• Howdy! Welcome to our community of more than 130.000 members devoted to web hosting. This is a great place to get special offers from web hosts and post your own requests or ads. To start posting sign up here. Cheers! /Peo, FreeWebSpace.net
managed wordpress hosting

Free VPS's?

sander k

Well-Known Member
NLC
Hello guys,

It happens more and more on FWS that I see people asking for free VPS's.
Now I am working on a new website/forum at the moment and I am wondering if I should offer some sponsored VPS's to promote my website.

Not compleetly sponsored as I want posts in exchange for it.

What do you think of this:

10GB Disk Space
100GB Bandwidth
128MB Memory
256MB BURSTABLE
SolusVM Control Panel

I will pay for them for a year in advance. How many (one time) posts should I ask for? I am thinking of 500 or something like that.
 
There's nothing wrong with giving out free VPS servers. It can be beneficial to both you and the party that you're sponsoring. The only advise I can give you is to make sure you giving them away to worthy causes. Don't hand them out like trick-or-treat candy because it'll serve no useful purpose at all.

Examples:
GOOD - I gave a VPS to theraptor so they can use it as a sandbox to continue development of The Hosting Tool.
BAD - Giving out a VPS to mtwiscool so he can attempt to develop a Win95 hosting platform.

See what I'm saying?
 
There's nothing wrong with giving out free VPS servers. It can be beneficial to both you and the party that you're sponsoring. The only advise I can give you is to make sure you giving them away to worthy causes. Don't hand them out like trick-or-treat candy because it'll serve no useful purpose at all.

Examples:
GOOD - I gave a VPS to theraptor so they can use it as a sandbox to continue development of The Hosting Tool.
BAD - Giving out a VPS to mtwiscool so he can attempt to develop a Win95 hosting platform.

See what I'm saying?
im talking to sander k
 
There's nothing wrong with giving out free VPS servers. It can be beneficial to both you and the party that you're sponsoring. The only advise I can give you is to make sure you giving them away to worthy causes. Don't hand them out like trick-or-treat candy because it'll serve no useful purpose at all.

Examples:
GOOD - I gave a VPS to theraptor so they can use it as a sandbox to continue development of The Hosting Tool.
BAD - Giving out a VPS to mtwiscool so he can attempt to develop a Win95 hosting platform.

See what I'm saying?

I do understand what you say. And I am not going to give him one. The one he wants is to expensive.
I will hire some very cheap ones via lowendstock.com and I will not show my hosts name on that site ;)
 
Here is what I have learned about the free VPS market:

Make sure it's post2host, not just order one and you get it. Those fail/get abused and shut down by the datacenter.
Ask hosts for volume discounts
People don't really trust new providers, and asking for 500 posts first is going to be tough until a few people get them. 2 years ago it might have worked.
If you manage it right, it is profitable
Don't buy a dedicated server right away, it's cheaper to resell at first.
If there is anything questionable about a user, ask him/her lots of questions.
Don't be afraid to accept sponsorships yourself.
 
Last edited:
Here is what I have learned about the free VPS market:

Make sure it's post2host, not just order one and you get it. Those fail/get abused and shut down by the datacenter.
Ask hosts for volume discounts
People don't really trust new providers, and asking for 500 posts first is going to be tough until a few people get them. 2 years ago it might have worked.
If you manage it right, it is profitable
Don't buy a dedicated server right away, it's cheaper to resell at first.
If there is anything questionable about a user, ask him/her lots of questions.
Don't be afraid to accept sponsorships yourself.

How do you go through every VPS and make sure they aren't abusive? Perhaps your advice regarding this matter will help other potential free VPS hosts.
 
I don't, but all of the abusive users so far have been filtered out before they got a VPS. Most spammers are not going to make a decent amount of forum posts and then wait around for me to release a VPS and hope they have more points/posts/etc than the other users requesting one.
 
I don't, but all of the abusive users so far have been filtered out before they got a VPS. Most spammers are not going to make a decent amount of forum posts and then wait around for me to release a VPS and hope they have more points/posts/etc than the other users requesting one.

Have you ever hired a experienced Linux system administrator to check all of your VPS for abuse? I think you'd be surprised...

You'd be surprised.

Ninja'ed :(
 
Last month I checked the outgoing email count on each VPS and it was lower than my VPS. I found 1 VPS downloading a torrent and I asked for the client to stop and he did. He was only downloading a linux ISO that was only available via torrent and his ISP blocked torrents.

Anyway, it's easier for them to buy a $2 VPS off of lowendbox.com than to spend a few hours posting on a forum.
 
Last month I checked the outgoing email count on each VPS and it was lower than my VPS. I found 1 VPS downloading a torrent and I asked for the client to stop and he did. He was only downloading a linux ISO that was only available via torrent and his ISP blocked torrents.

Anyway, it's easier for them to buy a $2 VPS off of lowendbox.com than to spend a few hours posting on a forum.

Who's talking about email? I'm referring to child pornography and other crap that could land you in prison. If you're not monitoring any VPS (or you don't know how to) I strongly advise you to hire someone who can do it for you. I would go check the WHT jobs and offers section.
 
Forgive me for being naiive, but I honestly don't understand the draw of these free or p2h VPSs these days. Most people do not have websites large enough to warrant a VPS (if they do, they don't know how to manage the VPSs without a control panel), and the others want them to run their [free] hosting companies, which you can't do on these crap VPSs that are offered.

Dmmcintyre3, you could probably answer this better than anyone...what do people use them for? I imagine there is a pretty hefty turnover rate, when people realize they can't do much with such low-end VPSs, or after they discover they don't know how to manage them?
 
what do people use them for? I imagine there is a pretty hefty turnover rate, when people realize they can't do much with such low-end VPSs, or after they discover they don't know how to manage them?

They have big dreams of running game servers. I have a high turn-over for idiots who think they're going to set up steam powered games and then nothing ever transpires. They typically cancel within the first 30 days.
 
Ahhhhhhh...forgot about the gameserver crowd. Hard to run much of a game on these 64 and 128mb VPSs. Ah well. Someday these people will learn.
 
lots of them are used for low/medium traffic websites, a few gamesevers, 1 dns server and 2 free hosts using a free control panel. 33 VPSs, 3 for me the rest are given away. The smaller plan (64mb ram) get kept the shortest amount of time, usually 1-2months
 
Last edited:
Back
Top