First of all. No. I am not a newbie to the web.

Second of all. Yes. I actually go to my website, participate, and monitor everything closely.

And guess what? I use free hosting.

Why? Because I am a high school student, I have no paypal or credit card account, I have no job and thus no income, and I don't want to ask my parents for money, just so I can host my club's website.

I've been seeing "Free hosting sucks!," "Don't bother with free hosting!", "You won't be happy!" all over the forum.

And 2 months ago, I would have believed all of them.

That doesn't stop me from using free hosting. Heck, my club doesn't have $60 a year to spend on hosting. We're poor students, for goodness's sake!

For those of you out there who I know are like me... you want free hosting. You want quality free hosting. With a lot of features (at least, the ones you need, like PHP and MySQL). And (hopefully) little to no downtime (I find this last one to be the most difficult to find).

I've had to move from one host to another because of bad service. Trust me, I know what it's like. Still, I can't escape free hosting. So.

I would like this thread to be for us free hosters, or ones who are looking for quality free hosting. Post the host you use, so that when one of us has to switch because our free host closed down, lost uptime, or is just simply horrific, we know where to land.

I am currently at Sitefrost.com. Until last week, it had 100% uptime. 100%. No kidding. I have my own host-tracker account, so I know. But last week, it was 99.47%. This week it's about 99.89%. Maybe it'll go back to 100%, since my admin promised a server move. :P

Anyway. The host has everything you can ask for. cPanel, PHP, MySQL, Python, Ruby, E-mail, and more. And different plans (some of which are extreme lenient) just for forum posts. And you don't even have to post much. I use plan B, which only requires 10 a month. Easy enough.

Trust me. If you are just starting a website or is at a really crappy free host, make the move.

This was a true perspective on free hosting, made by a person who has had plenty of experience on the subject. I hope you find it useful.

When starting out, especially as a small, niche group, free hosting can give you a nice help. It's limitations become serious as the stakes become serious. Many of my clients use shared hosting while some need the added security and (generally) added reliability of dedicated hosting (none use virtual private, though it always remains an option). When deciding on your hosting needs, the business plan must be taken into account because moving a site can be costly when you're losing visitors and especially costly when your host doesn't work while you're trying to find a new one to move to.

Another idea is to share shared (or dedicated) hosting. If you'll only have 1 not-too-intensive website and another club (for example) will also have 1 such site, then the 2 of you (3 or 4, maybe?) splitting costs can be extremely lucrative for all parties involved. I've had a client who leases a managed, dedicated server and hosts about 10 different clients on it who pay their share of the costs making it highly affordable while getting the reliability.

Free webh osting can be good. And in your situation that is the best choice you can have. So nothing bad with that

I'm glad to hear that you feel comfortable with a free host. However, that depends on an area you work on. For non-commercial, personal ot hobby project it will be enough. However, for ecommerce, business or high-load sites a free hosting just won't be suitable since they require some advanced features (like secure connection) and have stronger need for data security.

By the way, in all cases you should definitely back up your data locally - it is a good idea even for a paid host

Ahaha, of course! Not only does it make your life 5x easier, you don't have to complain and bother your admin if and when the server does crash. People complain about the most random and stupid things.

I believe that you can do your reseach on the freewebspace forums which is considered the best place for the free web hosting guides

well i really agree with you because i've been through what you have been, i use free hosting , and i like it , i used several diff hosts and found one that has 98% uptime, (well, at least it seems like it, cuz i never seen it down yet in a month) and i say that free hosting for something like clubs etc. is the best choice..

and i really like 000webhosting cuz its the one i use now...

*** 1500 MB of disk space
*** 100 GB of data transfer
*** PHP and MySQL support with no restrictions
*** cPanel control panel
*** Website Builder
*** Absolutely no advertising!

it has everythin i need and even more, so whoever says free host just *sucks, let me tell you , for starters like us , its no problem...

Join us now: <self promotional link removed>

I suppose that he is not looking for the web hosting he is asking about its future.
I suppose as long we will have personal non profit web hosting sites as long people will need free web hosting

Originally Posted by X-Cart

I'm glad to hear that you feel comfortable with a free host. However, that depends on an area you work on. For non-commercial, personal ot hobby project it will be enough. However, for ecommerce, business or high-load sites a free hosting just won't be suitable since they require some advanced features (like secure connection) and have stronger need for data security.

By the way, in all cases you should definitely back up your data locally - it is a good idea even for a paid host

Back up that is personal. That is very important. And that is up to you how often they are being made

Originally Posted by rumsfo

Back up that is personal. That is very important. And that is up to you how often they are being made

I believe that for this customer that isier said then done. Probably that will be good lesson for him in future.

Originally Posted by holhost

only paid hosting !!!

Unfortunately, I would have to agree. Even the smallest projects I've worked on have required more than the resources allowed at a free host.

Originally Posted by wt.canton

Unfortunately, I would have to agree. Even the smallest projects I've worked on have required more than the resources allowed at a free host.

So do I Only paid hosting and you will nevery have any problems at all.