Hi,
I planning to start a free webhosting business with XPanel and
RackShack dedicated server.
Does anybody have experience with XPanel?
Also any comments about PowerDNS Nameserver?

XPanel? :eek: Maybe you mean CPanel with the XSkin?

I have seen a control panel named XPanel discussed somewhere before but I don't really know anything about it.

Xpanel does exist : http://www.xpanel.org/features.html

I use Vlinto in my free web host and I also use Bind for DNS.

Free webhosting business or charity.....
Is it any NGO?

Free web hosting is more a charity as a business is one which aims to make money. There is no money to be made directly from offering free web hosting services and thus it cannot be deemed as a business or a profit center, thus more a charity or loss-leader or cost center depending on how you look at it.

:D

No money to be made? Tons of money is made on the advertising.

I had a friend who "took a whack" at the free hosting thing... He had banners and text links on the top and bottom of all the pages he hosted...

4000gb of bandwidth and 100 some click thrus later (5 cents each = $5 in revenue) the "whack" was over :)

Good Luck!

I've seen too many free web host set up hoping to make money from banners but most of them are gone, provide crappy service (you get what you pay for) or have started charging.

Originally posted by Woogs
I use Vlinto in my free web host and I also use Bind for DNS.

Does Vlinto support FTP or only web based upload form?

What are the advantages of giving free hosting??

Hm... In France, there's community hosting...

Here's how it works: It's an hosting service, with low prices. They take how it costs (let say it costs 100$ for the server) and divide it into the number of members (let say 100 members). It costs 1$ per month per member... and it's possible for the manager to make money... but not enought

Good luck ;)

What are the advantages of giving free hosting??

You will allow those who are unable or unwilling to pay for web hosting to be able to get a web presence.

In the past when there were tons of internet-money to spend, free web hosting sites were regarded as untapped goldmines with great advertising potential. It provided the large pool of clients and audience (clicks and page views) which web advertisers would go for with their banner ads.

But when reality sets in, that model no longer holds true. However, the free web hosting can be a nice loss-leader when it would lead to those upgrading to the paid option. Loss leaders are marketing gimmicks used by supermarkets where they might offer a particular item way below cost such as 5 gallons of milk for 10cents. This will attract shoppers but having them in the store, they hope to entice them to purchase other products along the way. It is like lose a little here but gain a lot elsewhere.

Some offer free hostings as a means to just hone their web administrative skills as a prelude to running a paid service. It is like on-the-job training. Most use free hosting for non-essential sites so if they crash, it is no big deal.

Some people are probably just plain generous with a lot of funds and no where to spend them at.

Hello
This is interesting.

I used to have a cobranded free hosting service which ha dover 250,000 users.

It made a small amount of money for me (enough to cover my first server costs, when servers cost serious money).

The previous one brought in a lot of money from links to other free services which were in the control panel, but those sorts of services don't have affilliate programs now.

I have often thought about setting up a free host again but it would need to be no cgi, limited space and limited bandwidth.
Not sure how it would make money.

Its an interesting idea.

Like free domains.
Namezero became a big brand by offering them but effectively went bust and were taken over as a result.

I have been looking at offering free domains for one year but I cant see how the money could be recovered (and I have tried all sorts of ideas in my spreadsheet!).

OK, back to normal business.

Gordon

Vlinto is web based only and uses MySQL so you can write your own code to allow FTP thru SQL authenication as well.

My free web host is still very profitable from advertising, I also use it to market my paid hosting and domain registration services.
The advertising market has died big time, I am not longer making $15 per 1000 ads like I was in 2001, but it still can be profitable if run right.

What about...free hosting...but premium phone line support. This is a model that was used in the UK very successfully. Freeserve were charging about £1 per minute for telephone support....but they then grew overnight into the largest ISP in the UK.

Simon