Free Hosting with No Strings Attached?
December 15, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzThe following is a paid review and is completely of my own opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having me review your site or product, please view my advertising page.
Whether you’re a brand new webmaster just starting your first site or an experienced web guru who manages 6 large websites for a living, there is one thing that all webmasters have in common: they all require web hosting.
Most webmasters pay for their web hosting, but there are certainly free web hosting for non-profits out there. However, free web hosts rarely let you host your own domain, impose forced ads on your website, or have very strict data and bandwidth limits. Cloud interconnectivity is also a great way for businesses to scale operations.
Enter InsaneGB.com. Appearing to offer the impossible, InsaneGB is offering 100% completely free web hosting with 5 GB of storage space and 200 GB monthly bandwidth. What makes this really amazing is that you can host your domain with them (or use a subdomain from them if you wish), are given your own full CPanel, and there will never be a single ad on your website.
If you don’t have a domain (At only $9 a year, I don’t know why anyone would not have their own domain), you can set up a subdomain off of their URL (example.insanegb.com). Since InsaneGB was launched less than a week ago, there are plenty of great subdomain names still available.
Signing up takes about a minute, and after confirming your e-mail address from 10 Minute Mail and waiting for your web host details to be e-mailed you (which only takes a couple minutes), you can literally be logged into your CPanel to start working on your website within 5-6 minutes.
I asked the owner of InsaneGB how he could afford to offer all of this for free, and how he planned to monetize it in the future. He assured me that there are no hidden fees, no forced ads, and that there would never be any ads imposed on users’ websites.
He told me that he has other successful sites that are generating money which he has parlayed to fund InsaneGB, and that once it gets big that he will be adding ads to InsaneGB itself. These ads will appear only on InsaneGB (and possibly within CPanel), but never on the user’s website.
That’s good enough for me! How could you complain about that?
Other features of your free account include unlimited: MySQL databases, domains, FTP accounts, and E-mail accounts. You also get PHP, Perl/CGI, SSI, phpMyAdmin, Front Page Extensions, Backup solutions, Cron Job Support, etc..
Basically you get anything you’d get if you paid for a server. If you want to get cloud services, then visit https://www.venyu.com/cloud/ or similar sites to know more.
Once signed up, you can manage your account at any time by logging into InsaneGB’s client area, which uses iPanel. From here you can change any personal contact details, open a support ticket, or check the status of your server.
… But where you’ll be spending the most of your time will be in your own private CPanel!
You will be e-mailed the private details of how to access your CPanel within minutes of registering. There’s no denying it – you really get your own fully-functioning CPanel, complete with all the trimmings.
Here you can easily set up MySQL Databases, configure your backups, or create some additional FTP accounts for some of your friends to help you work on your site.
The left column provides quick-and-easy access to server stats and important information you may need to configure scripts such as the versions that PHP and MySQL are running and the paths to Sendmail and Perl.
In case anyone is curious, here is the URL to my website I set up with InsaneGB.com. The whole process, including the creation of the kick-ass site, took me about 10-minutes: http://tyler.insanegb.com/.
No More Excuses
If you’ve been putting off making a website or blog because you don’t have a credit card or don’t have enough money to spend on web hosting, you now have no more excuses. InsaneGB.com offers you everything you could possibly need from a webhost, absolutely free.
I’d strongly suggest “investing” $9 a year to purchase a domain (InsaneGB does not sell anything, not even domains), but if you’re too cheap to even do that, you can still grab a good subdomain for free. I would also recommend you to check out this vps hosting if you want something affordable yet super efficient.
You can easily install and run WordPress on InsaneGB since you have MySQL and PHP support, and so there is nothing stopping you from trying to make “a few bucks” online anymore!
38 Responses to “Free Hosting with No Strings Attached?”
Being only a week old with no rep and lacking a credible website, I’m afraid that nobody smart enough would host with them.
– Sahil.
Free hosts come and go all the time.
Keeping a web hosting company going costs money. Not charging customers makes it easy for a host like this to start up (about 2 weeks ago) and then disappear in 2 weeks.
Unless you like the idea of finding a new free host every month I would suggest spending the few bucks to find a real web hosting company.
A little biased, but I agree. Plus, I don’t understand how he is going to monetize later without forcing something on the users.
In responce to the previous 2 comments about insaneGB I would like to say the following:
We are not like any other Free Webhost, no we are here to stay and we will stay. We already have a good reputation and we are already hosting around the 200+ people in just one week time.
It is indeed easy for a host like us to start up, but we will NOT dissapear after 2 weeks or 2 years. This is a long term project of 2 respectable online webmasters with the sufficient amount of funds to fund this whole project. We want to offer free hosting, and beginning from a couple of servers to a whole datacenter. Questioning how and why is not going to help, because I have stated many times that we are ABLE to fund our own projects, no matter how long they will last, and they Will last for a very long time.
Why pay for hosting if you can also get it for free? No strings attached indeed, and there is No catch.
Regards,
Bouncer.
That´s what they all say.
There’s no such thing like a free lunch.
Very true!
Solid review Tyler.
I too am little skeptical about the claimed freebies with no strings attached. After all this host too needs to cover its costs and I doubt the “internal only” advertising will perform well enough.
However I would be willing to give them a go for some non-vital sites of mine. From the first look as described in this article they surely do look quite impressive.
Same here. I will try it with some of my lesser used sites and see how it goes. At worst, it takes the load off my main server.
I’m tempted to move my hosting there since I can barely afford $10/month hosting now 🙁
-Mike
$10/month.. come on Mike, I’m sure you can generate $10 via Adsense each month?
I was in the same situation when I first started. 🙂
You can easily make $10 a month with Adsense and if it’s the only $10 you make that month, then you would have to wait ten months for payout. That means that you wouldn’t have the $10 on time for ten months if you were relying on Adsense.
Looks like it is down already.
Yeah, I’m getting the default Apache/Cpanel post-installation page. Boo.
I went to check them out and they are still down. I wonder what that means for their reliability? I may still try them out for a few domain names that I have parked right now that aren’t making anything.
It is definately a good concept, but perhaps the ads on the insanegb website will never cover the sites costs. Maybe an upgrade to 50 or 75 gigs transfer/month would be more effective? I know in some cases it will take no time at all to burn 20 gigs a month, depending on the site of course.
Art
Honestly, tyler, I’ve been subscribed to you for a while, before the you vs warass blow up days. Your posts are getting thin. Really, really thin.
Did he give out his other site? The one that he’s making money from.
No he did not.
Regarding InsaneGB.com being down… ouch.. bad timing for such a thing to happen… shortly after you purchased a review.
I should mention though that it is only their website that is messed up, as my website is still fully functioning and working properly, and I can still access CPanel fine (http://tyler.insanegb.com)
Sorry guys for the site being offline. The problem is with an upgrade of php and apache, it messed something up with the httpd.conf so the ip that insanegb.com was registered with is not showing up anymore thus it is pointing at the default cpanel page. As i type right now i’m fixing this problem, and it is indeed VERY bad timing that this happened 🙁 but i managed to have all hosting accounts work normally but the problems are still not fixed yet. I will post a reply when the new upgrade has been finished. And once again we Are reliable, just keep in mind that only 2 students are trying their best to keep this server up, our server admins are not really helping us out so we have to do it ourselfs. But money wise once again it is no problem at al.
Thank you for understanding
Yes! After one whole night fixing i finally managed to get the server back on it’s rails!
This was so exhausting…
I am really sorry for all the problems caused, but it is all good right now and i’m planning on keeping it like it! Not in the mood for any other server downtime.
Software has been fixed, registrations open again, you’re welcome!
Thanks.
I really can’t imagine how a company make revenue by offering free service. I believe 200GB bandwidth is quite high. Even some paid hosting not provide such high bandwidth.
You’re more than happy to whore your reputation off to any fly by night business for a buck it would seem. It really destroys your credibility to be shilling for bucks like this. I would think you could better focus your attention on making money from your other sites than through these sad attempts. Sigh…
Dick, it is only 20GB transfer, not 200.
Steve, I see no reason for tyler to turn down such a review. The company wanted him to express his opinions to his user base, they paid the money knowing it could be a pro review or a con review.
Either way it is a ‘review’. It would be nice if they had unbiased people doing this for every product we purchase. New or established. Hell, if it were an established company that we all knew about already, then of what use would the review be. What would anyone gain from it?
Art
iPanel is not the best choice for free hosting. I did it once, and after 200 accounts (which really is much at all) the server was practically dead. At 100 accounts it had started getting kinda dodgy.
~ Dave
That’s a pretty amazing deal, so where’s the catch?
Actually, from some of the above comments I guess the catch might be how solid the servers are..
I suppose if you’re just starting out and don’t require huge bandwidths then this is probably a good service to go with.
Yes Matt, this is true.
While free hosting services are simple and easy to start out, you may want to host larger more established sites with a paid hosting account. If it has enough traffic to slow the servers or burn the monthly bandwidth, then it should be making enough money to pay it’s own hosting bill. If it doesn’t, then perhaps the site needs some replanning or just forgotten altogether.
Art
I don’t think this is plausible. There is no way can substain for long without some sort of revenue. There’s gotta be a catch somewhere.
Of course there is and your friendly neighborhood review whoring blog is more than happy to take the $ and peddle their wares to an unsuspecting audience.
Tyler,
I’m surprised that you neglected to mention the typical buyer beware that comes along with items on the Internet that are FREE as well as the amount of time that this site has been around. I’m sure that you have people new to making money online subscribed here and these lessons would be good ones to be aware of as they start out on their journey.
While I think this is an amazing service and certainly applaud the company for offering this I still cannot wrap my head around the business model here.
Unless I was 15 and couldn’t afford milk money let alone a hosting package, I would place my income generating sites elsewhere.
Where did my comment go?
It is really hard to keep a website. Think of the hassles of it while it is undergoing construction. Plus the cost of maintaining it, unless you are a big company you wont be hurt by its cost
I’m a fairly well known established internet marketer. I won’t speak of my bankroll directly but some of my closest friends pull in 6 figures per year and a couple pull in over a million.
While this offer might be “possible”, it’s obviously got something up its sleeve and everyone here rightfully senses it.
Whether they intend to offer reseller packages later, or what, who knows… I took 1&1 up on one of their 3 free years offer when they were trying to break into the US market and the 3 years ended and I signed up…. even though I have a reseller package with host gator, and 2 friends who host a part of my business each.
Why do I need 4 webhosts? That would take a day and a half to explain but it’s not all that far-fetched.
I still can’t say what will come of this company but, as a marketer, I can tell you that they HAVE come up with a major component of “the irresistable offer” except that they have not come up with the OTHER component, the credibility, which is why many of you on here are resisting.
If earning your trust and respect over the course of a year or two is what they intend before rolling out a bigger, better package, or reseller hosting, or whatever else, then I can understand it to some extent…
…but there’s no free lunch in these waters, none.
Best…
Sam
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Hi,
I m agreed with SAM’s point of view as he said :
“…but there’s no free lunch in these waters, none.”
InsaneGB to me is perfect till now. Servers are 99.99% uptime and having no problem to me. I like the Great new C-panel look and Features offered.
Lets hope it would be long lasting what else we can do.
Grab the opportunity if its available now !, if you cant afford paid hosting then why not give it a try. If you are afraid – go have backups each day – or whenever you update anything. Thats all what we can do …
Great Job Tyler – Nice Review
Seems as though they are having problems and being flamed for it!
http://www.affiliatelounge.co.za/articles/hosting-articles/insanegb-goes-down-bad/
insaneGB never planned properly. I was a moderator on the support forum, and I literally watched the service collapse from the inside out:
http://www.woganmay.com/2008/01/13/my-insanegb-experience/
If you have a site hosted with them, get a backup copy before they vanish completely.
~ Wogan
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