Has anyone ever received a request for a free hosting account in exchange for a "hosted by" link on their page?

I got one today and to tell you the truth, i'm not keen on the idea.

What is your experience with such requests?

We get these requests all the time and if the site is for a good cause, we sometimes agree.

We get requests on it too - usually for people starting out, but for the most part we do not get involved with them. Some organizations we do have sponsored links and some forums or designers that cater to our clients too.

Those that we've seen the requests for free hosting usually have ZERO traffic to begin with, so they're not consuming any resources, but at the same time, with zero traffic, why spend your advertising dollars

So as Steve said - "sometimes we agree" - but there has to be a benefit

We receive requests once in a while for sponsored hosting, but as Steve and Conor said, there has to be some type of benefit to doing so.

Sponsoring someone with a site that has no traffic or has traffic completely unrelated to the web hosting/web design industry would be kind of pointless.

Glad to see you have the same outlook as I do. I asked the person what the site domain was and how much traffic it gets. Turns out the site is still under construction, so i passed. I did offer a discount though.

We have also received such emails requesting shared hosting, reseller accounts (which we don't even offer) and even VPS hosting in exchange for a sponsored link. Up to this moment we have just ignored such requests. Just don't be surprised if you get two or three in a month, as this is very common.

We received such kind of emails but we just refuse such requests.

We were received few requests like that.

But we are not entertaining that kind of requests as we don't have enough time to continuously monitor those sites to make sure our link is there.

We receive a number of requests of different kinds just like any other provider and I'd much agree that there has to be a benefit for both involved parties. However I'd add that it doesn't necessarily involve direct marketing, an example being charities and foundations or similar projects which can solidify our local presence.

This in turn allows your company to approach other companies of whom may also support the same cause with a stronger presence, especially at events organised by a said charity or foundation as well as providing an essence of giving back to the community/getting involved.

In addition to what CSN-UK had said, I just wanted to comment on this particular quote above regarding the checking of links and the time it takes to do so.

There are many scripts on the web (many of them free) which are setup as a link exchange type script to monitor that a particular URL, image or piece of code is showing on a page. If the code is removed, the admin (and/or the user) is emailed to alert them of the change and removal of the code.

If time is your reason for not implementing this, be aware that there are many free scripts which will automate the task for you.