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Musing About a Free Hosting Company
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
Following on this thread: http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/9001/free-webhosting-site-name
I've periodically thought of starting a free web hosting company. I think if I was going to do it, I'd do it like this:
Server
Either
- Kimsufi 2x500GB disk, 4GB RAM, 2-CPU/4-Thread Atom. Cheap and you don't need a lot of horsepower for free web hosting. About $23/month. @rds100 has similar
- Or a large DDOS-protected VPS. $25 + $3 = $28/month from BuyVM in Vegas for 2GB/4GB+70+4TB + . @KuJoe has DDOS-protected-VPS as well.
Client Panel
Have to be a free panel - Zpanel or Kloxo. I know cPanel is more popular but this is free.
Other Software
Have to find some sort of free-ish billing software.
And of course the usual - some sort of anti-Spam, ClamAV, CSF/LFD, etc.
Ah well just musing at this point...I have enough other projects that aren't done yet :-)
...though I couldn't resist registering HostItForFree.com
Comments
I'd personally do a large DDoS protected VPS with BuyVM and/or with @KuJoe (saves some headaches later and also leaves room for you to expand).
Client Panel just work with zPanel? (I mean there's really no other free alternative).
Billing Software: I'm not too sure if there's autoprovision available for the free hosting software (except for Kloxo). Possibly look into one that works with zPanel? (This is if you're looking into autoprovision). If not I'd say just try BoxBilling.
Server safety you should be able to manage it
(I have faith)
How do you plan on paying for the bills though? Personal funds?
Why not use reseller hosting?
Agreed, will be much more cost effective for you.
Personally I'd do it because of the fun that is customer-relations/management and the part of actual server administration, without dealing with money (well, B2C).
Actually I'm not sure free hosting customers expect autoprovision at 2am...and I'd hope I would be smart enough to write a perl/python/bash/whatever script that says "setup this account". But yeah, you'd have to think of all the common operations.
There are three monetization strategies I've seen/read about:
Several years ago I thought of a free hosting company that forced ads and then split revenue with customers. i.e., we provide hosting and ads, you provide content, we split ad revenue. Unfortunately, the accounting would be hellish and the main player for ads (Adsense) doesn't provide much in the way of an API. My idea was to create a separate ad code for each client, run some reports, etc. But it would have to all be manual.
And then there's the problem of Adsense yanking your account when someone puts up one of a hundreds things that violate Adsense TOS. Even if they violate your TOS, I'm not sure the googlebots would care.
I believe @Kujoe has large experience with free hosting, maybe he can give you some ideas. But i've also heard that free hosting tends to attract some... troublesome customers and DoS, so a DoS protected solution should be preferred.
I think without cPanel the free hosting won't do so well!
Maybe you could install proxmox then you can get a VPS license of cPanel that would be cheaper.
You don't need cPanel to make Free Hosting work. There's been multiple free hosts that don't use cPanel
It's not really necessary, but free hosting with cPanel will attract more clients than one that use a open source CP, if not cPanel maybe even directadmin..
check out x10hosting.com, they seem to be doing reasonably well.
@Raindog308
Some things to consider with Free hosting.
Don't use VPS. Why? Long story short, abuse and server load is a common issue and can be dealt better with a dedi.
Use cpanel. That 15$ will save you lots of additional work and hours and support request.
Use cloudlinux or better linux and make sure you have proper throttling.
Use thehostingtool. Free, opensource and flexible with a great community.
Setup abuse scanner on your server and run those on crons. Also add a list of paid softwares like Vbulletin, IPB etc. on your files to check list and suspend as soon as you see them. 99.99% time if a client can't pay for hosting, they won't pay for software.
For support, use a community forum. Multiple reason but 2 main, community based support and let user help each other and this will be your main income source.
Once your project picks up, use a content blocker such as this (Referral link :P) for signup page. Will cutdown signup volume and can generate upto 20-30$ a day. From my experience with 4 content locker site, Adscend is the only that understands web hosting and actually pays you.
Limit mailing limit. Monitor individual bandwidth and if you see any user doing more than 200mb/day, be sure 90% of the time he is hosting some leeching/seeding.
I'm sure there are a lot of free hosting offers with cPanel. I guess the best way is to have a paid version of the services, thus the free part serves as a promotion. Once clients outgrow their free allocation, they can easily upgrade into paid subscription.
Actually I have never thought about monetizing on the BornIn.Asia project, I think it is just something fun to do and a way for me to give back to LET, and plus I have a decent day-job right now which makes the cost more or less affordable.
But now @raindog308 brought this up...mmm...may be I'll think about something then
@superpilesos I don't know any web host that offers resellers hosting AND allow you to offer free hosting.
@op you may want to look at a website called youhosting.com you can customise control panel so much you can add a cpanel theme. If you need help with them, feel free to pm me, I have some contacts there
Youhosting byet etc is an option.
But please, for the sake of sanity, don't use any of those free resellers. Please.
cPanel is $35 for a dedi.
The expenditure is not much, $35/mo is not a lot but this depends on your status and if expect to make some money out of it etc.
I was going to do it and even have iPanel owner license ready as well but it's just not worth the trouble IMO so just lying here
A $7 1GB VPS from ShoveHost, a $15 cPanel/WHM, and a $5.95 BoxBilling license, done
You can always create one big OpenVZ VPS on the dedi and then use cPanel for VPS license - $15/month.
I think my proposed solution would be better than getting an OVH dedicated server, and cheaper.
Go with a DDoS protected VPS. Much cheaper and you're more prepared for anything with that.
Who are you intending to host? o.o I've run shared hosting company for a little over a year now and the only DDoS I've received were to people that I knew were going to get DDoSed anyway and were on a dedicated ip for easy nullrouting.
What is the point of free webhosting? People too poor to pay for something as cheap as decent webhosting are either trouble and/or retarded.
Or they are kids/learning about webhosting for the first time and they don't want to spend a ton of money.
Cheapest is $99 and that's without a RAID hard drive.
Or a minor that does not have a credit/debit card, and is not allowed to have an account for PayPal or any other processor (because of their age).
EDIT: @raindog308, don't use ZPanel unless you're comfortable with running known exploitable software on your servers.
like that actually stopped anyone
I've considered using something like Webmin, the API can't be that hard to use and I should be able to adjust my MyBB plugins easily.
We have a current special going on on WHT - $49.99 for a Dual Xeon L5420 with 16 GB RAM in Atlanta:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1249309
We also have some Core 2 Quad Q9550s for $39.99 in Atlanta, or Dual Xeon L5420 with 8 GB RAM in Las Vegas for $39.99.
Please PM me if you'd like to discuss further.
This is not allowed per the cPanel license agreement. If they catch you, the license provider can get in trouble.
Ok, what is allowed then? Create two VPSes and use cPanel on one of them?
Technically thats ok, but its theoretically cheating the system.