What do you look for in "FREE" hosting?

Heya! just wondering what you think free hosting needs to improve on?

I think the should cut the specifications, and double the reliability...

I think they should not put adds on but give smaller space..

yer, thats also a good idea.....

Free hosting would last for a long time if hosts and hostees would accept that they don't need 10GB space and unlimited bandwidth. Take a look at tripod and geocities, they have been providing free hosting for years.

If a new host starts up and *only* offers 25MB space and 1GB transfer, don't knock it. Chances are you wouldn't even use that amount. I think too many dream that their site will be huge and ask for megaspace and bandwidth.

If you *really* have a site that requires the big stuff, then pay for it ;)

I look for....
-98% Uptime
-No Ads
-Good Support
-Good Forum Community :)

I used to be satisfied with Portland back in the day.

15MB diskspace
100MB datatransfer
PHP/MySQL
No ads

The kids these days expecting 1GB or more of space and 10+ GB of transfer for free just completely blows my mind.

Exactly, when I offered free hosting 1/100 customers actually used up more than 5MB space, yet almost every one of them asked for upgrades.

Free hosts need to stay around for more than a month

Free host users have to stop trying to trick the host. IE put up their god forsaken anime episodes, try to use the host as an illegal file host/image host, etc. etc. etc.

Most hosts (and I speak from experiance) get issues when users abuse it. (as striker said) its a real shame, a few can seriously spoil it for everyone.
porn/warez/illegalfiles/ect... all cause problems for hosts.
A host that has experiance is a good host as it can deal with these issues.
(cough catch-free's been around for over 3 months cough)

I want a host which is very reliable and offer what it says. Its nothing about the space or how much Bandwith he provide. Its abt how reliable his service is. I dun want a site hosted by a provider and the next morning i woke up, its gone.

yer, i look for reliability..., i mean.... i honestly only use 5-10Mbs of space, but i ask for 25-50, just incase i want to test something, like install a second phpbb forum, to test mods and such, and 1000Mb's transfer is alot, but i ask for 2000MB's just incase the site goes well....

But id preffer reliability with 5 megs space, and 500MB's tranfer, then unmeterd space and bandwidth, and no support or relabiity, You know what i meen??

THANX!

-Jesse Graham-

We started offering 25MB Space and 500MB BW a year ago and we were getting a lot of feedback from people saying that what we were offering was too small so they chose to go to other providers that offers massive amount of resources.

But where are those providers now? We've seen a lot of them that came and went but we are still here! 50-200MB / 1-3GB Bandwidth and we just have our 3rd Opteron Server! :)

People now a days who are looking for FREE Hosting should really not be tempted by massive resources being offered because for sure they are overselling in some way and can easily get abused. They should be more realistic and look at the stability, reliability and credibility of the provider.

Zac

Reliablity and support. Those are my two main concerns. Anything else is trivial compared to those two items. Without reliablity, you have host that have server crashes, lose connnections or worse...completely closed down. Without support, nothing gets done and problems only mount and get worse. Those two combined equals a host that is only around for about 1 week or so. As long as I have those two things, I am happy.

Heya! just wondering what you think free hosting needs to improve on?

I think the should cut the specifications, and double the reliability...

I think free hosting needs to improve on following point;

-Must have 24/7 support
-No ads
-Must offer cPanel
-And most important, RELIABILITY

I think free hosting needs to improve on following point;

-Must have 24/7 support
-No ads
-Must offer cPanel
-And most important, RELIABILITY

The RELIABILITY part is a very good point, but for your first 3 options, I completely disagree. If you want to know why, read your first 3 option and think about it thoroughly. (*hint* "must" "no" "24/7")

Zac

i dont mind adds, i hate!! posting in other peoples forums... and what other way are they going to make a lil extra bucks?

Id prefer ads over posting.....

YnHub free host :P

What some people don't understand is these hosting companys are offering FREE
service and your aksing them to not place ads on your accounts? Thats not doing them any good if there free account will advertise for them..don't you think so?

I think they should not put adds on but give smaller space..

What some people don't understand is these hosting companys are offering FREE
service and your aksing them to not place ads on your accounts? Thats not doing them any good if there free accounts will not advertise for them..don't you think so?

Free hosts need to stay around for more than a month

Free host users have to stop trying to trick the host. IE put up their god forsaken anime episodes, try to use the host as an illegal file host/image host, etc. etc. etc.

That makes sense, and I see too many of those recently. Also, (besides longevity online)


Reliable (90 ~ 100% Uptime)
Allow most extensions (php, swf, htm, css, js, html, php3, xml, asp, inc, mp3, mid, txt, gif, jpg, jpeg, png, bmp, zip, ...)
Reasonable amount of space. (Ads can be placed, but NEVER pop-unders! And no, I won't go onto a host who embeds their pop-ups/unders as a floating layer if pop-ups are blocked. Like T35.com)
CHMOD Maximum of 0777


and much more. ;)

I think free hosts should improve on....

- ads
- space ~ maybe increase it by 30mb
- their reliablity

I look for about 50MB space, 2GB bw, 2 or more mysql, cpanel and fantastico
dont like forum posts
ads are ok