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This is how host1free NOT finally ceased - They're back in business
Host1free, a brand of Host1Plus, just ceased its free VPS business.
Timeline:
With no sign at all, on June 8, 2013, days before the SolusVM breach, Host1free sent off an e-mail to most of the free VPS users:
`Dear Host1Free User [Username],
We would like to announce that due to changes in our network infrastructure we will be changing current IP address of your free VPS server 5.175.217.*** to the new one 5.231.18.***.
In order to allow you to prepare for this event we added IP address 5.175.217.*** as main IP address and old 5.231.18.*** IP left as additional to your free VPS server.
Next Wednesday (2013-06-13) old IP address will be removed.
Please make sure to update your servers settings, DNS settings and etc. accordingly to avoid any inconience after old IP(5.231.18.***) address removal at Wednesday."
Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.
Regards,
Host1Free adminsitrators team`
As this doesn't usually happen in the industry, this IP change has marked the sign of their consideration of ceasing the free VPS service.
Days later, on June 16 SolusVM breach happened, and this is never a better chance for them to cease the business:
Regarding the Recent SolusVM Security Breach
http://www.host1free.com/blog/regarding-the-recent-solusvm-security-breach/
Sounds normal? But whilst they disconnected the control panel, all free VPSes seemed to be shut down, and users discovered that both their old and new IPs are appointed to other websites.
If you are still using one of the free VPS providers, DO remember to perform intense backup on your data. As these are free services, no one will credit to the safety of your data.
I am not trolling on Host1free, however, I believe they had put much effort into this service, kept it up for long time (one or two years I think). But the result did not meet their aim - to guide costumers to their expensive paid VPSes. So eventually, this free service will die.
Comments
afaik, they are restarting their free vps again with their own platform on July 10. Existing users do not need to register again as per their recent update.
I too was having a Host1free VPS which was unused for more than a month and when I did DD test it was under 10MB/s and download speed was under 100kbps....
And due to no reason the server was ceased/ terminated
I did not see this on their twitter nor blog, could you please show the source?
I had the same experience. Never used, it has been idle for about a year.
Why are you complaining about the quality of free stuff?
No complaints, just the Reality.. Some use these free services really Badly.
Their forum has a thread for this. Link is given below by @emg
I got terminated as well as a friend of mine for no reason.
The servers were hosting small forums. No matter dd and dl speed, it was enough for a few users at a time.
No warning has been issued, we simply found out cannot login to ssh and had another fingerprint, a week or so apart.
Free and bad quality is OK, being treated as dirt by not even sending an email we were terminated and the reason for it, is not.
Their paid offer is insanely priced compared with our regular offers here from proven hosts and the quality from the free tier is not a recommendation, so I think this dd more harm than good.
I have a Host1Free.com VPS.
Here is a link to the announcement in their forums - they keep editing post #1 as they provide updates:
http://www.host1free.com/forum/8-news-announcements/16860-regarding-control-panel-free-vps-users-only.html
Here is a related link:
http://www.host1free.com/forum/8-news-announcements/16997-vps-service-restart-until-10th-july.html
Just to be clear, a Host1Free VPS is a great learning tool, but it comes with minimal RAM, CPU, performance, network I/O (very slow, but unlimited bandwidth), no TUN/TAP, and considerable restrictions on how it can be used. Considering that it is free, I am very pleased with it. It makes a great testbed, development tool, backup server, and I plan to use it for other things as well - just none of them "critical need" applications.
Completely agree.
Update: The relaunch of the Host1Free VPSs has slipped until 15 July, due to hardware problems with their RAID controllers. See "Update 8" in the first post of my first link above.
Yea, I know they won't.
Nice Facts. Thanks for sharing.
Time will tell whether they come back or not.
Nonetheless, if I were Host1Free and I wanted to discontinue the free VPS service by not coming back, I wouldn't announce a restoration date only five days hence. It does not make much sense to me as confirmation of @sundaymouse's assertion that they won't come back.
Offering free web hosting must be quite difficult because of the abusers. I can imagine how many abusers/spammers are trying to sign up for these services, especially VPS, where they simply cannot add such restrictions like on the regular shared hosting. I admire them for the job that they do.
Also there's no doubt that that there will be some "unexpected" changes, servers going down (sometimes probably for hours or even days) - they are actually supporting this without any income (they probably hope that some percentage of the users will upgrade to a paid plan), and this means cutting costs as much as possible, without any guarantees for uptime or performance.
July 15 is passed, no new update on their forum today.
Registration is back up. Earlier they said that those who had VPS's in the past would receive them when the service came back online, this apparently was not true. I had a VPS with them for tinkering and had to register again for another VPS. Waiting now to see if I am granted one.
Looks like they are back up. I would wish this thread to be closed and to be keeped as a historical record, thanks @spirit .
Did you get your money back? OHH.. right
I did, but only prorated with the remaining time.
I had to re-register as it appeared they closed my free VPS.
Oh yea reregistered again
Good. They had an old scheme where they paid you to refer people, long story short they ripped a good friend off by about $100 or so. They had this coming.
Well, aren't you nice, lovely, and incapable of reading the entire thread.
I read the entire thread. I'm stating that my experience with them even prior to VPSCorner was poor. They quite blatantly ripped someone I know off and I'm guessing it's fair to assume that others also missed out on their entitlement.
There's lots of good VPS providers about and many get my praise, despite us offering VPS ourselves. Host1free is not one of them.
The moral of my comment is that after what I've experienced, the world would be better of without them.
A bit delayed because there was still interest for discussion. Sorry
Closed - per thread starter's request.
edit
Reopen - on request.
This is just an update on Host1Free. @sundaymouse was more right than wrong. Since my last post, Host1Free appears to have started up again on 15 July as they said. However, ...
Host1Free opened this thread, which today (20 July 2013) contains 26 pages of previous VPS owners who appear to be in the same situation. They had a Host1Free VPS, they reregistered with the same contact information as before, and were rejected. See:
http://www.host1free.com/forum/71-rejected-registrations/17137-reviewing-rejected-applications.html
Host1Free's forums are the only means of support. They are asking previous VPS owners to post their email addresses in the public forum for all to see, something I was reluctant to do. I posted a message asking them to look up my email address or send a PM, but no luck so far.
Bottom line: Kudos to @sundaymouse for predicting what might happen.
I signed up the day they reopened and had a VPS within 8 hours. I then had a friend who did not previously have a VPS with them signup and he received his VPS with in a day.
Hehe, they seemed to have removed old users' ip from restricted signup list. So I signed up using original e-mail and ip again, see how it goes.
I got my VPS too.