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For advertisements?
Advertisement, but what if you give a vps for a person that want to host a site for his college project?
You will not get a lof of advertisement.
Let me introduce you to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism
But yeah with VPSes being from like $8.50/year (or even 3 EUR/year), I never see the point in offering (or searching for) a "FREE VPS". Do you really want to have anything to do with people who can't afford to pay even that.
There are useful free services that you can provide to help the common good, namely running Tor/I2P/Freenet relays. And contrary to what some believe, those are less likely to get you in trouble than giving "shellz accountz" or free VPSes on your server to random kids.
First of all "Altruism"
.
Now, iif you talk about waste your time and resources with kids. You can restrict your help to specific projects.
Web Apps, Portfolio of people that jsut want to show their creativity, projects and similar things.
One man's free VPS is another man's beta tester
I'd vote for Altruism them
Or, many people, including me, may be happy to offer some services freely to someone they know, but I don't get the point why offer free VPS for others if you are not close friends, shared hosting stuff are more common as free services, they do not cost much to offer. In fact, a free shared hosting account for some simple sites with almost no visitors cost about nothing more for the server itself.
A "project" with any seriousness to speak of, would have no problems to pay for its hosting.
Really, if you want to "show their creativity" but don't have $8.5/year (or even $15/year, which will already run most of today's Web 2.0 server apps like node.js), then I really wouldn't bet on you having any kind of "creativity" in the first place.
I don't know. Some friends don't have enough money. I bought some year VPSs for them.
And to be fair people that doesnt speak enlighs just look for services in their language. spanish for example. Shared hosting basic plan 10 dollars month (500mb hdd, 60gb bw), a vps 20 - 30 dollars month (512MB ram - 10GB hdd) is it fair?
Some of them not even know about paypal or don't have a credit/debit card.
Then your 9 or 15 dollars/year is not possible.
Some guys doesnt know about LEB's.
Good point with another man's beta tester.
Not necessary a vps, I mean a shared hosting is ok for someone that don't know a lot of servers.
The main idea is HELP.
Then educate them. Show them where to get a cheap or free Visa/MC that works over the Internet (lots of places in my country, don't know about yours). Show how to use Paypal. Show them LEB/LET. Teach a man to fish, not buy (or give them) one free fish just for today...
I wanted to read those words: Teach a man to fish, not buy one free fish just for today
Some people might not have access to credit cards to be able to buy the servers. For example, in my country, it is nearly impossible to get a credit card. And leave the prepaid cards out of the question. You can't get them anywhere. But for that, you have a solution, Entropay. If only they didn't charge that interest rate, I'd be much more happier with them.
There is also Altruism, as stated @rm_. We have shared hosting available for free, but why not VPSes? Shared and email for free can be understood, but yes, VPSes, not that easily.
If you started this thread after seeing probably my thread for offering a free VPS service, or some other similar ones (there is another similar thread I came across recently here for a free vps service), there are multiple reasons. Like, wanting to enter the market and giving yourself a head start. There might be philanthropic reasons for it. In my case, I just want to start a free VPS provider which can be trusted and which provides good service.
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i started my business with free shared hosting promotion 1 years ago, and thanks for that now i have 1k++ paid client
its just like announced to the world : hey we have quality service, wanna to try this?
Right now I am an admin in a forum that offer free vpss, but it is in English.
I am considering to offer free services but in my own language. With some restrictions about who can get it.
And yes I saw your thread.
And about credit/drbit cards, sometimes it is difficult to get.
Yes it is ok if you want to get a profit.
Again my idea (probably a bad idea) is just offer it free no more.
i recommend you to rethink it
there's to much abuse issue on free hosting user
@tuguhost
Ya that is why I am looking for opinions
Yes this is fine, and there are already many of them doing fine, my point is that offering free VPS may cost too much to afford, as you need to by dedis and maybe some control panel licenses, they are not cheap, especially comparing with setting up a shared hosting server.
Congs, very inspiring
I always believe some restrictions are necessary for free services, or you'll drown in the flood of spammers and abusers very quickly. And as you're going to provide it in your own language, why not consider a paid version with payment methods people from your country widely used? (like Alipay in China) No one said a payment method must be Paypal, Card, 2CO or anything.
ya maybe in a future.
Priority is get users, reputation of a good free service.
Just to mention that there are people thinking free services are not as good as paid ones, even if you are way better ;P So maybe a paid version is needed, you can put it on your order pages but not selling them...at present...
Why not if you have free rooms ?
Helping people even if they are random is better than wasting resources.
First of all hi shawni (good you are on LET).
But how can you control the abuse of resources?
I offer very cheap ones but they do just about cover the costs now, it was never about profit it was more about seeing if it could be done, it has also opened up new ideas and creative thinking which has been great and given me some excellent business ideas that will generate revenue.
As for offering them for free it is just going to be abused because to many people simply don't care if that makes your life hard, so at least charge something even if it is $1 one time fee or even less, if someone has to go through the process of making a payment which is then validated that is 90% of the malicious people that would otherwise a free service gone from your worries.
If you are serious about offering something feel free to drop me a PM to discuss further I am always interested to help things like this along.
@AnthonySmith
I smell competition here.
Sorry I know it is not for me, but why competition?
he is only joking, it is because I run lowendspirit.com and soon to be offering (almost) free cPanel hosting working with MikHo
It was a joke, glad someone understood it. It is however true that there will be a free (or almost) cpanel service launched "soon".
Ya like it
good to see that more people wants to offer free services 
I didn't think about your 3 idea, history and CV. It will be good really good. And the part of responsability for sure.