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Is free hosting dying?

whatthenet hosting

whatthenet hosting

Member
I done a bit of study and looked around and I think free hosting is dying.
1. Most of the offers on this forum are from paid hosts with no free hosting.
2. Free hosts a dying faster and faster now.
3. Lycos has reduced it space in 2008 and yahoo! Closed its free hosting.
4. Social networks are replacing the need for people to have a website.
5. And most free web hosting directories have EIG paid hosting companies on their front page!
Is free hosting really dying or I am just a drama queen?
 
You will always find a free hosting provider. Or provider nearly free. You are welcome to offer free hosting too :)
 
Free hosting still exists but are hard to manage due to their limited services and unreliability. Rather webmasters prefer to go with cheap pricing web hosting services that can offer reliability and stability for their requirements.
 
You can get many free hosting services, but maximum of them are providing limited number of services. Among those all you have to serch the best for you according to your need. You will surely get one but its just time consuming to search appropriate one.
 
You will surely get free web hosting but there will be limitations in all spheres. But because it is quite popular with small websites which require very little from web hosting, it seems that you will always find some free web hosting providers. But if your website plays an important role in getting you clients and generating you revenue then you cannot rely on free web hosting because it is likely to cost you more in the long run so this is the reason why we see more and more people are opting for paid web hosting as they cannot compromise on uptime in this competitive world of internet.
 
Considering when I started in Free Hosting, it was almost impossible to fail.. Considering what it was, it's almost dead..

I remember the good old days. A community I ran way back reached ~1000 members in the space of 3 months, with around 2000-3000 posts per day. Forum sponsors were lining up to advertise or sponsor different webmaster forums & domain discussion forums, it was easy to break-even, or even turn a profit.

These days, to attract a good community, able to offer the advertisers what they want, you have to offer more than hosting - for example, like Frihost, who since 2010 have also offered free TLDs as well..

Being in the free hosting business, you certainly noticed the drop of users when MySpace became popular and Facebook became everyone's source of news... I still remember the hours per day I spent on this forum, talking to people, etc. Even now, that time has been replaced with Facebook..
 
There is definitely less free hosting around than before, and also of lesser quality. Most of it is "automatic". But it's not dead yet. Can't see it completely dying either. It's probably the best way to get the attention of those who need hosting. Particularly when they start the first time. Or if they want to try something out first and don't have enough knowledge to start a xampp or equivalent.
 
I don't think free hosting is dying, but I believe consumers are after more a reliable product. It seems free hosts are becoming less reliable and not staying in business for long and I believe if you can get a good plan for $2/month then why wouldn't you go with that.

That's my take on it.
 
Yahpoolerz said:
I don't think free hosting is dying, but I believe consumers are after more a reliable product. It seems free hosts are becoming less reliable and not staying in business for long and I believe if you can get a good plan for $2/month then why wouldn't you go with that.

That's my take on it.
Click to expand...

At $20-$30/month for a VPS with a cPanel license it's VERY easy to start a free host. Want to know why free website hosting is dying?

1) Obvious potential legal issues with allowing anonymous users onto your shared server.

2) Large hosting operations can be expensive. Free hosting has no revenue. It's not a business.. you fund everything out of pocket usually.

3) 99.9% of ALL signups on free hosting are SPAM/BOT signups. You have to take YOUR time to sort through them and determine which ones are legitimate. And most of the spam signups are malicious usually.

4) Starting a small business via PayPal as a sole proprietorship is simple. You spend the same amount of time setting up a paid host that you spend setting up a free host. You have less hassle because all of the signups are REAL and not SPAM. Your legal issues with allowing users onto your shared server are almost entirely resolved. The few who do cause issues you have proper identification on or at the very least a link back to the user since they paid you money.

5) Finally, the most obvious reason from a consumer standpoint is that options like Facebook exist now.

Most people aren't really interested in running a blog or personal website and just want a way to communicate with friends.
 
1. Management of free hosting is expensive, Use of credit card is increased and everyone will prefer to purchase paid hosting.

2. High risk of abuse, You don't have a time to monitor thousands of website 24x7 hours.

3. You are new provider and think daily you will get 100 customers then you are wrong, peoples will not trust on you until your company is at lest older then 1 year.

Free hosting is not completely dying. If you can afford paid hosting then why you will waste your energy in a free hosting where you know that one day your website will be terminated at any time without backup.
 
LowVM said:
1. Management of free hosting is expensive, Use of credit card is increased and everyone will prefer to purchase paid hosting.



1) Obvious potential legal issues with allowing anonymous users onto your shared server.

2) Large hosting operations can be expensive. Free hosting has no revenue. It's not a business.. you fund everything out of pocket usually.

3) 99.9% of ALL signups on free hosting are SPAM/BOT signups. You have to take YOUR time to sort through them and determine which ones are legitimate. And most of the spam signups are malicious usually.

4) Starting a small business via PayPal as a sole proprietorship is simple. You spend the same amount of time setting up a paid host that you spend setting up a free host. You have less hassle because all of the signups are REAL and not SPAM. Your legal issues with allowing users onto your shared server are almost entirely resolved. The few who do cause issues you have proper identification on or at the very least a link back to the user since they paid you money.

5) Finally, the most obvious reason from a consumer standpoint is that options like Facebook exist now.

Most people aren't really interested in running a blog or personal website and just want a way to communicate with friends.
Click to expand...

When did 99.99% of free hosting sign-ups become spam or abuse? I have only found 3 spam bots in 2 months and i get 5 sign-ups a day.

Free hosting shows that a company has the money to give something out free. Would you trust a company that can't afford free hosting? That could mean they can't afford tech support servers software ect...
 
Free hosting isn't dying, but there are many changes because other hosting services become cheaper and cheaper, especially VPS.
 
whatthenet hosting said:
When did 99.99% of free hosting sign-ups become spam or abuse? I have only found 3 spam bots in 2 months and i get 5 sign-ups a day.

Free hosting shows that a company has the money to give something out free. Would you trust a company that can't afford free hosting? That could mean they can't afford tech support servers software ect...
Click to expand...

Then you have had a better experience then I did in regards to the spam so kudos to you.

Again you're saying company but the majority of these free hosts are unregistered. Most are sole proprietorships which is not a company.

And again you're making the mistake of thinking that most of these free hosts run a paid host and ergo can support themselves.
 
Its changed a lot since I started out, but would have to agree with Tyler. Social Media has taken large potion of the traffic free hosting sites had.

I'm sure I have a few more years left of providing free hosting.

Sent from my SM-T310 using Tapatalk
 
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