I am trying to create a list of things that people find important when choosing a free web host or hosting in general. Could you please offer some of your opinions Thanks Matt
I assume you mean ignore the second post but not the first so I will tell you what I consider important choosing a free hosting provider: - No banners, popups or any type of advertising - FTP access - ASP or PHP support For paid hosting, relevant factores include uptime, webspace, bandwidth, and customer service.
agree with the php/mysql and no ads, but without ads the freehost won't make $ and it'll disappear. there are some who can do without but they have an edge somehow, so I want to add; proven stability; host *must* be around for more than 1 year.
no ads is common if you're paying for the hosting. but what makes it great? their server's uptime, their tech support must be clever, you must have ssh access into your webspace, full dns management and more.
Thanks everyone what about server quality? control panel - cpanel, directadmin, layered panel, webmin... preferences? support... should it be ticket based or via community help forum? I mean is it feasible to have most level one support issues handled by the community members? what other incentives, bonuses or tools? Matt
how much space and bandwidth? Lets be realistic in the needs, if most of us look at what our sites actually use compared to what we buy! the fact is web hosts oversell and buyers overbuy. aren't cpu resources more important? I can tell you you are getting 600gb storage and 6000gb bandwidth on a $3.95 paid plan but it is impossible to even reach 10% of those numbers... with things such as inode limits you get shut down half way through the day. So what "numbers are reasonable?
unlimited bandwidthm sql and ftp? sure you can have unlimited bandwidth on a 1mbps port shared for the entire server. and why not give everyone unlimited sql? that way, with a thousand accounts on the server all running joomla, ipb, some good search databases your site should load within the week. There is no unlimited!
Fast support!! One of my websites is hosted on a small host that takes (at minimum) 24 hours to respond to any support requests. It's not so bad if I have a small problem, but if something major happens, I'm stuck. It's happened several times already, so I'm giving serious thought to switching to a host that has better tech support.
Thanks for the feedback... keep it coming. what about ad free after 60 days? would an annually paid support upgrade work $5/account annually? or does that overstep the free host line? ( I mean pay for ticket based or use the forums for free)
Bannerless hosting is possible depending on how you market it. A friend of mine runs a free hosting service with no ads, PHP/SQL support and FTP access, but only 150 MB and limited bandwidth. Here the money is made through the control panel encouraging to unlock the full potential of the service (auto-installers, addon domains, etc., etc.) and this can be done by upgrading for a fee or switching to full-featured paid packages. Back to Mattheww's questions, Cpanel/Fantastico are the standard but license may result costly unless it is already part of your server or reseller package. A good alternative is Plesk or Ensim but once again license might be a problem. Some popular alternatives include DirectAdmin, Webmin, and Zpanel, but these often carry lots of support tickets, forum posts asking for help or emails, depending if you define a support area or not. People are familiar with Cpanel, Plesk is intuitive and Ensim not so different to the first two. As per support, I wouldn't pay for it either with a free or paid hosting, only for VPS or Dedicated servers.
I would say the two main things are having lots of uptime, and also a good, fast loading sitebuilder. And I don't think that it needs to have a squillion templates. Just a few that look okay.