My friend Austin Overton asked me to review his new free web hosting service call Free Web Hosting 24/7. My question to Austin was, “What’s the catch?” Anyone who’s been in this business for any length of time knows that web hosting is never 100% free. I’ll get to the catch in a bit but first, let’s take a look at Austin’s new business venture.
Free Web Hosting 24/7
Free Web Hosting 24/7 is completely free to sign up for. The free hosting plan gives you 500MB of storage space and 10GB of monthly bandwidth. Other features include:
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Addon Domains Names
- Unlimited FTP Accounts
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited Autoreponders
- Unilimted Email Forwarding
- cPanel Control Panel
Setting up an account is very straightforward. You can use an existing domain name or a sub-domain like yourname.freewebhosting247.com. Then it’s just a matter of filling in the required account information and confirming the email that the service sends you. The entire process should take no longer than five minute.
It’s Fantastico!
The cPanel control panel that Free Web Hosting 24/7 offer includes Fantastico De Luxe, which quickly and easily installs most of the popular Internet software for you without you having to do chores like setting up a MySql database. Just select the software you want installed, fill in a few fields like username and password and it’ll do the rest. I was able to set up a John Chow WordPress test blog within a few seconds. Free Web Hosting 24/7 allows users to monetize their sites. You’re free to install ads from any ad network or sell your own ad space.
So, What Is The Catch?
In order to use Free Web Hosting 24/7 to host your site or blog, you have to allow Austin to run a footer link on your site. Austin tells me the link is not intrusive. It just a text link that says, Free Web Hosting by FreeWebHosting247.com.
At this moment, the script that places the footer link on a site isn’t working. Until Austin gets the script to work, Free Web Hosting 24/7 really is 100% free.
How Does This Make Money?
At this point, you may be asking how is Austin going to make money from this? It’s actually quite simple. The free accounts offers 500MB of storage, which should be enough for most bloggers. However, the bandwidth limit of 10GB maybe a problem. If you exceed the monthly bandwidth, FreeWebHosting247.com will ask you to upgrade to a paid plan that cost $5.95 per month. Free Web Hosting 24/7 doesn’t host the paid sites. That is done by DreamHost, one of the biggest names in the web hosting business.
Austin’s service is ideally suited for new bloggers getting their feet wet. Unlike Blogspot.com, Free Web Hosting 24/7 offers the far superior WordPress blogging platform. Unlike WordPress.com, Free Web Hosting 24/7 allows their users to have their own domain name and monetize their sites. All for the cost of a footer link.
The only problem I see with Austin’s new venture is his infrastructure. Free Web Hosting 24/7 is powered by a single Intel Pentium D 930 server with only 1GB of RAM. If Austin’s free service gets popular, he’ll have to upgrade the system or users will start to experience performance issues. Then again, Austin can use that as a reason to upgrade to a paid plan.
If you’ve been using a free service like Blogspot.com or WordPress.com and want to try out a paid service without really paying for it, then Free Web Hosting 24/7 is worth a try. Just remember that you’ll have to move to a paid plan down the road if your site gets big. That shouldn’t create a problem because you should be making more than enough to pay for hosting by then.
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One of the most common complaint (or excuse) I hear from potential new bloggers is they don’t know how to install WordPress. Terms like FTP and CPanel are like a foreign language and setting up a database might as well be setting up the space shuttle for a launch. Because of the technology barrier, many would-be bloggers never start their blogs...
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Sounds like a cool idea. Hope everything works out for him.
Woo… first to reply. Not sure whether to be happy because I’m the first or to be depressed because it’s Christmas Eve and I’m the first
no bro, it just means that you’re dedicated to making money online.
that’s the spirit.
making money online…. what an interesting concept….
making money online…. interesting concept…
This is a cool idea but I think there are a lot of limitation such as the DT and space. I still prefer to go for paying host service. However this is good for people who are starting off with the website business
Hahaha. I guess all 55+ people replying are just as bad since we’re all on here as well.
It might just sound as a good idea. But giving free hosting account for just a backlink with the hope that someone will actually upgrade is not what I see as good idea. In any case, free web hosting’s do have a way of making money, donations (from the community) or advertising (which he does not use any kind of iframe). Wish him best luck on his venture.
P.s. Merry Christmas to everyone.
I was just about to mail a check to pay for webhosting, after reading this post I have just called my bank to cancel the check.
I have been blogging about running for 4 months and my stats show I have 100 daily visitors. I think the time is right to jump from wordpress platform into a paid host.
Merry Christmas buddy and thanks for the inspiring articles.
Congratulation for your performance and keep up the good work.
Sounds like almost 80% of all free hosts out there. They offer free service and have no footer link at the bottom, but to upgrade you have to sign up with some other company, usually DreamHost. However Austin’s service stands out, because he offers the most “Unlimited” add-ons.
He got to do something about that domain name though, it’s too long.
Yeah, I’m thinking about buying a shorter abbreviated version of the domain for people’s sub-domains.
woo hoo time for some autoblog spam
ANOTHER one of these free hosting sites? Sheesh!
-Mike
Never had the chance to try a host with the fantastico control panel. Maybe worth a shot here seeing how it’s free
this sounds like one of those free hosting server and gaining popular with more users before putting ads to make money site.
Free hosting is soooooo 1999. You can get like 30,000 gigs of storage and transfer these days for like $3.95 a month.
That’s like $3.95 more that Jamie Lynn Spears spend on birth control in her entire life.
If you’re too broke for that, it’s time for you to go get a second job and quit looking at porn on the internet all day.
blog spam yeah!!!!
With hosting costing like $10 why bother going free.
This kind of worries me, all you need is a couple of people to start experiencing decent traffic through there site and the hundreds of others will suffer. I hope the server administrator is switched on kind of guy, if this takes off he is going to be busy!
I’ve been running a few small websites of Zymic free (totally free, no links, ads or anything) hosting for a while now and have found it faultless. Like John says you’ll need something a bit more reliable (certainly in terms of support) when you start getting good visitor numbers but it’s hard to beat when you’re just experimenting.
Ah, the dreaded FREE link..yeah no such thing in my experience, but sometimes the noob link is even better than a free link because the noob link happnes to capture a bigger audience. Or it just ends up being bad spam….either way I hope it didn’t cost you.
What about the uptime? A blogspot subdomain is better than a blank or error page! And soon the link will change into AdSense ads! This is not suitable for serious bloggers.
This looks very interesting to many people especially me
, well i am not sure how good it is if anyone have tried it can you please tell me how good it is. You can email me at my blog. Thanks for the info.
lets give ‘em a try..!
Very cool idea. I will give it a try
Well, I’ve created my account pretty fast .I’m waiting for the DNS to propagate in order to see how good is the service
Definitely a step up from wordpress.com and blogspot.com. My suggestion though, since hosting is a saturated market, is to go after a niche audience and promote it as such. Example: An online gamers guild site host . Word of mouth helps land new customers more easily in smaller circles.
Besides, its better to own 50% of a smaller niche than 5% of ten bigger ones. Authority baby, its worth money.
I think this is a great idea for smaller blogs or those wishing to try webhosting who have had a free account. Personally I would wait a while before jumping on the bandwagon to see what Free Web Hosting 24/7 is like, but I wish him Good Luck.
Regards.
Great idea for the beginning blogger to be able to get a wordpress blog set up for free rather that use the useless Blogger. I don’t see a link on the footer of your new blog, John?
The servers have few resources for a free host. …in just a few days he will need much more servers…
I will try it.
Like the idea but i have to agree with Ion.
Maybe not in a few days, but soon.
Seems like he didn’t quite prepare for midsize flow of users.
Like the idea but i have to agree with Ion.
Maybe not in a few days, but soon.
Seems like he didn’t quite prepare for midsize flow of users.
Good review, will consider ,
Thanks a lot
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Tracy Ho
wisdomgettingloaded
Good luck to him.
Merry Christmas all also.
Sounds like a good plan for beginners. I have a few people to recommend it to.
As an internet marketer myself, I feel that web hosting is a fix cost that every serious IM guys have to bear. So definitely, we all want an affordable and reliable web hosting that comes with all the good features. I happen to found one pretty good web hosting. I wrote an article on the web hosting company. Anyone who read this comment can check out my blog article.
http://desire-for-wealth.com/web-hosting/3ix-hosting.html
P.S Hi John, I hope you wouldn’t mind me sharing something on your comment column.
I am going to give a take..
thanks for the update
I don’t know how he’ll make money, but hey! Good luck to him!
Signing of for a few days now, would just like to wish all of John Chow’s readers (well those that celebrate Christmas anyway) a very Merry Christmas and a safe and fun holiday period.
You will see that after a year or two when he has enough users he will add a sort of advertising on all sites
He is not stupid !
I actually never plan on adding advertisements to users sites. I may offer a Post For Hosting upgrade where users can post in a forum and get more bandwidth and storage but I will be content with affiliate income.
and are you willing to pay for the resources, let’s say if you have 10000 users (around 400 dedicated servers), only for a link in the footer
You need to research the hosting business before you think you know how it works.
400 dedi’s for 10000 users
you need to learn about hosting abit more before using statistics 
Personally, I think free hosting sucks.
However, some people love it n00bs and this is a good offer for them. I wish him all the best for growing his site and service
i’m guessing you’ll have to buy a domain name, i doubt Austin will be giving those away for free like the web hosting. idea sounds sounds like it could work. let us know how it turns out Austin.
He’s giving free subdomains. If he was giving out free domains, probably everyone on the internet would join and get him to buy them a domain to sell.
K the part with 400ds was a bit exagerated and only if you wanted to offer smoothness for browsing
servers at softlayer are good but expensive and you will need a few of those in a year or two! I don’t think it’s profitable but good luck 
Ever heard of FreeWebs.com?
I dont like free hosting for useage myself but one thing is for sure that its a profitable industry with the right marketing and monetization of ads
I understand what you’re saying and I do plan on upgrading the sever plus clustering a few more a bit later on to ensure that service stays at decent speeds. But look at HostGator and DreamHost… you think they are giving away dedicated servers to each package? They oversell like hell and that’s part of the hosting business, the 80/20 rule applies in saying that 80% of the resources will be used by 20% of the people.
John, really??? This site really needed a review? Free webhosting is not new, and neither is the catch that it comes with. Be it your aff with dreamhost or hostgator, for that $5.95 that you take from the customers, you get $50, which is a sweet deal.
Sounds pretty awesome to me
I’ve been meaning to launch a new blog anyway, so maybe I’ll give ‘em a try!
I wouldn’t trust a host that only has existed since October, but that’s just me.
Everyone’s gotta start somewhere…
The service looks interesting but I have hosting.
it looks good.
but i wonder that is there any bandwidth limit. if yes. how much ?
Yeah, 10gb of bandwidth… it’s listed on the site.
10GB from what I know
Well I have free unlimited domain names with Bluefur, but nice try though.
“…If you exceed the monthly bandwidth, FreeWebHosting247.com will ask you to upgrade to a paid plan that cost $5.95 per month.”
It costs $5.95 per month if you pay 10 years in advance. otherwise, it is $9.95 per month for one year. Anybody choosing to pay on monthly basis will have to pay $49.95 setup fee.
I would think many times before trying to setup a free account and then upgrade to paid hosting.
for that you have hostgator with only 7$/month and no setup fee from what I know
Sadly HostGator stopped accepted free web hosting affiliates… supposedly some of the bigger sites we’re sending some really shitty leads.
I run a web hosting company also and I understand perfectly that there is no free thing under the sun. We have given away free webhosting account in the past but the clients had to pay for the domain name registration.
While the hosting may come free, you would need to pay some money extra if you need more functionalities aside what the free hosting account offers. Anyway, most web hosting company always use free website hosting offers as a bait to get new clients. The truth is that if you are really satisfied with the service, you will go ahead to order for a paid hosting.
Sounds like a good idea. It’s free if you already own domain names right? Lol…I got so many domain names maybe I will host it there…
this is really good for beginners.
It is happy to hear about free web hosting. Is this also will be the same other free hosting only if you pay yearly fee or credit cardNo. etc. etc. anyway let me see it once. Thank you for the information.
I’m liking the free hosing alot, gonna have to check it out…
You should give it a try because is free and the plan looks interesting.
I think web hosting is a fixed costing that every IMers have to bear when they are doing online business. What we want is an affordable and reliable web hosting that come with good features. Recently, I found one and I wrote an article about this web hosting. It’s hosting plan starts $1 per mth. Interested ? just read my blog http://desire-for-wealth.com/web-hosting/3ix-hosting.html
I like your posts and am a fan of the site, but I don’t think this particular free hosting service will benefit me for my site. I might use it for test purposes, but you can easily sell the bottom space on most blogs to companies that will pay a lot more per year than simple hosting (through say godaddy would cost). Just my personal opinion. Thanks for hte post.
-Scott
http://www.sampleaday.com
http://www.scottstravelblog.com
I’m going to give it a try for a new movie blog I’ve been considering. If it takes off I have no problem paying for more bandwidth.
I question the reliability of Dreamhost. I’m on their shared hosting package. John Chow rejected me from TTZ because my site was down. It’s still down now as I’m typing this.
Great … I agree with you john , 10gb bandwidth is more than enough for early bloggers. This service seems good , i can recommend it to my friends who want to start a blog. cheers
Erm… Looks promising but will stick to a regular paid hosts. You get the comfort and certainty that it will stay for the rest of the year until you can start scratching your head 12 months later on the renewal to whether get a new hosts or stick with the existing one. By the way, I use hostonfire.com.
Very nice
With that limited on the server and com he is using, it seems once it gets popular, it will be down so getting a paid host will be more ideal.
I plan on upgrading the server and clustering multiple servers when the need comes… I’m not going to just let the service die when the server becomes overloaded.
I’m already significantly over 10 GB a month on my bluehost account.
Check back on this free hosting company in a year.
If you are the least bit serious about making money online do not even think twice about this. Or about hosting that costs $1.95 to $2.95 per month. You are throwing money away.
Get a good reseller account at a place like httpme.com. Is it the cheapest? No. But you will not regret. And then when you traffic has spikes like mine you can handle. Or you can move to a dedicated like I did to handle all of the sites and the traffic spikes.
Hosting is the foundation of ANY online business. Don’t screw it up.
I signed up for this service 4 days ago and I still haven’t received a confirmation email or any information about how to log in to my account.
I have the same problem like you, Savvy Frugality.
I hope they’ll do something about it.
Wish I’d heard about this before I signed up with Blogger!
Interesting, but what is the bandwidth max before you have to actually start paying?
Does this free website hosting idea still work? Apparently when you try signing up, there’s an error. Does this happen to others too? I see that some of you did sign up but now that’s simply not working!
I signed up about 10 days ago, and have yet to get any kind of email confirmation. I don’t know if I have an account or not. Poor customer service, no….no service at all. Thumbs down.
You get what you pay for, I guess.