Hello all, I am looking to start a free web hosting service and wanted to find out which free web hosting script/platform is the best. Many thanks in advance for any feedback.
Can you elaborate what exactly you want to do? Your question is kind a confusing. Are you planning to offer free hosting services or looking for a free hosting?
zPanel is not very secure For pricing you can go for DirectAdmin(if cPanel costs high)... For billing you can choose THT or BoxBilling... For website design you can choose a free template or buy a cheap one or can get it designed by some designer (like us )...
MY plan is to offer free webhosting services. So what i need is a platform which would enable me to do this. Hope this clears up the confusion The hosting I want to offer is cpanel based, i can purchase servers etc thats not the issue.. i want to make the whole process automated.
As you haven’t mentioned your budget so I guess you are open for any option. You can start with a decent reseller hosting plan, web hosting companies offer cPanel/WHM with it. But for WHMCS you will have to pay a bit extra. If you are considering VPS or Dedicated servers, then the license fees of cPanel/WHM/WHMCS will vary from one hosting company to another. You can also use a cloud service to offer free hosting. Once you configure your cloud server, you can create a number of VMs for each user. It will also allow you to monitor resource usage of each VM quite easily. And most importantly, you will be only charged for what you use. Note: Make sure you get a backup hosting plan separately. For example, R1Soft backup plan. This will help you to schedule regular backups securely. Do not depend on hosting company even when they claim they take regular backups.
How does anyone make money from free hosting? it just doesn't sound economical to me. Generally the services that free web hosts provide are slow and insecure - so why anyone would want to host there website with a free web host is beyond my comprehension.
To make money by offering free hosting depends on the person’s ability to commercialize the product. If you really want to know how the free hosting service providers make money, visit Flippa marketplace and search free hosting providers which were or are for sale, you can study their revenues and expenses. It will provide you an opportunity to know how much money they make through free hosting services. Note: I am not promoting the free hosting service here, I am just trying to say it’s also a good way to make revenue if run the service properly. Mostly, people who use free hosting services are newbies, bloggers, or those who would like to test their website or applications on the web. I am in the hosting industry since last 4 years and till the date never seen any major commercial website which is hosted with a free host. So I think people are quite aware about the pros and cons of free hosting services.
use youhosting if you plan to offer a free service. You can put ads in the footer of each users page, you can put ads in the control panel (that only your users see, and not their website visitors). IMHO, youhosting is *crap* but mark my words, it is ALOT better to start off with youhosting (where only costs involved is the cost of your domain name which you can get from anywhere). To explain where I am coming from, You might be some web marketing genuius, but odds are, if this is your first website, or first business, or first time trying to run free hosting, you have NO IDEA how competitive the market is. Additionally, with free hosting, any money you earn wont be enough to cover any sort of paid marketing or advertising costs. I have seen alot of people start to provide hosting, and here is what I normally see, people will start the site, incur big costs (servers, software, SEO, marketing, advertising, etc) and most of what they get is a massive hole in their pocket. I will tell you now, if you cannot earn $1 from using the youhosting platform, then you will be unable to earn enough to cover the time it took for you to start this
Offering free hosting and expecting to earn revenue from ads is a time tested plan that has unfortunately failed for many. Explore the option of reselling to a particular niche market with which you are familiar and you may see better results. Good luck with whatever direction you decide to pursue.
As matt_62 says, if you are a beginner - you can go with youhosting.com or myownfreehost.net. Both are ok to provide free hosting to customers. All you need is to buy a good domain name and market your site.