I am thinking about offering free specialty hosting.

My rationale is that I really want to meet customers for our custom software business - but I am worried that the customers signing up for the free hosting aren't going to be willing to pay for services.

Has anybody had any experience offering free hosting before?

How have you been able to generate revenue?

What are the pros and cons?

We used to offer free hosting. For the most part you get people that may abuse the system and will not pay for services. In my opinion.

Normally free hosting revenue is generated by google ads or other types of ads.

I agree with impactgc, its very hard to make money off of free web hosting besides generating ads, or possibly increase your backlinks by having all pages link back to yours.

Most people who want free hosting, want exactly that free. I don't see most people who get something for free, going a head and buy something else from you. Kind of defeats the purpose of free web hosting.

Most people who want free hosting, want exactly that free.

Some people forget that there's no such thing as free lunch!

Today, with the amount of paid hosts, and hosting being so cheap, it's going to be hard to find legitimate users. As all of the scammers and abusers will have flocked to you. The amount of time you spend managing and dealing with complaints will outweigh the very little benefits you will recieve.