Are "free hosts" legitimate or real?

**Ardit** · Jan 18th, 2008, 12:36 pm

How is it that these sites can give away free hosting?

How do they make money?
Do they advertise on your site?
Do they sell your information?

How legitimate are they?
Will they just up and shutdown on you?
Will they just up and run away with your information/ site?

Do they have customer service?
Will your questions ever get answerd?

Are their limitations, other than storage and bandwith?

Are their servers any good?

Are they legal?

Sorry for the horrible spelling i suck at it.

**webster13045** · Jan 18th, 2008, 12:46 pm

im may be different than other people

but i do not trust free hosts what so ever they can and will shut down one day and your site will be gone as well

dont expect a whole lot of support as they are a free based host

they storage bandwith im sure has limits most not all but most oversell there server

**Ardit** · Jan 18th, 2008, 1:11 pm

Originally Posted by webster13045

im may be different than other people

but i do not trust free hosts what so ever they can and will shut down one day and your site will be gone as well

dont expect a whole lot of support as they are a free based host

they storage bandwith im sure has limits most not all but most oversell there server

Belive me i dont have any trust in them either
Especially since nothing in this world is legally and ligitimatly free.

but i was thinking about testing them out just to see if they will stick around, maybe even trying to contact an owner.

**ZeroCapacity** · Jan 18th, 2008, 6:03 pm

There are a lot of free one's that have been around for awhile. These also sell hosting. They offer the free stuff to get potential customers. 50webs comes to mind right off. They are not bad and I have used them in the past. Especially when I just started and had no cash to speak of.

**Ardit** · Jan 18th, 2008, 6:16 pm

Originally Posted by ZeroCapacity

There are a lot of free one's that have been around for awhile. These also sell hosting. They offer the free stuff to get potential customers. 50webs comes to mind right off. They are not bad and I have used them in the past. Especially when I just started and had no cash to speak of.

i was thinking of using one to test scripts and layouts.

**ZeroCapacity** · Jan 18th, 2008, 6:20 pm

They work great for that type of thing man. That is a very good idea. Just remember to get one that will support the scripts you want to test. Not all of them support all types of databases and scripts.

**Ardit** · Jan 18th, 2008, 6:27 pm

any sugetions as to whom i should use? they are mostly php scripts.

**ZeroCapacity** · Jan 18th, 2008, 6:47 pm

50webs they give you free mysql and no ads. I think the web space is 60 megs but most scripts do not use this much even.

**Ardit** · Jan 18th, 2008, 6:49 pm

im gonna try it now

thanks for the help too

Edit: i dont like to give my adress on these types of FREE sites

**timsdd** · Jan 24th, 2008, 5:57 am

I signed up for one and I got this

--------------------------------
Your Domain Name
--------------------------------
Our name server information is
as follows:

Primary: ,
Secondary: ,

nameserver is , ?

yeah, that is helpful! :ssad:

**Ardit** · Jan 24th, 2008, 10:39 am

Originally Posted by timsdd

I signed up for one and I got this

nameserver is , ?

yeah, that is helpful! :ssad:

lol i actually got some from zero capacity and its really good

Exact Hosting but you can find the thread here on wtf to get his limited time free hosting

**1maverick** · Jan 27th, 2008, 4:55 pm

some are better than others - but in most cases you get what you pay for.

a few of free hosts make money allowing phising site to get on the server and then re route traffic to a webpage that is full of ad's and that is how they make money

**Ardit** · Jan 27th, 2008, 6:07 pm

Originally Posted by 1maverick

some are better than others - but in most cases you get what you pay for.

a few of free hosts make money allowing phising site to get on the server and then re route traffic to a webpage that is full of ad's and that is how they make money

Wow i dident know they did that stuff

**jumpenjuhosaphat** · Jan 27th, 2008, 7:50 pm

How much space and bandwidth do you need? I can give you a full cPanel package for free, no strings. I gave some space to an online buddy of mine a year ago, and he took advantage, used my space to store giant files....I had 2GB of space, he used 1.2G of that...He recently moved, and I've recently upgraded to 8GB of space...So if what you need is limited in space, I'd be happy to help you out.

**Ardit** · Jan 27th, 2008, 8:14 pm

Originally Posted by jumpenjuhosaphat

How much space and bandwidth do you need? I can give you a full cPanel package for free, no strings. I gave some space to an online buddy of mine a year ago, and he took advantage, used my space to store giant files....I had 2GB of space, he used 1.2G of that...He recently moved, and I've recently upgraded to 8GB of space...So if what you need is limited in space, I'd be happy to help you out.

Thanks for the offer.

Right now im using some hosting that zero capacity gave me.

Thank you though. :scheesy:

**jumpenjuhosaphat** · Jan 28th, 2008, 7:32 am

No problem....

**jnrcorps** · Feb 2nd, 2008, 10:14 am

i dont trust them but hey that is just what i think....

**Steve** · Feb 2nd, 2008, 11:30 am

some make money by putting ads on your site . some make money by giving you limited space for free and when you run out , they charge you monthly for the package 1 step up.

and dont forget , you get what you pay for.

**Dulcepixels** · Feb 3rd, 2008, 9:16 pm

Every "free" host will have a "catch" behind.

**Ardit** · Feb 3rd, 2008, 9:21 pm

Originally Posted by Dulcepixels

Every "free" host will have a "catch" behind.

Well some definatly do, but alot of the time i think its more of a hey, like it? then buy it
type deal

**Ned** · Feb 3rd, 2008, 10:25 pm

most free hosts are 'legit' but really crappy. Either tons annoying ads or disabled scripts.

**Web** · Feb 5th, 2008, 5:30 am

hmm ... i just posted here and the post didn't seem to work

**grim** · Feb 5th, 2008, 5:35 am

Originally Posted by Web

hmm ... i just posted here and the post didn't seem to work

It did not work because you keyword stuffed your post with links, these types of posts are auto moderated to keep spam off the forum

**Web** · Feb 5th, 2008, 7:32 am

Originally Posted by GRIM

It did not work because you keyword stuffed your post with links

oh cummon, they were useful links

**Colleen** · Feb 5th, 2008, 7:34 am

Originally Posted by Web

oh cummon, they were useful links

Of course you'll think that of your own stuffed posts, 5 links to your own sites? Looks spammy to anyone.

**bojomojo** · Feb 12th, 2008, 6:58 am

they make profit thru advertising and affiliating, but you cant really depend on a some1 who only gives hosting for free... if its a side offer then that can be trusted

**bineshjacob** · Feb 12th, 2008, 8:54 am

I don't believe that they can give an efficient service as same as the service provided by the paid hosts. There is lot of difference between the paid host and the free host.They only give very small bandwidth and disk space also.

They doesn't provide uptime guaranty.Like this they have lot of restrictions. Some free hosts may provide some extra features like web based control panel, free emails, file transfer ...etc. Although we cannot believe our site when it as a free site.

**Ned** · Feb 12th, 2008, 2:32 pm

free hosting is almost worse than no hosting at all

**Ardit** · Feb 14th, 2008, 2:04 pm

Originally Posted by Ned

free hosting is almost worse than no hosting at all

haha, thats impossible

**Steve** · Feb 14th, 2008, 2:09 pm

Originally Posted by Ned

free hosting is almost worse than no hosting at all

i dont think so , but i know what you really mean.

**Ardit** · Feb 15th, 2008, 7:56 pm

Originally Posted by Gasmoney

i dont think so , but i know what you really mean.

some thing funny happened

I was using free hosting just to test my layouts and scripts

And i tried to log in. I CAN'T.

Soo much for that huh...

**EmmaB** · Feb 15th, 2008, 8:00 pm

I have had lots of good experiences with free hosts. You just need to research them and talk to people who have used them. It is really easy to come by free forum hosting but rarely any goof full website hosts.

**twenty4web** · Feb 20th, 2008, 4:49 pm

I think free hosts are a good way for newbies to get their feet wet, however, if you plan on hosting any real website, they should not be considered as the way to go.

**craptalks** · Feb 22nd, 2008, 3:55 am

How do they make money? Put advertisement on your site most probably, or ask you to post on their forums?

Do they advertise on your site? Well i think most of them do.

Do they sell your information? This, i do not know :P

How legitimate are they? Pretty legit

Will they just up and shutdown on you?
Yeah, i had a portfolio website and they just deleted it -.-

Will they just up and run away with your information/ site?
Possible.

Do they have customer service?
Yeah
Will your questions ever get answerd?
Yes, but i doubt they are good answers

Are their limitations, other than storage and bandwith?
Of course, like cpu load

Are their servers any good?
Not good, i had a few website on a few free hosting and they were all slow!

Are they legal? Yeah

Just bear in mind, if you want to host a website and will have quite some traffic to it, my advice is not get a free hosting

**Colleen** · Feb 22nd, 2008, 9:52 am

Originally Posted by twenty4web

get their feet wet

Or they could just stick their feet in the bathtub.

**iowadawg** · Feb 25th, 2008, 2:21 pm

There are quite a few legitimate free hosters on the net.
Some have been around for years and they would not be around for years if they were not good.

See my recent blog post for one great free host company.
Moving one of my sites there, just to save money and to see how good they are.

**Bogart** · Feb 29th, 2008, 10:39 pm

Free hosting is a great way to spread your sites out onto unique ip ranges.

**Thor Erik** · Mar 2nd, 2008, 10:27 am

Originally Posted by bineshjacob

I don't believe that they can give an efficient service as same as the service provided by the paid hosts. There is lot of difference between the paid host and the free host.They only give very small bandwidth and disk space also.

They doesn't provide uptime guaranty.Like this they have lot of restrictions. Some free hosts may provide some extra features like web based control panel, free emails, file transfer ...etc. Although we cannot believe our site when it as a free site.

For example with the host I'm helping on, we can provide both uptime guaranty and reasonable space/bandwidth plans, We do not restrict any scripts(except more commonly stuff like C99 and similar scripts obviously)

In our case, we do not sell any information.
We only terminate when aplicable, for example when there is a fraud site or a unlicensed vBulletin/IPB where we have been contacted to remove the site.
If your site only uses a litle too much cpu it's suspended, and re-enabled when the user contacts us.