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This is how host1free NOT finally ceased - They're back in business
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This is how host1free NOT finally ceased - They're back in business

sundaymousesundaymouse Member
edited July 2013 in Providers

Host1free, a brand of Host1Plus, just ceased its free VPS business.

Timeline:
With no sign at all, on June 8, 2013, days before the SolusVM breach, Host1free sent off an e-mail to most of the free VPS users:

`Dear Host1Free User [Username],

We would like to announce that due to changes in our network infrastructure we will be changing current IP address of your free VPS server 5.175.217.*** to the new one 5.231.18.***.

In order to allow you to prepare for this event we added IP address 5.175.217.*** as main IP address and old 5.231.18.*** IP left as additional to your free VPS server.
Next Wednesday (2013-06-13) old IP address will be removed.

Please make sure to update your servers settings, DNS settings and etc. accordingly to avoid any inconience after old IP(5.231.18.***) address removal at Wednesday."

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Host1Free adminsitrators team`

As this doesn't usually happen in the industry, this IP change has marked the sign of their consideration of ceasing the free VPS service.

Days later, on June 16 SolusVM breach happened, and this is never a better chance for them to cease the business:

Regarding the Recent SolusVM Security Breach
http://www.host1free.com/blog/regarding-the-recent-solusvm-security-breach/

Sounds normal? But whilst they disconnected the control panel, all free VPSes seemed to be shut down, and users discovered that both their old and new IPs are appointed to other websites.

If you are still using one of the free VPS providers, DO remember to perform intense backup on your data. As these are free services, no one will credit to the safety of your data.

I am not trolling on Host1free, however, I believe they had put much effort into this service, kept it up for long time (one or two years I think). But the result did not meet their aim - to guide costumers to their expensive paid VPSes. So eventually, this free service will die.

Thanked by 1Jeffrey
«1

Comments

  • afaik, they are restarting their free vps again with their own platform on July 10. Existing users do not need to register again as per their recent update.

  • MikeInMikeIn Member

    I too was having a Host1free VPS which was unused for more than a month and when I did DD test it was under 10MB/s and download speed was under 100kbps....

    And due to no reason the server was ceased/ terminated :|

  • @peppr said:
    afaik, they are restarting their free vps again with their own platform on July 10. Existing users do not need to register again as per their recent update.

    I did not see this on their twitter nor blog, could you please show the source?

  • @MikeIn said:
    I too was having a Host1free VPS which was unused for more than a month and when I did DD test it was under 10MB/s and download speed was under 100kbps....

    I had the same experience. Never used, it has been idle for about a year.

  • awsonawson Member

    @MikeIn said:
    I too was having a Host1free VPS which was unused for more than a month and when I did DD test it was under 10MB/s and download speed was under 100kbps....

    And due to no reason the server was ceased/ terminated :|

    Why are you complaining about the quality of free stuff?

    Thanked by 2Amfy kspll7
  • MikeInMikeIn Member

    @awson said:
    Why are you complaining about the quality of free stuff?

    No complaints, just the Reality.. Some use these free services really Badly.

  • upfreakupfreak Member
    edited July 2013

    @sundaymouse said:
    I did not see this on their twitter nor blog, could you please show the source?

    Their forum has a thread for this. Link is given below by @emg

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited July 2013

    I got terminated as well as a friend of mine for no reason.
    The servers were hosting small forums. No matter dd and dl speed, it was enough for a few users at a time.
    No warning has been issued, we simply found out cannot login to ssh and had another fingerprint, a week or so apart.
    Free and bad quality is OK, being treated as dirt by not even sending an email we were terminated and the reason for it, is not.

    Their paid offer is insanely priced compared with our regular offers here from proven hosts and the quality from the free tier is not a recommendation, so I think this dd more harm than good.

  • emgemg Veteran
    edited July 2013

    I have a Host1Free.com VPS.

    • I applied for it in September, but never heard anything back. Nothing.
    • In early February, I received an email from them saying that there were too many VPSs that had gone completely unused. They shut down all VPSs, and any that weren't restarted within 7 days would be deleted.
    • Because I had not received anything from them after my original application, I had no password. Eventually I was able to gain access to the VPS using their "lost password" link.
    • Host1Free changed the VPS's IP address without notice twice since last February. Once was in early June. In each case, there was no email notice.
    • Somewhere around 16 June, Host1Free was attacked via the SolusVM exploit, and all the VPSs were deleted and lost. There were no backups. The lost VPSs affected both the paid customers and the free ones.
    • Host1Free worked first to restore paid customers, then started working on the free VPSs. They recently announced that the free VPSs would be available to previous free VPS users on 10 July (new VPSs, because there were no backups).
    • They will be moving away from SolusVM, to something called "Cloudnom".
    • Sometime after everything settles down, they will begin to process applications for new free VPSs, but not right away.

    Here is a link to the announcement in their forums - they keep editing post #1 as they provide updates:

    http://www.host1free.com/forum/8-news-announcements/16860-regarding-control-panel-free-vps-users-only.html

    Here is a related link:

    http://www.host1free.com/forum/8-news-announcements/16997-vps-service-restart-until-10th-july.html

    Just to be clear, a Host1Free VPS is a great learning tool, but it comes with minimal RAM, CPU, performance, network I/O (very slow, but unlimited bandwidth), no TUN/TAP, and considerable restrictions on how it can be used. Considering that it is free, I am very pleased with it. It makes a great testbed, development tool, backup server, and I plan to use it for other things as well - just none of them "critical need" applications.

    Thanked by 1upfreak
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @emg said:
    I have a Host1Free.com VPS.

    Just to be clear, a Host1Free VPS is a great learning tool, but it comes with minimal RAM, CPU, performance, network I/O (very slow, but unlimited bandwidth), no TUN/TAP, and considerable restrictions on how it can be used. Considering that it is free, I am very pleased with it. It makes a great testbed, development tool, backup server, and I plan to use it for other things as well - just none of them "critical need" applications.

    Completely agree.

  • emgemg Veteran

    Update: The relaunch of the Host1Free VPSs has slipped until 15 July, due to hardware problems with their RAID controllers. See "Update 8" in the first post of my first link above.

  • @emg said:
    Update: The relaunch of the Host1Free VPSs has slipped until 15 July, due to hardware problems with their RAID controllers. See "Update 8" in the first post of my first link above.

    Yea, I know they won't.

  • FritzFritz Veteran

    Nice Facts. Thanks for sharing.

  • emgemg Veteran

    @emg said:
    Update: The relaunch of the Host1Free VPSs has slipped until 15 July, due to hardware problems with their RAID controllers. See "Update 8" in the first post of my first link above.

    @sundaymouse said:
    Yea, I know they won't.

    Time will tell whether they come back or not.

    Nonetheless, if I were Host1Free and I wanted to discontinue the free VPS service by not coming back, I wouldn't announce a restoration date only five days hence. It does not make much sense to me as confirmation of @sundaymouse's assertion that they won't come back.

  • EvoEvo Member

    Offering free web hosting must be quite difficult because of the abusers. I can imagine how many abusers/spammers are trying to sign up for these services, especially VPS, where they simply cannot add such restrictions like on the regular shared hosting. I admire them for the job that they do.

    Also there's no doubt that that there will be some "unexpected" changes, servers going down (sometimes probably for hours or even days) - they are actually supporting this without any income (they probably hope that some percentage of the users will upgrade to a paid plan), and this means cutting costs as much as possible, without any guarantees for uptime or performance.

  • July 15 is passed, no new update on their forum today.

  • Registration is back up. Earlier they said that those who had VPS's in the past would receive them when the service came back online, this apparently was not true. I had a VPS with them for tinkering and had to register again for another VPS. Waiting now to see if I am granted one.

  • Looks like they are back up. I would wish this thread to be closed and to be keeped as a historical record, thanks @spirit .

  • Did you get your money back? OHH.. right

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @etcSudoers said:
    Did you get your money back? OHH.. right

    I did, but only prorated with the remaining time.

  • I had to re-register as it appeared they closed my free VPS.

  • Oh yea reregistered again ;)

  • Good. They had an old scheme where they paid you to refer people, long story short they ripped a good friend off by about $100 or so. They had this coming.

  • @VPSCorner said:
    Good. They had an old scheme where they paid you to refer people, long story short they ripped a good friend off by about $100 or so. They had this coming.

    Well, aren't you nice, lovely, and incapable of reading the entire thread.

  • @MrObvious said:
    Well, aren't you nice, lovely, and incapable of reading the entire thread.

    I read the entire thread. I'm stating that my experience with them even prior to VPSCorner was poor. They quite blatantly ripped someone I know off and I'm guessing it's fair to assume that others also missed out on their entitlement.

    There's lots of good VPS providers about and many get my praise, despite us offering VPS ourselves. Host1free is not one of them.

    The moral of my comment is that after what I've experienced, the world would be better of without them.

  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited July 2013

    @sundaymouse said:
    Looks like they are back up. I would wish this thread to be closed and to be keeped as a historical record, thanks spirit .

    A bit delayed because there was still interest for discussion. Sorry :)

    Closed - per thread starter's request.

    edit

    Reopen - on request.

  • emgemg Veteran
    edited July 2013

    This is just an update on Host1Free. @sundaymouse was more right than wrong. Since my last post, Host1Free appears to have started up again on 15 July as they said. However, ...

    • Instead of sending out email messages to previous VPS users as they promised earlier, they posted a note in their forums instructing previous VPS users to reregister using the same email contact information as before.
    • I did as instructed, and they sent a validation link to my email address. I clicked the link.
    • Twelve hours later, I received an email message from Host1Free. The subject was misnamed, "Host1Free VPS Approval". The message body said, "We are sorry to inform you that your free VPS application was not approved. There could be multiple reasons behind this: You have not supplied correct personal information in the registration form; Our servers currently do not have enough free resources to create virtual machines. Please try submitting your application again in few months."
    • Host1Free opened this thread, which today (20 July 2013) contains 26 pages of previous VPS owners who appear to be in the same situation. They had a Host1Free VPS, they reregistered with the same contact information as before, and were rejected. See:
      http://www.host1free.com/forum/71-rejected-registrations/17137-reviewing-rejected-applications.html

    • Host1Free's forums are the only means of support. They are asking previous VPS owners to post their email addresses in the public forum for all to see, something I was reluctant to do. I posted a message asking them to look up my email address or send a PM, but no luck so far.

    • The thread stays mostly closed, presumably as their way to throttle the number of previous owner requests. It has been opening up for brief periods, but I think it has been closed for two days. I may decide to post my email address in the public forum, assuming that they open the thread again. I am still thinking about it. Frankly, I am not that desperate to have another free VPS from them.
    • Last night I received another rejection message from Host1Free, even though I had not done anything more. The subject had changed to "News about your Host1Free "Free VPS" Approval", but the content was the same.
    • I just looked at the "Reviewing Rejected Applications" thread. It is still closed, and there are 18 users browsing that thread, hovering like vultures hoping that it will open again.

    Bottom line: Kudos to @sundaymouse for predicting what might happen.

  • I signed up the day they reopened and had a VPS within 8 hours. I then had a friend who did not previously have a VPS with them signup and he received his VPS with in a day.

  • Hehe, they seemed to have removed old users' ip from restricted signup list. So I signed up using original e-mail and ip again, see how it goes.

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    I got my VPS too.

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