Free Hosting is not free, there is ever a catch. I just dono why people never understand this. I mean there just has to be a catch! I remeber when we started offering free hosting a few months ago, and we put banners at the bottom of the pages, you would be surprised at how many complaints we got everyday from people screaming at us to remove the banners! Yet we were offering very meany features, including Php and MySQL! Its crazy the way people want it all for nothin at all in exchnge!

Please answer in the poll above what you think

As far as I'm concerned free hosting is a scam. Anybody that falls for it deserves what they get.

Personally I pay just over $250 a year for my hosting and I insist that all my customers go with a decent web host - somebody that is in the business professionally, that provides greater than 99% uptime (and can prove it), provides nightly backups (archived offsite) and 24/7 technical support is the bare minimum requirement for a hosting service.

I'm a webmaster, not a hosting provider.... I make my money by being honest, forthright and professional - - I expect my customers to be professional and I certainly expect all my providers to be professional - else they won't last a single heartbeat....

Free host is a services, which provides you free hosting, and you as acustomer provides otheir stervices what hoster prefer

Not all free hosting is a scum. I dont like it when people refer to outting adaverts at the bottom as a scam! The fact is I have given you free hosting, with ou without the banner!

i some times use geocites free service .... and there add banners dont bother me much ....

You always get what you pay for. And there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

I agree, you get what you pay for. I am happy to pay a fair price for service and the provider our site Ask Uncle Terry is with provides excellent service.

I think there's a way to offer free hosting without the ads. Simply put, it was the old Brinkster model...free hosting with limited ASP functionality (the big disabled feature was no CDO/CDONTS) and if you wanted more, you could pay for it after trying it.

Free hosting is also not meant for anyone who's building a serious website (i.e. a business website). It's meant for the guy who wants to throw up an e-wrestling federation site up or a site about his hobby or a "hi, this is me, Bob. I live in Fargo, North Dakota. This is my wife, Jackie. These are our beautiful children, Jill and Player To Be Named Later. Here's our cat, Roadkill. And here's a random collection of animated GIFs, poems, and other crap that has no useful purpose other than to waste five minutes of your life. " So if you're throwing a business website on a free host, you deserve to do no business whatsoever.

The other major problem with free hosts is the advertisers themselves. They're usually run-of-network ads for crappy products and services or "YOU ARE THE OVER 10,385,434TH VISITOR TO THIS WEBSITE! CLICK NOW TO WIN A PRIZE! (After filling out 8 forms, giving away your confidential information, selling your first-born, putting a second mortgage on your house through We Screw You Financial Savings Corporation, and about 10 other things.) Quite a few of them are spyware threats as well.

In other words, free hosting with ads isn't a scam, but it's not a good business model either and it's been done to death. So I agree with your customers in this case...lose the ads.

There is such a thing as free hosting, it's when a host who has some extra space gives to non-profit sites.

There are 1 or 2 good free hosting companies.

As far as I'm concerned free hosting is a scam. Anybody that falls for it deserves what they get.

Well, not all people want to have adsense and a big blog about their dog. Some are just starting out and want to see how everything works, paying for that shouldnt happen on what we call our free internet. I personally have seen a sesisable decrease in the past few years in free hosting and free sub domains, but i`m sure people are still looking for it.

And in my early days, 5-6 years ago, i was able to find some nice free hosters, the thing was they were all local, with my countries subdomain, whenever i looked for an intl i was **** in the ****. So i guess thats where you should look. Not sure though, havent used one in a while.

The reason why free hosting is important for us hosting companies is because it provides us with a valuable target group of individuals that can very easily become paying clients later on. The trick is to treat them right, help them develop their business and then they will realise they need a more serious image and functionality then they will pay you then you will remove the adverts. But as long as they want it free, we need a way to be able to pay our server bills. Get what am saying?

Originally Posted by rpbu.com

There are 1 or 2 good free hosting companies.

Free hosting can not be good because everyone knows the benefit of paid hosting over free hosting so, mostly people opt for paid hosting. If free hosting would have been good then paid hosting companies might have gone down.

It depends on what you mean by good. For someone biulding a website about their family and favourate food, free hosting can be very gooood! For someone with a site about exporting textiles, free hosting can be baaaad! So, free hosts like us exist because of the former, not the latter!

I know exactly what your saying, don't anyone realize that when people do start making money 'online'... There will be 'no need' for it anyway?

my 2 cents.

www.4seasonhosting.com is giving away absolutely free hosting as a promotion for the first 1000 subsciber.
the way I see it is that Free is always good. nothing to loose right???

Nothing is free in this world. It would be nice to get free hosting but it wont happen. I feel better buying hosting because I am in control not somebody else.

Is adding banners at the bottom of a page too much to ask?

Frankly, if the host is to survive, they have to get "consideration" (an old legal term). There needs to be some sort of payment (ads, actions, etc.) to counter the costs of hosting.

I've had several sites disappear from "free hosts." I never put a serious site on free space, though I have a pretty active one hosted by http://www.peoplespace.com for now. It's been stable for a long time, but their business isn't hosting: it's their site. That is probably the difference.