Free hosts that have closed this year

[JamesCWilson]

As you may or may not have heard already, a number of very long established free webhosts have already closed their doors this year, and I believe Geocities has been one of them if I am not mistaken. Even free webhosts seem to be getting effected by this bad economy, and it doesn't seem to be just the pay hosts. What is everyones take on this?

 

[Artashes]

Free hosting providers do not close because the economy is bad. Free hosting providers close because they are mismanaged. They give away too much resources (unlimited is the term we are looking for), put no limitations in place and then find themselves in trouble with spammers, warez distributors. Their hosting bills skyrocket and they simply close doors because it is an easy way out. In some cases, however, they get shut down by an upstream provider for too much abuse complaints or other legal reasons.

As far as Geocities, a brand owned by Yahoo! I believe, I think it was the company's own decision for a while now. The service, while popular, has probably not been performing very well and if anything, attracted all the same wonderful people, but mostly SEO spammers who used Geocities to build up hundreds of pages of fake pages to enhance their own or their clients' search engine efforts.

 

[devonblzx]

It is just a hard concept, free hosting. As said before it can be easily taken advantage of. Shared hosting isn't an expensive product these days, at merely pennies per day it should be an easy alternative for a true webmaster.

 

[host1plus]

Artashes clarified everything very well, free hosting must reborn in new way, because this way is quite old, I think.

 

[SenseiSteve]

Free hosting providers do not close because the economy is bad. Free hosting providers close because they are mismanaged. They give away too much resources (unlimited is the term we are looking for), put no limitations in place and then find themselves in trouble with spammers, warez distributors. Their hosting bills skyrocket and they simply close doors because it is an easy way out. In some cases, however, they get shut down by an upstream provider for too much abuse complaints or other legal reasons.

As far as Geocities, a brand owned by Yahoo! I believe, I think it was the company's own decision for a while now. The service, while popular, has probably not been performing very well and if anything, attracted all the same wonderful people, but mostly SEO spammers who used Geocities to build up hundreds of pages of fake pages to enhance their own or their clients' search engine efforts.

Great analysis, Artashes. While I don't think it's so much the economy, I do believe that steep pricing cuts in shared hosting packages helped drive some of these over the edge.

 

[Artashes]

Artashes clarified everything very well, free hosting must reborn in new way, because this way is quite old, I think.

I would actually argue on that point. There are still many companies and individuals who would choose free hosting for not mission-crtitical projects. Non for profit organizations, students, etc, who are just looking for basic space, if they can not spend the extra $10/month or even per year for what they see as unnecessary expense, they won't.

There are also many examples of well established free hosting providers who have been making good money and provided adequate service. The key on the free hosting business is to not imitate your competition, not to overreact and offer unlimited resources (or just gigantic resources that might as well be unlimited) but to establish your own rules and limitations. You do not want to attract someone who will be able to upload a file that is more than 5-10 MB in size. You do not want to attract people who need more than 5 GB in monthly traffic allotment.

 

[ldcdc]

Free hosting providers do not close because the economy is bad. Free hosting providers close because they are mismanaged.

That is quite often the thing that leads to the failure of both paid and free hosts. The economy's state might have a bit to do with the failure of some free hosts, as they depend a lot on advertising revenue, which may be diminishing.

 

[Dave B]

I agree that the economy does have something to do with free hosts closing, particularly Geocities. Yahoo is strapped for cash and faced layoffs this year so trimming fat like Geocities only makes sense from a financial standpoint. I'm sure the fact that it was (and really always has been, to a point) being abused for SEO and other purposes probably didn't help it's cause much either. Too expensive and more trouble than it's worth in short.

Dave

 

[Hosting India]

i have heard that the free host generate a lots of revenue from the advertisement that it displays on the free hosted website, more than it can earn from the hosting, so might be another reason to shut down the services

 

[thewebhostingdi]

It is always good to host your site with paid host. Do not host your site with free host. It is good that many free hosts have closed their services.

 

[LDHosting]

It is always good to host your site with paid host. Do not host your site with free host. It is good that many free hosts have closed their services.

Free hosts do have a purpose in my opinion. Students that are learning IT get assignments to make a website and they want to impress by putting up a live website. A free host in this case would be ideal, and there are a lot more legit reasons why someone would want a free host.

Yeah, a free host isn't as reliable as a paid host because a free host is offering you a favour and is not bound by any rules. They can do what they want, unlike a paid host. You get what you pay for.