Personal websites.....maybe............business websites........you are taking a huge risk.

Friends with servers?

If they are in a data center, then good for you. If they are running a server at home on a cable modem or DSL line, that’s another story.

Make sure your friend knows how to fix problems with His/Her server if it goes down however. Make sure your friend has the money to replace bad hardware if it goes down. Also, make sure your friend does not get mad at you for any reason so that they do not delete your content.

The bottom line folks.......you get what you pay for.

Uptime, support, speed, dependability, quality assurance........these are qualities that you are paying for with paid hosting services. By paying for them, you have the right to expect nothing less. Free hosts will not guarantee anything. If they loose your data, oh well.......It was free.

Here are a few TOS entries I have found at several FREE hosts:

1) User accounts may be deleted after 30 days if there is no activity on the account or if the account has less than 2 unique visitors per day on average for 30 days, in order to free unused resources.

2) Our free hosting plans are NOT for the following purposes:
File storage; File hosting, File Linking, Image Linking, Movie Hosting, Radio Blogs / Broadcasting, Signature Hosting, Trackers, Proxy or Relaying Services & Backup Storage.

3) The Customer is responsible for building and updating his/her web page, and regularly backing up any related data.

4) Termination. Host may terminate this Agreement, discontinue the Service and delete the Site at any time without notice to User

5) makes no guarantee as to availability of service.

6) We reserve the right to stop our free web hosting service at any time, for any reason.


Here is a quote from a FREE HOSTING account holder I found today:

“I have been using this free web space hosting service for about 1 month. There are several bad things I have come across in this server. It does not accept all filename extensions, it has maximum 300 users simultaneous ftp users (not enough), very basic cpanel with functions that do not work (such as forum installation), logging into the cpanel fails most of the times, as well as logging into the ftp account, there is no answer to my e-mails, and it has a maximum file size of 500KB.

These are all common issues that I have seen in most every FREE hosting provider TOS. Not to say that ALL free services are horrible, just risky to people that absolutely NEED dependability.

Judge for yourself.