Why any one provide free hosting?

[seojig]

hello,
i have seen lots of thread like we provide free hosting and bla bla ..
can any one tell me why they are going to give free hosting plan?

thanks

jigs

 

[networkmsia]

some of them will install some small google ads into your website once you host with them. they gain the profit from there.

 

[antic]

They profit from the ads (links or banners) that are on the site of their customers.

 

[tanfwc]

spammer usually sign up for free hosting account so provider might disable the ability to send out email

There is always a price to pay for a stable server to be hosted on :D

 

[Zwolf]

This site has a very good explanation of why companies offer free hosting. The article is entitled: The Evils of the Free Webpage Provider - Hope that helps.

 

[kallis]

Interesting topic and excellent clarifications.

 

[iHubNet-Matt]

All the free hosts use that as their advertising place. They will surely place their ads somewhere in the page.

 

[champ_rock]

Some people simply have some extra space which they dont use. for example, i have reseller which i am hardly able to utilise even 50%. therefore i just give them away to friends or anyone in need of small hosting and cannot afford it

 

[meljr]

It looks to me like they sometimes will offer a nice small starter package free, and then hope that you will grow into needing a "BIGGER" package later. Then you buy the bigger package from them and they now have a paying customer.

meljr

 

[hadrick]

Actually people provide free hosting as a side business to gear up their paid hosting business. Most of the professional free hosting companies don't ask for forum posting or putting ads, you can think about atspace, they are same like that. Although there are some new comers in the free hosting world who are intended to earn some money from ads and making their forum popular by providing free hosting on return of forum posting and putting ads on client's page. But certainly i personally dont appreciate such an approach.

Regards

 

[-NC-]

meljr is spot on, the ones that don't have advertising on are simply using it as a teaser, to get you to upgrade to their paid service. exactly the same as some other free services - e.g. domaintools.com (free, but if you want the upgraded service, you have to pay)

zwolf, great link, entertaining read! one point to note: any free provider worth using should let you use your own domain name (not registered with them!) and provide ftp / database access. that way, if they do decide to slap ads all over your site in the future, you can just download your content, change the dns on the domain name, and then all they have is the content, but the website is orphaned with no links / bookmarks, and you can set up shop somewhere else in a few hours

 

[iHubNet-Matt]

Yeah make sure they dont access the secure part of your site.

 

[kallis]

This is an interesting thread,very useful informations about free hosts.Thanks guys.

 

[Aesthetic]

Nice read, thanks, guys!
Do you know of any serious site using free hosting? How happen that free and paid hosting go hand in hand? I did my best trying to come up with another industry where you'll see the same, but failed.

 

[directorysubmit]

There are some hosting providers which give free hosting without any catches like, forcing ads, placing their hosting link on the sites. But usually the packages are much smaller like 50mb, 100mb and with little bandwidth. They also limit sub domains, addon domains, databases.. and other things. Their aim in providing this kind of hosting is perhaps to get the free accounts upgraded to paid ones.

 

[novelty]

With such cheap hosting plans available in the industry which include lots of scripts installed, support and everything, (lunarpages.com, hostagator.com, webhostingbuzz.com) I don't see any reasons to use free hosting.