Free Forum Hosting?

[Spyros]

Yup, it sure is getting harder and harder these days to find a 'real' free host. Most of the hosts I have found put ADs on the hosted sites, or restrict certain features until you upgrade to paid plans,etc... which are extremely annoying :sad:

Actually, the opposite is true...

You would have a hard time two or three years ago searching for a free host to upload some static HTML pages with a few images. Nowadays, free hosts exist, and they offer many goodies (like databases, scripts, FTP and others). And they're getting more and more.

As you say, their free hosting plans may be just promotions for their paid ones, but how can a company survive without selling its products?

If you like their services and your site's needs are getting bigger, you will consider upgrading your hosting plan to a paid one with more features. Else, you can stick with their free - limited - plan. It's after all, a promotion for their paid products.

Just like the young lady would give you a sample of the company's new cologne when you enter their shop at your local mall. It's a promotional offer. You like the sample, you buy the product. You don't like it, it's OK.

[Footzilla]

Thanks guys for sharing your views. I was thinking that first i used the free hostng package and then after a couple of months i should move to a paid hosting. Can you guys tell me any post to host sites?

[aashwin]

Forumotion
Or smfforfree2.com

[shadow12345]

Actually, the opposite is true...

You would have a hard time two or three years ago searching for a free host to upload some static HTML pages with a few images. Nowadays, free hosts exist, and they offer many goodies (like databases, scripts, FTP and others). And they're getting more and more.

As you say, their free hosting plans may be just promotions for their paid ones, but how can a company survive without selling its products?

If you like their services and your site's needs are getting bigger, you will consider upgrading your hosting plan to a paid one with more features. Else, you can stick with their free - limited - plan. It's after all, a promotion for their paid products.

Even though I only learned most Internet stuffs (including hosting) about more than one year ago, I agree with what you said about how hard it was to find a free host. I understand that companies need to sell something to survive, but to a normal user who are not able to pay for anything online and really want a website up, then those restrictions are nothing but nightmares.

My site once suffered from slow loading time, instability and "ADs-took-half-of-the-screen" pages so maybe my opinion is not really true but personally, I don't like hosts so what I meant by saying 'real hosts' were the ones who only serve people for free or treat free and paid customers the same.