Before i began switching over to paid webhosting i.e. with HostGator, i was lucky enough to make a test version of this site using the free web hosting provider >> 000webhost. The word came out fairly new to me early last year (of 2007) as i dont know much about web hosting and other web stuffs. But thanks to my comrade who shared this information to me. I got the chance to little by little explore the world of self hosting, domain names and registry, cpanel, bandwidth and other terminologies. If you haven’t heard this yet, 000webhost is actually one of the reliable free web hosting providers around… atleast from what i’ve experienced. You see, it’s not as good as the paid web hosting providers that we know of especially the “top” ones but for beginners and others deciding to switch over from free blogging to self hosting their blogs, i think they can fairly be a good host to start with. Survey says it all. I heard a lot of good reviews over their services. Imagine for free you can get Free Linux server with 250 MB space, 100 GB bandwidth,100 GB Data Transfer. Unlike other free webhosts around like 110mb.com etc., 000webhost do support PHP and MySQL with no restrictions. You get full access to the latest version of PHP and MySQL. 000webhost also supports the following PHP features:

• PHP mail() function and Sendmail
• Curl, GD2 library, ImageMagick, Zend
• fopen() and PHP sockets
• safe_mode is OFF, file uploads ON
• Zend Optimizer support, Ioncube loader.. and much more features are enabled

Sometimes, there is a bargain when you choose a free web hosting provider over a paid hosting provider. I decided to make a shift towards paid hosting because of some limitations i get with free hosting. Some of the known disadvantages of free webhosting are as follows:

Little/No Support
Free hosts generally offer no customer support to their free customers and if they do it is low priority. While many free users are new to web hosting, neglectful support can ruin the hosting experience. As compared with 000webhost, i think they have leveraged this criteria and give out the best support to their free service. The good thing about their support is that they roam around some forums to answer questions about their free web hosting issues which is justifiable and i think by doing that they are being transparent.
Overcrowded Servers
Normally free hosts are not known for their reliability and uptime. Often the servers web hosts put free users on may be overcrowded and slow or even frequently down. Since it is relatively simple to get a free web host company started many free hosts are fly-by-night operations and care little for the long term well being of users files. But with 000webhost, though there were occasional down times, based from my experience i think it’s bearable and understandable. The initial down time i’ve experienced with them happened just once for 15-20 minutes. Not bad for a free hosting right?

Less Features
Well, free web hosting plans usually don’t include advanced features, software, and email services that paid ones do. (ex. PHP, MySQL, FTP accounts, and POP email). But with 000webhost, they have limited number of free FTP accounts, POP email accounts and disk storage. One of the main reasons why i switch over to paid hosting is the disk storage. I am concerned about the growing bandwidth and storage with my website hence i made the transition to Hostgator. 000webhost probably can’t handle my long term requirements but bearing that in mind, somehow i want to be justful…atleast I have considered what this free hosting has provided me and was happy to have their services.

Ad Banners
To fund the free hosts, web hosts add an advertisement in the form of a text link, banner or pop-up to free users web sites. Many users find these ads take away from the design of their site, or are a nuisance to their visitors. But with 000webhost, they don’t display much of ad banners. According to their site forum, they have primary 4 funding sources: (1) they have paid hosting company, (2) they have strong financial ground; (3) they run their business through the support and donations and finally, (4) they earn by offering paid upgrades for those who need more disk space and more services. Not bad for a free webhosting right?

Trivia about 000webhost:

000webhost is providing Linux web hosting services, has been founded in 2006 and now it’s two years in business.

000webhost.com average uptime is 99.932% (rank #2118 on directory) with total 6996 successful and 4 failed checks, monitored since 2007-08-03. Similar companies with 99.932% uptime are nomonthlyfees.com and websitesource.com.

Search for “000webhost.com” on 3 biggest search engines returns average of 8266 results so company name popularity rank is #364.

There have been 1711 positive votes for 000webhost and 223 negative. And overall company rank on our directory is #12 (similar companies are invisionpower.com and hostdepartment.com)

» Free Web Hosting
Disk Space	250 MB
Bandwidth	100,000 MB = 100 GB!
Domains Allowed	Unlimited
Control Panel	cPanel, view demo
Ads on your pages?	No Ads or Banners!
Your own ads allowed?	Yes
» Package Details
Website Builder
PHP Scripts Autoinstaller
Unrestricted PHP Support
MySQL Databases
Instant Backups
FTP Support
Web File Manager
99.9% Uptime
Instant Activation
» Supported Features
PHP and MySQL	Details
Cron Jobs
Curl
GD
Image Magick
Streaming Video
PHP Pear Modules
» E-mail Features
POP3 Accounts
Web Mail
Auto Responders
Spam Protection
Mail Forwarding
IMAP Support
Modify MX Entry
» Control Panel Features
Latest cPanel	View Demo
Website Builder	Details
Fantastico Autoinstaller	Details
Getting Started Wizard
Video Tutorials
Multi Language Support
Hotlink Protection
IP Deny Manager
Redirect URL
Password Protected Directories
Web Based File Manager
phpMyAdmin

Try it for yourself. So if you are transistioning into self web hosting, this is a good start. If you plan to roll out some design changes and template changes you can also subscribe to their service so as not to harm and mess up with your production template. You can sign up by clicking ->here

Update:   For more discussions about this topic. pls see this discussion board :

http://www.techronnati.com/forum/domain-names/

Popularity: 8% [?]