How would you like to have totally free Web hosting with no ads at all? That type of service just isn’t out there, is it? Yes it is. Moved.in is causing a lot of buzz in the world of Web hosting because they are offering totally free Web hosting with no ads anywhere.
So lets first look at what you get. You get 150 MB of Web space, 5 GB of bandwidth a month, full FTP access, PHP, 3 mySQL databases, 1 PostgreSQL database, CPanel, Fantastico and ad free hosting. That is a good line up for a regular Web hosting account, so getting all of that for free makes the deal even better.
So how do they make money from this if it is free and has no annoying ads popping up? Well one way is through advertising in the newsletter they offer to customers. I was told though that since they already run several other popular and successful Web site that costs were not really a worry right now. So from what I got out of the conversation is that they can keep Moved.in running from the revenue they earn on other projects. Sounds good to me!
The Accounts Manager, Martin Bosch, told me this:
“Since there is no high cost attaches to keep the servers running it’s no big deal at all. Even if there were no advertisers it would be no big deal as we run serval high traffic sites which cover all costs. Generally it’s a ‘give back to the community’ project but if it covers the costs it’s even better.”
So is the actual Web hosting any good? I’d say it is equal to some of the low-end Web hosting plans available out there today. Sure, you don’t get much if you compare it with some paid solutions out there, but for free you have to admit this is a lot more than you’d be getting at Angelfire or Yahoo’s Geocities.
Another thing I like about Moved.in is they are working off of the invites only system. This means you have to be invited by a current member before you can get an account of your own. This system does a good job at keeping folks who just want to clutter the servers with junk far away. They don’t want the accounts just to be used to harvest pictures for other places. They don’t want the folks who just need a place to host their eBay images in other words. They want real people, with real Web sites.
Can you point a domain name to your account there? Lets say you don’t like the mysite.moved.in interface. This is what they have to say on the matter:
You can point your top level domain name to your account. However, we do not allow domain parking or add-on domain names. To point your domain name to your account you will need to setup a (cloaked) URL redirect pointing to username.moved.in
Another thing that is worth mentioning is that they don’t want forums to be hosted either. I can’t disagree with them there because forums do take up a lot of space and popular ones can hit servers pretty hard.
So if you can get an invite, I’d say try out the services and see what you think. I really do believe though that this is what the future of free Web hosting is going to look like in time. I might have to talk with the folks at Moved.in again to see if I can give away a few invites on an episode of The Web Hosting Show too.
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