Free Forum hosts

[JamesCWilson]

There seems to be an awful lot of free forum hosts around these days, and even more surprisingly...some of them actually seem to rival or surpass many pay hosting solutions.

I was just wondering what everyones thoughts on this was, because I have tried a number of the services myself.

While some were rather poor, the best ones were alarmingly good!

Has anyone else tried any of these places, and what are your general feelings about it?

[Soskel]

I think they are a great way for people to start a small forum. Servers might be slow, and support might be awful, but it's free.

[Hannah]

It's definitely a good way to dip your toes in the water if you're brand new to being a forum owner. Certainly it's a lot more cost effective than paying for it somewhere then discovering you don't enjoy it nor have the time or energy to maintain it.

If you haven't paid out a year's fees for something you only used for a few months, nothing's lost then but the time you put into it really and you don't feel so bad about dumping it or putting it on a back burner awhile.

I had a proboards one years ago and don't even know if they're still around, but I never had any problems with it at all either will speed or support. Even their ads were very unobtrusive, just simple text ones. Of course times change and it may be a whole different ball game there now if they still exist, but I liked them and couldn't believe it was free.

[ANMMark]

It's not a bad idea for starting out...absolutely.

[JamesCWilson]

Heh, nice opinions everyone!

Anyway, I must have looked into about 50-60 free forums last night for research purposes.

Of those hosts, about 10-15 looked excellent and well-maintained.

About 10-15 more looked to be very poorly handled, and the rest fell somewhere squarely in the middle.

Some free forum hosts truly DO have excellent and quick customer service believe it or not.

[web77org]

Originally Posted by JamesCWilson

There seems to be an awful lot of free forum hosts around these days, and even more surprisingly...some of them actually seem to rival or surpass many pay hosting solutions.

I was just wondering what everyones thoughts on this was, because I have tried a number of the services myself.

While some were rather poor, the best ones were alarmingly good!

Has anyone else tried any of these places, and what are your general feelings about it?

One problem that you may run into is many free forums dont allow you to have any access to your database.
This can mean that when youve got 200,000 posts and a huge membership that you will have to start from scratch if you decide to go with paid hosting.
I had 10,000+ posts or so when we decided to move....all lost.

[JamesCWilson]

Yeah... the database thing can be a serious issue, I admit.

However many free hosts now offer optional database access for a monthly or yearly fee, and it's generally inexpensive to get.

Of course, it would be a lot better if they would just give you free access!

[appage]

I started my career as a message board admin at a place called network54.com - I think its still around actually, but it looks a little outdated compared to other options. It was a good place to start before purchasing a dot com and vbulletin.

[purple]

I've tried out a couple and have a couple test boards for skinning purposes and was amazed myself with how versatile a free forum could be. Granted payin gives you more control, but a free forum really can be a great place if you don't mind letting them be in charge.

[JamesCWilson]

Well... I just looked at that Network54 site, and it looks SERIOUSLY old school. We're talking about old school in the 1990's way, when things like visual aesthetics were much less of a focus for forums.

You know what though? It's actual a little refreshing in a way, since it gets back to the focus of what forums were first created for: Discussions, not pretty graphics or tons of options.

[appage]

lol..yeah i don't think they've done an update since the place was first designed

other ones i remember were proboards and ezboard...i think they're both still around

[AbbieRose]

Proboards and EZBoards were what we worked hard to move away from. They served us at the time and I still have accounts there, but I would never go back.

The only host I really liked was IPBFree. And yes if I recall correctly you could pay to have access to other features (for much cheaper than going it alone) and so have database access.

Otherwise it is a really big draw back for a free host-too big for me.

[dramaqueen]

There is a lot of good information here that just got me started into looking at some free forum hosting. IPBFree does look pretty nice and I may check into that a little more. Thanks everyone for all the comments. Very helpful!

[JamesCWilson]

One free forum host that I stumbled across recently is called freeforums.org and so far, I am incredibly impressed! Although the forum is ad supported, they let you you do revenue sharing so that you can make a little money for yourself.

The biggest drawback they have which I noticed is that they do not support PHPBB3 yet, but it's in the works.

Customer service is speedy and helpful however, so that's a big plus for me.

[AbbieRose]

And how about database access for freeforums.org? Do they take back ups every so often, or does a server problem mean that you lose everything on the forum?

There are just so many issues I would have with it, so many fears.