Hey,

I've been researching a lot lately, and i'm not sure if paid hosting is really worth it.

It's because there are WAY too many paid hosts...

Free hosts is easy, because simply... it's free.

combined with a lot of users and google ad words, or other ads, revenues can be very high.

I would just like to have others' input.

Thanks

I did some free hosting where I had advertisements. The revenue wasn't high at all but since I was doing it for the good of my community I didn't mind it.

We do both.. free hosting for almost 6 years.. paid hosting for around 3... Revenue is about the same from both right now but much higher profits from free hosting. Paid hosting has a lot of hidden expenses (not server related) such as credit card processing fees, chargeback fees, etc..

On free hosting our gross margins are around 65% where its only in the 50's on paid.

Thanks for the info/advice amelen, thanks for all your input

Originally posted by amelen
We do both.. free hosting for almost 6 years.. paid hosting for around 3... Revenue is about the same from both right now but much higher profits from free hosting. Paid hosting has a lot of hidden expenses (not server related) such as credit card processing fees, chargeback fees, etc..

On free hosting our gross margins are around 65% where its only in the 50's on paid.

Hmm. That's interesting. I will consider this in the future!

You should ask galacnet, he runs a free hosting service, he can give you some important input.

amelen, which companies do you target for advertising on your free pages?

IMO, if you can't make more money from paid hosting than free hosting, something is wrong. Maybe your prices are too low, maybe you just haven't found the right niche, but paid hosting should be able to pull in more money than ad revenue any day.

On the other hand, if you're having better success with free hosting, by all means focus on that part of your business. It's going to vary from host to host though, so stick with whatever you have found to be successful, not what everyone else says. In other words, there's no best business model, only the business model that's best for you. ;)

Free hosting is good, you will get lots of support for it. But running it is hard. First if you want a large number of customers, you need a very big server with lots of space. Secondly you MUST make sure they CLICK on the ads or else it is impossible for you to get any revenue. Also, you can try free hosting at the same time provide paid hosting as well. (if your free hosting goes well).

And of course, paid hosting offers more. You can provide free hosting but NO MYSQL. This will encourage people to register for paid hosting =P

When it comes down to Free Vs. Paid, I would definitelly choose paid. Why? You at least have the impression you're working for someone, there is constant cash flow, You can develop it gradually, the resources needed are much lower than in the case of Free Hosting.

Yaser... we have contracts with a few advertisers.. spyware removal software ads seem to do best.

As for ad revenue from paid vs. free.. we have been running free for many more years and have over 100,000 free hosting members.. so it generates a lot of money :)

Thanks amelen.

I think you should contact design, seo companies etc. Someone who provides a service related to web hosting, like you mentioned spyware does well, inter-related service would be best.

Do you offer free emails to them?