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Free versus paid web hosting

S

Scribe

New Member
I plan to make a site where I'll post articles, tutorials
and e-pubs for download, but I know that some people
warn against using free web-hosting. Webhosts that
shut down your site once it draws a little traffic, those
sorts of things... (I know a person who said his account
with was shut down for the offence
of uploading phpbb to his account. And he didn't even install it.)

Basically I wanted to know if any providers of free
web-hosting could be recommended at all, or should I go
for a paid hosting plan once away? I expect traffic to grow
slowly but steadily, but if possible I want a free provider
that is fair and doesn't shut down my site for no reason,
until the site has so much traffic that signing up for a paid
service is inevitable.

Are webhosts that give you 100GB of b/w a month serious,
will they really give you this amount, or is it just a marketing trick?

Finally I wanted to ask a question about free domains.
I've signed up with co.cc because they offer a a couple
of free domains for a year. Does any of you know if you have
to pay to keep your domain afterwards?
 
Scribe said:
Are webhosts that give you 100GB of b/w a month serious,
will they really give you this amount, or is it just a marketing trick?
Click to expand...

No, they are not serious. You can call it marketing trick, but we call it severe over selling.
 
AboutWeb said:
No, they are not serious. You can call it marketing trick, but we call it severe over selling.
Click to expand...

Seeing as you can get 100TB transfer for $200/month or even less these days if you look in the right places, it's certainly possible. But most free hosts tend to -not- have that kind of cash flow.
 
Thanks for answering!

I must admit I have never had my own website before,
so I'm really quite blank about what to expect. Does anyone
have any advice about what to look for with a provider of
free-hosting? And how much free bandwith would you expect
a company to give you if they're not overselling?
 
From my experiences, hosts that offer the ridiculous amounts of transfer are indeed overselling and use that to gain customers, but some make measures where you will NEVER be able to go close to that by implicating a low file size max (like 500kb). As Tyler said, it is possible but highly unlikely that a host will doll out serious cash when they will never be able to break even. Most hosts that I have seen fold within a few months, as they oversell that BW, then it catches up to them when they receive an invoice for the overselling from their provider.

As for actual hosting, if you can do the research there are a few hosts that will rival paid hosting. Namepad, my host of choice, is one of these and I have had website(s) with them for nearly 4 yrs. The main deal as far as I am concerned that paid has over free is that if anything goes wrong, you can sue them for refunds. I would still be weary of any host that offers 100GB transfer, unless you are paying for that BW (as in 100GB for 2$ a month doesnt cut it for me).

As for the free co.cc domains, they can most certainly charge you for them after a yr. I had a fairly popular site once and used their domain, only to get an email stating inorder for me to continue to use it I would have to pay something like 5$ a yr. For that you can get a real TLD.
 
Sain Cai said:
As for the free co.cc domains, they can most certainly charge you for them after a yr. I had a fairly popular site once and used their domain, only to get an email stating inorder for me to continue to use it I would have to pay something like 5$ a yr. For that you can get a real TLD.
Click to expand...

What about dyndns? Would their service remain free?

---
 
It's a DNS provider that has been buying up other DNS providers over the years. dyndns is free at the moment, but I don't believe they'll remain free forever.

Most hosting providers have DNS services included in the plans, so just avoid third party DNS providers because it just creates another point of failure.
 
Sain Cai said:
I have no clue what that is:confused4
Click to expand...

DynDNS[dot]com allows you to register a couple of free domains,
their service is primarily aimed at giving a static address to people
having a home server with dynamic ips...

But nevermind, I've had a little discussion with myself over this, and I
don't think I'll use a free domain service. A top level domain seems
more reputable.

I've been in touch with namepad, and he's already answered my questions.
He says they're not doing this as a business, do you know how he affords
his server costs then?

(Seemed like a nice guy)
 
To my mind no free host, even the very best one is better than a paid host. Certianly I am talking about the professionals. Free hosts do not have financial responsibility before their clients, and that gives them certain freedom of behavious and stability. When it comes to the hosting for serious business, I would never choose the free host which are only suitable for personal websites and something with lesser responsibility
 
~ServerPoint~ said:
To my mind no free host, even the very best one is better than a paid host. Certianly I am talking about the professionals. Free hosts do not have financial responsibility before their clients, and that gives them certain freedom of behavious and stability. When it comes to the hosting for serious business, I would never choose the free host which are only suitable for personal websites and something with lesser responsibility
Click to expand...

Well since we are talking about financial stuff here, how can you possibly afford to give out 350GB space and 3.5TB transfer for $10 a month?
 
deeplist said:
Most hosting providers have DNS services included in the plans, so just avoid third party DNS providers because it just creates another point of failure.
Click to expand...

I guess sticking with one provider for both hosting and DNS would be most convenient if you had a paid plan, but if you're going for a free-webhost I guess you would have to get your own domain anyway. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems as if going with an external domain registrar gives you more freedom, for instance if you for some reason have to switch web-host. (At least when having free hosting).
 
Tyler said:
Well since we are talking about financial stuff here, how can you possibly afford to give out 350GB space and 3.5TB transfer for $10 a month?
Click to expand...

You could swing the bandwidth, but the disk space is very clearly oversold.
 
Recommended

Scribe said:
I plan to make a site where I'll post articles, tutorials
and e-pubs for download, ...

Basically I wanted to know if any providers of free
web-hosting could be recommended at all, or should I go
for a paid hosting plan once away? I expect traffic to grow
slowly but steadily, but if possible I want a free provider
that is fair and doesn't shut down my site for no reason,
until the site has so much traffic that signing up for a paid
service is inevitable.
Click to expand...

Hi there.
Back to some of your original points, even "growing slowly but steadily" you might not actually be drawing down 100GB of bandwidth. If you are doing an epub-download site, those types of files aren't all that big.

Take a look at the large thread I have been working on. At the top of my page is a list of green icons representing hosts that I recommend. The fact that you can see the green icons says that the host is up. These are the finalists of a survey review project I have been doing for a couple of years now.

http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/...-host-spread&p=1140928&viewfull=1#post1140928

I think CWahi said they might not do domains, so you can talk to the others to see if any of them work for you.
 
Scribe said:
DynDNS[dot]com allows you to register a couple of free domains,
their service is primarily aimed at giving a static address to people
having a home server with dynamic ips...

But nevermind, I've had a little discussion with myself over this, and I
don't think I'll use a free domain service. A top level domain seems
more reputable.

I've been in touch with namepad, and he's already answered my questions.
He says they're not doing this as a business, do you know how he affords
his server costs then?

(Seemed like a nice guy)
Click to expand...
I believe there is paid hosting on Namepad as well. I am not sure if they are accepting any more applicants for free hosting, but all I know is that Namepad has been extraordinarily reliable and when there are any outages, scheduled or yips, he is on top of what is going on. Any support is always returned promptly. Clearly I have nothing but praise for Namepad.
 
In my opinion, free hosting is good for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is, if a host offers free and paid packages then the free package is the best way to try out their services, uptime, support etc. It also acts as a base so that you can get your website online and then once you start getting near to your space or bandwidth limit, upgrade.

As I said, in my opinion you are more likely to get 'closed down' if you go for 'unlimited' offers. If you have a set package then you know your limits, can upgrade if and when required and as long as your not effecting the overall state of the server then you should really be fine.
 
TaoPhoenix said:
Hi there.
Back to some of your original points, even "growing slowly but steadily" you might not actually be drawing down 100GB of bandwidth. If you are doing an epub-download site, those types of files aren't all that big.
Click to expand...

Yes, true, e-pubs are tiny, but I though of having PDFs as well, which are
bigger. But then again, I've never had a website before, so I have absolutely
no idea how much bandwidth my site is going to draw.

My fear is just that at one point I'll get Slashdotted, exceed the limit, and be
shut down or charged a lot of money because of the spike.

Take a look at the large thread I have been working on. At the top of my page is a list of green icons representing hosts that I recommend. The fact that you can see the green icons says that the host is up. These are the finalists of a survey review project I have been doing for a couple of years now.
Click to expand...

Excellent, but dude, that thread is long ;)
I've checked out your website, so I guess I've got a little handful
of alternatives to choose from including namepad.

I think CWahi said they might not do domains, so you can talk to the others to see if any of them work for you.
Click to expand...

As in not selling domains, or only offering subdomains?
 
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