I'm sure you get it because we get it a lot. What do you think of people who email you looking for free hosting? What's a nice way to say "no"? Do you just not reply to their emails? Do they annoy you? After being let down, do they ever become clients? How big does their site have to be to get free hosting (pageviews per day)?

I know, it's a lot of questions, but I'm just clueless, and I want to know what you all have to say!

While we don't offer straight free hosting, we will offer substantial discounts to non-profit organizations - it's kind of a "give back to the community" thing in addition to helping them out, since NPOs usually have strict budgets. As for a nice way of saying "no," usually something form lettery like saying "I apologize, but we do not currently offer free hosting due to the immense cost of owning and operating a server" etc. - The more annoying group of people is those who want old pricing. We'll usually do it so that we can bring in a new client, but typically, if we raise the pricing, it's for a good reason...but we frequently get sob stories of "well I was waiting to make my decision and shopping around and then the prices changed"...

We also get a lot of requests for sponsorship's and old pricing. It's amazing how many will go back two years to an ad that's no longer available and demand we honor that price.

Do you usually honor that price? I know I would (or at least try to establish a middle ground) if I could.

I guess a host should avoid such customers because they will only be your customer if you give them a discount and then they will bother you consistently in the future.

If they take the time to personally address the email we'll usually reply. If it's a bulk email - not so often. From a business standpoint there should be some form of "return on investment" to giving free hosting, and legit non-profit organizations will recognize that hosting providers (like charities) still have to cover operating expenses somehow. Pageviews per day doesn't necessarily mean that any of their visitors will be signing up after seeing your sponsorship advertisement. Many registered charities will give tax receipts for the value of the hosting as a donation.

We do get some requests for sponsorships, and we usually politely decline them. And no, after being let down, we've never had them come back to become a customer at another time.

I haven't opened my company yet, but surely any website owner that claims their website is super succesful should be able to pay for hosting themselves, no sweat? I don't really see the added value of sponsering a website that is able to generate hundreds of dollars in ad revenue.

We stopped answering that kind of requests / emails.

Exactly, if someone don't have few dollars on hosting, he probably not get much money on his "business".

It depends how you look at it. If I think I can benefit my business in ANY way by simply sponsoring a person with hosting for their website, I will. I've sponsored dozens of people with free web hosting and I can honestly say that I have always received something in return by doing so. Whether it's a referral from them or free advertising on the person's website.

I still review each of these emails on an individual basis. Its rare that a 'sponsored' hosting deal can pay off for the host. For shared hosting - if they have reasonable traffic, its a low cost way to get a backlink. For Dedicated hosting - they really need to sweeten the deal. So much so that I've only done 2 sponsored deals on dedicated servers in as many years.

I setup a pre-written reply for those folks looking for sponsored hosting that don't have decent site metrics (i.e. PR 4+, decent backlinks) and a relevant niche for their site (i.e. potential customers for me). "Sorry, but we don't offer sponsored hosting... but we do have a great affiliate program...".

Year ago I was heavily involved in auto racing, every driver and their mother wanted me to sponsor them. It got very annoying. I told them that giving it away don't put food on my table and beer in my fridge! Root beer that is

we have do sponsorships long time ago , but it seem it is not what we are expect

In the past, I have done sponsorship's... These sponsorship's proved to be ineffective..

I have been able to use these as tax write-off's which helped us in that aspect.. however, I don't think we gained 1 single client by these..

I simply tell the (potential) clients that we would be able to offer them some sort of partial sponsorship - where this has proven to be beneficial to both parties.. It helps our company put food on our tables and beer in our fridge as well as give the client a good home to rest their website on..