Why use free forum services?

[Gimgak]

I see lots of forums do this, some that are even quite large, use free forum services instead of hosting on their own shared hosting account. Now i know that its easy when creating a quick forum and you don't pay anything, but I find it strange that people pay for ad free forums, which'll cost them around the same as just getting shared hosting from a reputable company. Finally lots of times these places don't offer backups, so you are stuck on their forum service.

Am I missing something here? I just don't find it the best thing to do, even without $$ you can get free hosting on a p2h or something similar.

 

[Jasonp]

I think its generally becuase they arent experienced enough? or they can't be bothered to attempt or expand there knowledge and learn more about how forums work and what to do and what not.

 

[Mudjosh]

I also find it strange.

I went to lunarpages when we had around 100 or so members..

a really small amount actually..

But I think it was worth it. If I didn't, I wouldn't have found my co-admin and then in effect wouldn't be using IPB which I adore.

 

[Gimgak]

Well I see a few people here think the same as me. Now it would be nice to have some users who use free forum services to tell us why they use them -🙂-

 

[AnAccount]

I'm not experienced enough as a forum owner, I've only been doing this for a year, so that's why I am still on a free host. I might go to a more advanced one when I have more experience, but it's enough of a headache running a forum on a free host, so I'm sticking with free for now.

 

[Murder he Wrote]

I'd say it's down to a few things.

• Inexperience - The majority forums advertised here are operated and run by people in their teens. Whilst there are some teens who spend many hours online and know next to everything when it comes to Hosting / Installing forum softwares, to many going straight into Advanced Hosting is like being thrown into the deep end. I'd imagine not everyone knows what a MySQL database is, how to set one up and how to link it up with the forum. Additionally, things that are simple to many people like installing a forum style, connecting to your site via an FTP client or setting up new directories may seem like a daunting task for others. So I'd say that aspect of inexperience may be why free hosted forums are popular.
  
• Risk - You wouldn't want to set up a forum for it not to work. By starting on a free host you literally have nothing to lose. You could get 3 months down the line, find your forum only gets 2 posts a day and decide to bail out - something you wouldn't want to do if you were paying for hosting etc. Which leads me onto my next point...
  
• Finances - Since the majority of free host users are aged between 13 and 16 they're too young to have lucrative jobs or even have a PayPal account. Chances are many of them don't have enough to even buy a domain name so by using a free host and a free domain provider such as .co.cc they're able to set up their own community free of charge, and assuming things go well enough move to advanced once they're in a financial position to do so.

Believe it or not, FP started on a free host.

~cool~

 

[hcfwesker]

Believe me, I'd buy a vB license right now, and pay someone woith the knowledge to convert my forum's content ... but, it's not possible.

My forum was just made for me and 3 friends .... and it just took off in a whole other direction.

I've spent 100's of dollars on my forum, and would glady pay for paid hosting, if i didn't lose everything me and members have worked so hard on the past year

 

[Mudjosh]

I'm not experienced enough as a forum owner, I've only been doing this for a year, so that's why I am still on a free host. I might go to a more advanced one when I have more experience, but it's enough of a headache running a forum on a free host, so I'm sticking with free for now.

A response to this. I mentioned in a previous post that I only had 100 members on a Christian forums when I moved..

This is NOT enough experience for me I can promise.. lol..

But a small business cured our finances issue by a large donation so I went for adv. hosting aka shared hosting.

I had a horrible time due to my useless knowledge too.. I broke my forum numerous times by installing features. (aka mods)

But now because of moving to adv hosting and installing those mods, I could install a hard mod with complete ease. I haven't any knowledge of php sadly so I can't be a modder myself.. But installing mods on the styles of the forum taught me alot in the way of html and I coded my first web design on a phpbb3 forum.

So, inexperience, while it is a worthy excuse, isn't the best one to use.

You'll never become experienced enough in my opinion until you have a forum with around 10k members and 1k active members.

Then you will (hopefully) be experienced.

I hope I made sense.

 

[Expired Account]

I am on free hosting for my forum Any Videos, but I am starting up another forum which will be on paid hosting.

 

[AnAccount]

BTW, I am no longer a teenager. I am an adult, and I still know nothing of forum owning. I only took one year of Modern Business Technology, and I wish I would've taken at least one more, so I could have some knowledge of HTML, but sadly, I took MBT during my senior year, and I was only in year 1, so I didn't get to go on to the advanced level. I know it's not good enough to say that you're not experienced enough, but that's definetly true for me. I have a learning disbility, but at the same time, I love learning new things. So starting on a free forum host was the best bet for me, because at least then I can learn some of the basics (such as making backups and stuff).

 

[thedudeman]

I don't like free forum hosts because they lack the flexibility of owning your own hosting. For example, doing file edits is something I do quite often. Plus, they can't run IP.Board. -razz-

 

[Tolken]

I do not use the stupid forum services.