Nothing is free in this world. The word "free" attached to some web hosting sites is there only as a hook. Why would anyone give away hosting for free? There's got to be something in it for those "free web hosting sites". These companies are there because they are doing business and not philanthropic work.
A good example of a "free" webhosting company is 110MB.com. I had an account with them because like many people who are new to web hosting, I opted for free hosting before diving into the real thing. The reviews of 110mb.com were quite good so I was convinced that they are really good. I signed up fo a free account and immediately attempted to install my very first WordPress blog. But I soon realized that the a free 110MB account does not include MySQL database feature which is needed to run a WordPress blog. To unlock the MySQL feature I had to shell out $9.95. I told my self that it's okay, that amount is quite small. And so I shelled out $9.95 to be able to get on with the WordPress install.
I was impressed with the cPanel of 110mb; installation of WordPress was a breeze and I was able to upload tons of templates in a matter of minutes after installation. I then proceeded to buy a domain name from GoDaddy for my new WP blog. But when I attempted to point my new domain to my WP blog I learned that .htaccess support must be turned on first before I can use a custom domain on my WP install. Another $9 is needed to unlock this feature. So I shelled out another $9 for the .htaccess feature. At last my new WordPress blog was running smoothly with its shiny new custom domain. But when WordPress 2.7.1 came out, a problem made itself known: I needed to turn on the Sendmail ON feature to be able to do an automatic download and upgrade of my WordPress install in 110MB server. It costs $9! And of course, if you are doing a WordPress upgrade you need to back up your blog. To be able to back up my blog, I had to turn on the 1-Click Backup ENABLE feature which is worth $7!!! My goodness! So I uninstalled my WP blog and forgot about 110MB and their not really free web hosting, along with the $18 I wasted on them. Actually, it was not wasted, i learned a lot from them.
I then did a little research about the best web hosting companies around and I was torn between WebHostingPad.com and FatCow.com. After chatting with the customer service of the two companies, I decided to get a one year web hosting from FatCow. I was able to get a very good deal from them. Now I am enjoying FatCow's good service, really worth my money. If they continue to perform this good, I'll buy more hosting from them. As of now, I have around 15 blogs hosted on FatCow. Yes more than 15 and I don't know how I'd take care of them all :)
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Well they do give a hint on their webiste that MYSQL and Sendmail features are not free(It says"must activate" besides them).
April 4, 2009 at 6:52 AMOo nga, it's true that free hosting really sucks. Even if I know a lot of free websites that lets you house your own self-hosted blog, I would still prefer those services from paid hosting.
April 4, 2009 at 7:04 AMHmm.. you can always hire writers to build content for your 15 blogs. You can also hire a web designer to make your blogs pretty. Even hire somebody who can also do maintenance on all those 15 blogs.
I think you really need to delegate work, even if you can really do all the jobs yourself.
how much did you get from fatcow? unli bandwidth ba? i'm planning to switch hosting when my contract is up with asmallorange. i paid $24 for two years pero 3GB bandwidth lang so every month I have to add $3 to accommodate my blog.
April 4, 2009 at 8:56 AMi always suggest lunarpages sa friends ko because for $5 per month, unlimited bandwidth, disk space and may kasama pang domain.
I got it for $48. The regular price is $66 for one year, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited blogs, unlimited domains, databases, and space. They have very good service. I love their customer service, maaasahan.
April 4, 2009 at 9:17 AMim using free hosting from byethost now... so far so good
April 4, 2009 at 10:30 PM@ Cabdulrasaaq yes, they give a hint that those features need to be activated but I lost interest when in almost every step I make I had to make another payment just to have something activated, so I realized that it is not at all free and I might as well buy a complete hosting plan; its safer especially if you are planning to have an online business. And lately the blog i had hosted in 110mb was always down so I just removed it.
April 5, 2009 at 2:59 AM@Gem it never occurred to me to hire people to take care of my blogs :) I am used to doing everything myself even if I'm very busy with my day job. One of the reasons why i blog and why I spend money to be able to do what I want to do is because I am a very "hands-on" guy when it comes to doing things.
@godgets I also had a free account with byethost. I did not have any problem with them or their service but I do not really think that it is such a good idea to use free hosting for a blog or a site that you are taking seriously. If you are using a free hosting, you will not have any say as to what they'll do with your site. Just visit differnt webmasters' forums, you'll read many people complain about having their sites deleted from byethost when their sites started to get good traffic (and use a lot of bandwidth. Just like that, without warning. o the months of work just vanished out of thin air.
Yap I noticed the energy, even if I haven't seen you personally. You juggle a lot of things and it's really amazing. Not all people can do that.
April 5, 2009 at 5:12 AMFor a time I was thinking of the previous webhost service that you were using, until you mentioned that you were using 110..
yan ang adik, super daming blogs hahaha, kaya ng hosting account mo yun lahat? sabagay,light weight lang naman din ang WP haha
April 5, 2009 at 8:33 PMGreetings,
Kevin Paquet - Pinoy Teens
kaya naman he he he
April 5, 2009 at 8:46 PMPost a Comment