Hi all.

I am thinking about starting a free web hosting service using the following business plan:

- Investment money - $12,000.
- Custom web hosting system capable of holding around 10,000 users (PHP, MySQL) per server (on Dual Xeon 2,8GHz).
- Paid plans and domain names registration services.

I am thinking about running the service for a couple of months without banners and then place AdSense for example on users sites.

1. Do you have any specific recommendations I should follow?

2. Do you have any recommendations about the company I should rent the servers from?

3. Do you have any recommendations about the advertising method and platform I should use?

4. I might be forced to find a way to advise my free users about the banner that will be placed on their sites when the banner-less period is over. Any advises about what method of approach I should use?

5. According to you, what will be the percentage of the X accumulated users using the banner-less strategy, compared to the banner-from-the-beginning strategy.


Any other advices will be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
techhouse

Why would you want to dump this much money into a free hosting service? In truth there is a lot more to be made with a paid hosting service, that's just the way things seem to be working out anymore.

Http://www.freewebhostingtalk.com would help you out some as well (think of WHT dedicated to the free hosts).

10,000 sites on a single machine is not going to be a very simple task. I'm going to assume you're not allowing php, cgi, mysql, or mail functions which would make it a little easier to understand.

I would also consider blocking all of China as most users you will find from there only wish to do bad things with your webspace and unless you can read chinese sometimes it's very hard to even know they are doing anything wrong.

There are many many places you could get the machines from, personally I would suggest LayeredTech but everybody has their own ideas.

Adveritisng? Well as soon as word gets out about your site it will spread through many many foreign boards which are updated daily and you will notice several hundred new signups a day, most of which would like to host spam and warez on your servers, other than that you can advertise pretty much anywhere a new web user would end up, use your imagination.

I would do a "free two month trial of our banner free service" when they sign up to give them a taste of no banners if that's what you wanted to do. That migh thelp with some upgrades.

PHP, MySQL, CGI and Mail functions will be supported even for the free users.

Originally posted by techhouse
PHP, MySQL, CGI and Mail functions will be allowed even for the free users.

No way you are going to hold 10,000 per server then and you are just opening yourself up to a world of problems and headaches.

Hey techhouse,

I'd suggest talking with WHT user: tomsyer
He's been doing freehost for a few months now, and knows how to build them. Do a search here, and find that he's sold around 3 or 4 in the past few months. He's current one is a fairly nice outfit. He's custom written a signup script, and tested with different control panels. He can tell you what you need to know.

Hello,
I am currently working for a free hosting company and I can help you out with a few of those questions.


1. Do you have any specific recommendations I should follow? Yes, with $12,000 get the BEST server you possibly can, it is very hard to upgrade to another server, or even have multi-servers, you need a really strong server so you don't have to worry about transfering thousands of MySQL databases and such in the near future

2. Do you have any recommendations about the company I should rent the servers from? GNAX has amazing uptime, you need an affordable place, rackspace.com is not a good option because they do not give a lot of bandwidth, ThePlanet.com and such are also very good options. You need to have a managed plan to because free hosting can cause lots of server problems.

3. Do you have any recommendations about the advertising method and platform I should use? ALL FREE HOSTING DIRECTORIES, then word of mouth will be fine. You will be spending money like crazy using Adsense and such, I think once people hear "free", you'll be fine.

4. I might be forced to find a way to advise my free users about the banner that will be placed on their sites when the banner-less period is over. Any advises about what method of approach I should use? Xpanel.com, so far is the only option. With $12,000 though, you could probably afford to hire someone to make a custom script. PM me if you need some people, I know plenty.

5. According to you, what will be the percentage of the X accumulated users using the banner-less strategy, compared to the banner-from-the-beginning strategy. Not sure what that means...

Feel free to ask any other questions. The free hosting biz is hard, but it's a lot of fun. I personally think it's more exciting than the paid hosting biz :)


Best Regards,

Thank you all for the responses.

5. Let's say I have 50,000 users in 6 months time if I provide banner-less free hosting service. I was wondering how many users may I possibly have in a 6 months time if I offer free hosting service with banner.

You would get..maybe double.

Although a lot of people may stay away thinking they will get this nice site, then another 6 months down the road you will slam their site with banners.

On my personal view a free web hosting service is not good in a long run both for the customers and the free host providers.
You're going to be totally dependent upon your customers and advertisers even you'll be unable to control the ads on your each page.
Overall it’s very hard to afford to provide the customers in true sense the support and service through a free web hosting services.:rolleyes:

How about with a custom web hosting system holding 10k users per server with all extras (sql, php, mail) for free and tech support located in low-wage world region? Can this combination provide quality for the free customers?

If you are coming up with such combination, I think your idea is not bad, just I advise, you should keep control over the flow of those advertisement pointed toward your site and overall you should have to maintain your site well through those remote tech support.

Originally posted by techhouse
PHP, MySQL, CGI and Mail functions will be supported even for the free users.

php, mySQL and mail are normal but I highly suggest you not to activate cgi on free account's. It will increase server load dramaticaly.

Thank you for the replies.

Which free scripts would you recommend me (besides phpbb, vbulletin, mambo, etc.) as I want to provide 10+ free scripts for my users.

I want to provide more advanced free scripts along the essential ones.

Just for the record, vbulletin is NOT a free script.