Saturday, March 9, 2019

Free Web Hosting Services

Have you ever created a little website for an event or group at a bargain introductory price, and then forgotten about it until you notice huge recurring charges applied to your credit card?  I have, so now I stay away from introductory pricing on web sites.  A few years back there seemed to be dozens of places to host a web site for free, but now there are few choices for general purpose sites with rich site building features that don't have some kind of catch or gotcha to get you to upgrade to a premium plan.

 I've looked at a number of pages like this one that lists free hosting services, but they never seem to reveal the catch or gotcha I'd care about for each provider.
So after trying a few services, and finding the gotchas, I thought I'd start a spreadsheet to track this.  Please add information about your favorite free or really cheap hosting sites in the comments, or let me know of any similar comparison charts already out there!  Should there be other features important enough to include in the summary like cron jobs, or number of ftp accounts?

You can share this sheet, or view all sheets, with this link: http://bit.ly/freewebh

This is one of the topics I covered in a WordPress talk for CUCUG, and will expand on for RCSI in May.  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

 Please share this post with the shortlink: http://bit.ly/CompareFreeHosting

 P.S.  I also have a sheet for comparing cheap mobile plans.

Since posting this, many new options have become available besides traditional hosting accounts.  See:
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13 comments:

  1. deborahMarch 10, 2019 at 2:39 PM

    you are so organized and helpful inn sharing the information you have gleaned from other sources. thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. David NeedhamMarch 11, 2019 at 10:20 PM

    Not free, but what about Linode or DigitalOcean for $5/mo? I suppose the catch is that you have to do EVERYTHING yourself.

    We also talked about Amazon EC2. Pricing will vary depending on actual usage, but probably be very inexpensive for light use. https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/tutorials/launch-a-wordpress-website/

    ReplyDelete
  3. MarkZMarch 11, 2019 at 10:46 PM

    Interesting ideas. There are a fair number of lifetime hosting options in the $50 to $200 range. My fear is that you start a website at $5 a month, forget about it, and 20 years later you've spent $1,200 on something barely used. I'd rather cover my costs for a single smaller up front fee. It does not take long even at $5/month to get past the break even point. On the other hand, a site that is only up three months to promote an event might be cheaper by the month, if a free hosting option does not suffice.

    I'd like to put AWS in the table, but have no idea how to compare it price/feature with other offerings. Suggestions?
    I also suspect that creating pages for beginners in WordPress might generate a cost with all the trial and error process page loads.
    This blog also points out that AWS lacks many of the monitoring and management services many hosting providers take care of.
    https://nouveauframework.org/blog/ultimate-guide-to-hosting-wordpress-on-aws-ec2-for-complete-beginners/

    Here's an example of one of the more obscure lifetime offers:
    https://ahead-hosting.com/lifetime-hosting-plans/
    Mid Winter Sale! 60% OFF with code: 19winter60

    ReplyDelete
  4. MarkZMarch 13, 2019 at 5:57 PM

    On the subject of cheap instead of free hosting, has anyone tried 1 Dollar web hosting?
    https://www.1dollar-webhosting.com/1dollarwebhosting.htm
    They offer an unlimited number of sites with unlimited everything for $3/month. This might be a nice option for someone managing a lot of sites. I have several pages at different hosting providers (mostly free ones, and three lifetime host accounts) so I can see this potentially simplifying management at a single point of failure! Their cheapest plan is 50 cents a month, which isn't bad either.

    ReplyDelete
  5. MarkZApril 7, 2019 at 5:40 PM

    Here's a similar idea to AWS. I didn't know Google had a cheap VM!
    https://www.christitus.com/2019/03/14/wordpress-google-cloud-platform/
    Google VM web host under a dollar a year!!! Typically 1 to 7 cents per month!

    ReplyDelete
  6. MarkZMay 3, 2019 at 8:50 PM

    According to this link AWS is not the deal Google is:
    https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-host-a-website-on-Amazon-AWS-Is-that-a-fair-price

    ReplyDelete
  7. MarkZDecember 29, 2019 at 7:27 PM

    Here is an interesting sale, $0.26 per month for five years:
    https://www.androidauthority.com/boxne-ssd-hosting-1056594/

    ReplyDelete
  8. deborahMarch 30, 2020 at 9:47 AM

    ahh this is alot of info, and i imagine tis useful, but i need you to hold my hand through it all!

    ReplyDelete
  9. SAMERRAugust 12, 2021 at 8:22 AM

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    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MarkZAugust 12, 2021 at 10:05 AM

      That does sound like reasonable pricing. I'd be interested to see pricing on lifetime plans there.

      Delete
  10. SAMERRAugust 12, 2021 at 11:21 AM

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    ReplyDelete
  11. Sara khanAugust 17, 2022 at 12:46 AM

    Thanks for sharing this. i learn many new things about web hosting.

    ReplyDelete
  12. cyber pcDecember 4, 2022 at 4:58 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

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