just to get back into cPanel. Well, I could ask for the backup.

 

[Crazyjesus]

I have mixed feelings on this topic. On the one hand, it is a magnificent opportunity to learn that they offer you for free, but if you later want to take advantage of some success, they charge you too much for upgrading. On the other hand, how to start with a paid hosting if you don't know if the traffic will really cover the investment? It's a bet.

 

[Aaron12]

A free host can not handle the high traffic and can become painful for your website. I had bad experience with free host, my website got crashed every time and it become headache for me. Anyways now i move my website to a premium host and i am happy with it

 

[EagleEye]

If you're not paying for the product, then you ARE the product. Either this or the hosting will eventually run into a wall with funds and close down. And since you didn't pay them anything they have no obligation to you to inform you, or backup your site!

 

[jyy1]

If you're not paying for the product, then you ARE the product. Either this or the hosting will eventually run into a wall with funds and close down. And since you didn't pay them anything they have no obligation to you to inform you, or backup your site!

If ads are running, the hosting should be at least as good as non-ad supported shared hosting. Yes, you would be "part of the product".

 

[KennyB]

Free is always nice but there's a catch to it: you don't own it. If something happens, they can kick you at any time and that's not ok. Free hosting shouldn't be used for anything serious. It doesn't make sense to not have certainty. If you're serious about your business, then you need paid hosting. You can use free hosting for something you won't feel sorry if you end up losing.

 

[James]

You can use free hosting if you need limited resource and have limited ability to run your website as it will gives you platform to learn how to handle your website but it have some negative issues like many of them have their own ads on websites means it looks spamming for visitors and also you can't control your website freely. So it always be good to have your own hosting.

 

[Kane]

I have never used free hosting and I don't suggest anyone to use free hosting because they run their ads on your website, they give limited diskspace and bandwith, and uptime is also not guaranteed. There are already a lot of hosting providers that charge only minimal fees.

 

[Kelly5]

Myself, I think it's a good deal for a site which isn't at the level of heavy traffic yet. I mean, why pay for something you don't use? Anyway, though, another free option is the ads thing. In that case, the hosting would be as fast as paid, but you'd have to deal with ads. Would you mind that? I'd rather stay away from third party ads.

True. Free hosting plan are good for sites with small traffic and not if what you're intending to use the site for requires huge traffic. Other go for paid hosting plan. Free stuff are usually frustrating to say the least.

 

[Justin]

I guess free hosting is a good opportunity for people to launch their own website without spending a penny for hosting. While there might be too many drawback, free hosting at least give you an opportunity to learn abot webaite creation and management

 

[Nurudeen]

Free hosting isn't good for a website which the owner wants to use the most for stating up a business or even aiming to monitize with different monitization platform. For example if you are a blogger or webmaster, you can't use free hosting to get your blog approved on google AdSense to monitize it.

 

[singlej007]

Free hosting is good majorly for young blogger learning how to blog, but if you have gone far on blogging with huge traffic, free hosting will start frustrating you.

A lot of free hustling also has ads that will be displaying on your site which may not be favorable to your readers

 

[Alexandoy]

A friend had tried a free hosting for his first website. He is an artist so his web pages are great with the images. However, when I tested his site it was very slow and in a crawling pace sometimes. Maybe because the hosting is limited in speed or maybe the multiple ads on the web page is what makes the speed slowing down. After a month of trial my friend moved to a paid hosting after registering his paid domain name.