Free Web Hosting with no Banner ADs

Did you know that there are actually Free Web Hosting available for us out there? If you have been searching for one which allows you to host your site for free, WangInternet.com has a good one to recommend. In fact, the site which you are currently viewing is hosted freely and reliably on the Free Web Hosting Provider.

The site which I’m talking about is Awardspace.com http://www.awardspace.com

You must be wondering, since the site provides free web hosting, what ever it offers must be at it’s minimum. Check out the hosting plan and judge for yourself if the hosting services are any good

• 200MB Disk Space
• 5GB Monthly Traffic
• 2 Domains Hosting
• 5 Subdomains
• Free DNS Server
• PHP, Perl/CGI-BIN
• 1 MySQL Database
• FTP/FrontPage Access
• 5 POP3/IMAP E-mails
• Instant Account Setup
• Web-based File Manager
• Easy-to-use Control Panel
• Reliable RAID Backups
• GRID Hosting Platform
• Super Fast Servers
• Reliable Data Center
• 99.8% Uptime Guarantee
• 24×7 Network Monitoring
• Forum Support
• NO BANNER ADS
• Fully Upgradeable

-> ALL THIS TOTALLY FREE!

Awardspace.com is an ideal web hosting for small business, for personal websites, phpbb forums, mambo cms and wordpress. When it’s free, I can’t ask for more.

Now, you must be getting excited and wondering what’s the catch. Why is Awardspace giving away free web hosting with no pop up advertisements? How do they make money? The answer is simple, through Google Adsense (one of the many ways)! Awardspace basically takes the opportunity to display their own pages when there is a broken link on your site. Take one example from my site:

Accurate Link
http://malaysiaweddings.awardspace.com/

Broken Link
http://malaysiaweddings.awardspace.com/content/MalaysiaWeddingCards-BROKEN-LINK.htm

You will see that clicking on the Broken Link, you are redirected to Awardspace’s site. The site has an article with Google Adsense ads around it. Smart eh! I wonder how’s their daily earnings, since there are usually many brokens links on sites.

I hope you find this post useful, especially if you’re looking for free web hosting. Another one that I could quickly recommend is 50webs.com (http://www.50webs.com). Some of my other sites are hosted with them. Example, CCTV Camera 101, Wedding Planning, Beauty Tips, Stress Management

*Updated August 21, 2006
After hosting WangInternet.com on Awardspace for nearly 6 months, there are several downsides and will highlight them here.
1. Database server can go down occasionally. In within these 6 months, it has gone down twice but for less than 24 hours. If your site is really critical don’t host with them for free. If it’s for fun, then no prob.
2. Awardspace blocks certain ISPs from accessing their server because of constant DOS (Denial of service) attacks. Not sure who would want to do this but blocking certain ISPs ensure that their free servers don’t go down frequently. You could lose some traffic because of this.
3. There are some affiliates which cannot be hosted with Awardspace! However, Google Adsense is allowed. Phew…
4. You must make sure to back up your WordPress or PHPBB or Mambo database constantly.

Other than the items above, Awardspace is the free web hosting company to go for. It’s free, thus it’s not perfect, and I’m ok with it so far! Hope you find this post useful, then head to awardspace.com to host your very first WordPress Blog!

Updated Nov 3, 2006
This site is no longer hosted with Awardspace since I bought a web hosting package with BlueHost.com which allows me to host 6 domains on one account. Contact me to obtain a rebate up to $60 when you sign up for an account with Bluehost.com.