I didn't find much information via search about this topic, but I'm wondering for those of you that run free hosts - what percentage are you converting into a premium/paid hosting plan. Is 10% upsell a realistic goal?

Chris

I think it's impossible to answer this question accurately, because it would totally depend on your business.

In other words, are you giving free hosting to girl scout clubs? Is your website and service totally designed to cater to their needs and desires?

So you give them free hosting for yyy features.. and then you require them to pay for zzz features.

If so, then you will have a much higher conversion ratio then if you just have a generic "free hosting! ya!" website. there are thousands of those already.)

Well from our records....
You should have a percentage from up to 5 percent conversion rate.... You are better off targetting the traffic that they generate because some of those people that come in to their sites may want hosting.
We provide general hosting and also tailored free hosting packages.
Most of those that convert are because they can't stand free packages and the speeds :P
Those that signed up because they went to a freely hosted site, we have no records...

Do free hosting and monopolize the advertising. Then you are getting free ads and if they upgrade to a paid plan you are getting even more out of it.

Originally posted by mrzippy
I think it's impossible to answer this question accurately, because it would totally depend on your business.

In other words, are you giving free hosting to girl scout clubs? Is your website and service totally designed to cater to their needs and desires?

So you give them free hosting for yyy features.. and then you require them to pay for zzz features.

If so, then you will have a much higher conversion ratio then if you just have a generic "free hosting! ya!" website. there are thousands of those already.)

You're right; I should have specified which type of free host.

I'm trying to get stats from those free hosts who are giving away limited accounts and banking on a good conversion rate.

Originally posted by galacnet
Most of those that convert are because they can't stand free packages and the speeds :P


That's what I'm trying to confirm. It sounds like you also limit speeds on your free service offering?

Originally posted by mrbroadband
That's what I'm trying to confirm. It sounds like you also limit speeds on your free service offering?

Limiting the throttle helps us contain a few very very important things.

1) Competitors trying to take us down by killing the bandwidth.
2) Stop some in-experience users from screwing up the servers
3) Make is a PLUS point to upgrade :)
Those are just a few of why throttle should be limited. The security and reliability reasons are actually the most important ones :)

Those free web hosting "companies" that I see going bust almost all have a problem with this as they give full stream to some "moron" and then the server can't take the load....
Imagine if someone gets an account and then uses 100 FTP accounts to upload things at the same time at insane speeds.... the CPU will go bust.... then server shut down... and all hell breaks loose ;)