Compilation of FREE LES Shared Web Hosting Offers

vyas · May 2020

Written by @vyas, 26 May 2020
Article was migrated from WordPress to Vanilla in March 2022

Free Shared Web Hosting: Offers Galore

Over the past couple of months, providers on LES have generously offered free shared hosting plans for the LES community. The goal or objective behind is simple: they want to give back to the community and help those who can benefit from these offers.

In the below section I have compiled the list of offers by Four providers who have posted such offers since March 2020. Relevant details such as location, bandwidth, number of websites, disk space, are also included. This information is already available in the forums. However, wouldn't it be cool if it was available in a single page? I wanted to keep it simple, and while a more comprehensive tabulation like the one mentioned in this post might make sense for some, I opted for brevity and simplicity. With this thought, let us dive into these offers.

Presenting the offers Together

	Nexusbytes (Servedez)	Teta Host	HostingCubes	Khan Web Hosting
Location	New York	France and Germany	Multiple**	Romania
Panel	DA	DA	DA	DA
Disk Space	Unlimited*	1 GB NVMe	1 GB	500 MB NVMe
Bandwidth	Unlimited*	100 GB	25 GB	50 GB
Email Accounts	10		5	5
Databases		3	5	5
Number of Domains	1	3	1	1
Remarks	Check terms and conditions	Daily Backups	Renews after 1 yr	5 FTP Accounts
Further Information	Visit Site for details	Link to offer	Link to offer	Link to offer

Notes:

DA stands for Direct Admin control panel
Free shared hosting plans by Hostingcubes are available for a period of one year at 7 different locations. Visit the offer page by @Lee - for further details
Requirements for Free Shared Hosting by Khan Web: "All you would need to do is join Discord Channel & send a PM to user @AK_KWH, mentioning your discord username"

The Obvious and Not-So-Obvious

There are several reasons to question the rationale behind such offers. For example, why would anybody offer a service for free? Then there is the suspicion that the providers might use the sign-ups as an opportunity to up-sell services. That may be true in some cases, but more than one provider in the above list has mentioned that these offers rarely result in paying customers. In the words of @seriesn from Nexusbytes,

"Usually if you are not paying for your project, you don't take it seriously logic applies here..... I guess it also depends because a lot of these use cases are for personal projects that never take off, or people just abandon them." - @seriesn

Risk of abuse by Users

The intention of this post is not to delve upon the pro's and cons of free shared web hosting. But I thought of mentioning that the providers can often face abuses from users and those looking to exploit the gratis service. This discussion from the forums, based on experiences of Lee with Hostingcubes, offers an interesting perspective.

Free service during beta testing

Some providers can offer free accounts for a limited period when they are launching new products or services. A recent example is Hello Internet /@hello, who offered free CPanel hosting in Germany. In exchange, they sought feedback, testing from the users. A provider may choose to continue offering the 'free' service to the beta testers beyond the testing period.

Summing it all up

The act of offering a service for free does not limit itself to shared hosting on this forum. Some users have posted their offers for a 'free' use of VPS. But I thought of limiting this post to shared web hosting offers. One reason was focus. The other reason is more personal: I have benefited over the past years from free web hosting services. This prompted me to compile the offers and write this post that would provide a handy resource the LES community.

The details in the table are compiled from the offer posts. In some cases, I have used the details by checking with the providers, or from my own account. In case of any updates, errors, or additions, do leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Links to free shared web hosting offers by providers:

I have included them in the table above but for ready reference, here they are, in no particular order:

Tetahost https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/1047
Nexusbytes: https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/850/free-shared-hosting-servedez
Khan Web Hosting: https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/772/free-directadmin-nvme-shared-hosting
Hostingcubes: https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/636/lab-rats-required-to-test-new-free-hosting-service/p1

Ympker · May 2020

Great read! Thanks for the headsup!

tom · May 2020

Thanks! Very helpful!

MichaelCee · May 2020

Great article

seriesn · May 2020

Thanks for including us to the list. Free hosting, just like our handful of free vps providers ( @Neoon @Mason ) is almost a charity and community project. While it attracts handful of abusive users, sometimes, you do end up meeting great bloggers/devs/coders/entrepreneurs. Sometime you even gain good friends from the user base. Seeing small project grow and people succeeding is extremely rewarding and I guess, that is what makes it worth the effort, end of the day.

pepa65 · May 2020

@seriesn said:
Thanks for including us to the list. Free hosting, just like our handful of free vps providers ( @Neoon @Mason ) is almost a charity and community project.

I have signed up a small non-profit in Thailand that I arrange hosting for into your 'family' :-). I had a Reseller account elsewhere where I hosted them (also for free) but that reseller account I will need to discontinue due to cPanel cost increase.

I understand what you were saying by "Usually if you are not paying for your project, you don't take it seriously". I would obviously feel somewhat more comfortable by paying a small amount, but your cheapest paid-for option would already be more expensive than desirable (this is a 16MB largely static little site...)
So now I am wondering to what extent I can trust your free accounts into the future for years to come?

In any case, thank you for your community involvement and for this free account!

seriesn · May 2020

@pepa65 said:

@seriesn said:
Thanks for including us to the list. Free hosting, just like our handful of free vps providers ( @Neoon @Mason ) is almost a charity and community project.

I have signed up a small non-profit in Thailand that I arrange hosting for into your 'family' :-). I had a Reseller account elsewhere where I hosted them (also for free) but that reseller account I will need to discontinue due to cPanel cost increase.

I understand what you were saying by "Usually if you are not paying for your project, you don't take it seriously". I would obviously feel somewhat more comfortable by paying a small amount, but your cheapest paid-for option would already be more expensive than desirable (this is a 16MB largely static little site...)
So now I am wondering to what extent I can trust your free accounts into the future for years to come?

In any case, thank you for your community involvement and for this free account!

First of all,
Welcome to the family . My comment was more on the broader term. Every month I would removed 100-200 dead accounts where the owner haven’t logged in for months or the website didn’t get a single hit for 60 days.

Free hosting, being a complete loss project, I continue to do it for self satisfaction. As I said above, met some cool people, seen some cool projects that went live on our free server and gradually outgrew the need of shared hosting. Seeing those success stories makes me feel good and motivated. I am pretty anal about abuse. So the service is usually drama free

I guess the biggest draw backs on the free hosting is actually, being completely transparent, these servers are always going to be loaded. That’s about it. How much can you trust the free hosting side? Just as much as any $1/year plans or maybe a little bit more. Our uptime has been solid so far

I have been toying with the idea of introducing ultra small plans on premium side of things. Hopefully all the stars will align and I will get.

Thanks for the feedback.

Neoon · May 2020

I see, we are famous now.

vyas · June 2020

Thanks for the feedback...

Lee · June 2020

Thanks for the mention, and apologies for not being around too much in the last couple of months, COVID has pulled me back into my banking role in a significant way and I am now having to project manage a couple of COVID related matters, I will get back to the forum when I can but looking like I am pretty much focussed on the Bank and a couple of more important hosting projects. The free service will continue though.

vyas · June 2020

In addition to the providers in this post, have published a blog post with a bigger list of providers. The list of providers who offer free web hosting us compiled from other sites and discussions on hosting forums.
https://www.amarvyas.in/free-webhosting-offers/

vyas · August 2020

Update: note that Tetahost are no longer in business. Refer to this discussion : https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/1623/tetahost-offline-30-hours-deadpool-official-charge-back-time