This is perfect for you if you want to give privacy to your users while registering, logging in or updating their personal information and prevent eavesdropping on your site. But you have to manage a dedicated ip address to install a SSL certificate and you have to pay it from your own pocket to your hosting provider

Price		FREE		$4.99		$7.46
Disk Space		Unlimited		150GB		Unlimited
Bandwidth		Unlimited		1500GB		Unlimited
Money Back Guarantee		Anytime		30 Day		30 Day
Uptime Guarantee		100%		99%		99%
Email Accts		5		1000		500
Webmail

I know it’s hard to believe that they can maintain this kind of service while offering it free. But the saving grace is that it is a subsidiary company of Brinkster Communications Corporation. And I guess most of you have heard of Brinkster as it has been there for more than 10 years in web hosting business, though I can’t say that the hosting reviews you will find about them are always positive

So Hostable guys want to spread the words out about their new business. They started with giving three years of free hosting for only 99 cent. They used this small amount as verification fee and the customer had to pay it using credit card or Paypal. But it didn’t go as planned. They still got fraudulent and malicious activities from lots of people. I guess that it is easy if you can get hold of a vcc

Now they have announced that they are implementing a new fraud prevention system to maintain the quality of the service. And they are offering 2 years of hosting completely free. You don’t have to pay any verification fee. I have no idea what they are trying to do, but it will be good to see how they approach it

They are offering it to the first 5000 users who will pre-register for this free hosting package. I just registered today. This offer has been online for several days. And I thought the slots should have been filled already! Anyways they haven’t closed it yet. So you should try to register one right now. No harm in trying as you don’t have to pay a dime from your pocket

But frankly speaking, this free web hosting isn’t that awesome as it sounds. If you are going to start a brand new website or want to experiment with some web project then it is ok. If you have a standard website with some traffic then I would recommend against it simply because it has lots of downtime quite regularly. But in December they have started upgrading their server by purchasing new server and uplink. And I have seen few downtimes as compared previously. So it might be the good time to give it a try.

I have attached screenshots for last three months downtime.

And moreover, if you want to buy a new domain, you get it for $1.

$1 domain coupon code:

20101010G2 – .com/.net/.org/.biz/.info/.mobi/.us
20101010U2 – .uk
20101010C2 – .ca

Free 12 months unlimited hosting coupon code:

Coupon: 201010UHF1

By the way, if you just purchase hosting package, they will deduct $1.95 from your credit card even thought the price is $0 and keep it as online balance for your future purchase . This system helps them prevent fraudulent activities. So it is better to give just $1 and catch both domain and free hosting

The offer is valid till 19th instant, five days to go. Grab it guys. For more information visit their blog post.

It is called DreamHost Apps. If you don’t want a paid hosting from DreamHost, here you can find free application web hosting that includes several popular open-source web applications like WordPress, phpBB or Drupal. Obviously you won’t have FTP access or can’t install new themes or plugins. You have to be happy with the pre-installed ones. But that is the case with any other free WordPress blog hosting. And like WordPress.com you have no restriction on space or bandwidth. But unlike WordPress.com, you can map your custom domain free of charge. And though you can’t modify your themes code at will, at least you can add Adsense or any other ads code through widget in sidebar. I just checked with their support. And there is no policy against showing your own ads.

As a new blogger or a webmaster, you will think why not get this free SSL certificate and present my site as more professional and secure. But if you are new, there is every chance that you are missing a most important point. You cannot install your SSL certificate on shared ip. You need a dedicated ip to do that. That means you either need a dedicated hosting or a shared hosting with a unique ip address. Dedicated hosting will cost lot more than normal shared hosting that you usually use. And if you buy unique ip address for your shared hosting, you have to pay $2 or more extra monthly depending on your hosting company.

I am not discouraging you to use SSL certificate. But frankly speaking, you can live without it if you just have a blog or normal website. SSL certificate is a must have for a site that does monetary transaction with the users. Otherwise you can’t get the customer trust. I won’t buy anything from an online seller if it is not verified by a trusted SSL certificate provider like Comodo or Verisign.

So, just don’t think that you will get a free PositiveSSL certificate and install it for your blog. And you will be a proud owner of a secure server for free. It’s not as simple as that.

But even if you can’t make use of Namecheap’s free SSL certificate offer, I would still recommend you to use NameCheap for buying domain. I am in love with their user interface. You just can’t find a better one

But the good thing is that you don’t have to worry about these things from now on. DreamHost have added new cPanel import feature to web panel. I received their newsletter yesterday. Now you can just give your cPanel login information & they will import the site from existing hosting company & set it up in your DreamHost web panel. You don’t have to do anything except updating your domain’s nameserver info. And if you don’t want to supply your cPanel login info, you can just export the zipped file from cPanel & DreamHost will take care of setting it up for you.

By the way, as a current customer I am happy with DreamHost. They have pretty good uptime. Seldom their server goes down. Only problem is that when it goes down, they take a lot of time to recover it. But at least we can see the status update from DreamHost status blog.

Now when they put it back, we couldn’t login to the cPanel! And that means we couldn’t get the backup. I have sent more than several mails without any reply. Then somebody replied:

Anirban,

We apologize for not responding to your emails, this is first email we have seen from you in a long time. We have checked your site and it is working for us just fine. Please double check your domain name again, and also your temp url with us at http://96.31.78.90/~anirbanr
We would love for you to stick around, please let us know if there is anything else we can do.

Also if you still require a backup, simply email us in return at support@fusedhosting.net

Thank You

They could see a site that was offline! They have a vision after all! And they apologized for the emails that they didn’t receive! How gentle!

The support ticket system was made available to the customers after some days. And when I asked for a backup, it got closed automatically without any reply. When I reopened,  somebody replied that they were generating backup & would send me. No luck! I again mailed them few times. Then I got an email that my backup was ready in cPanel. But as I couldn’t login to cPanel, I couldn’t get it! By the way, several days had passed already to get that response!

I was trying to figure out how to get a backup & get free from these big time jokers. After several failed attempts, I got this to work. They have sifted the server to new i.p address. I couldn’t login to the cPanel of old ip address too. But then I again tried to login to the old one with port 2082, and entered my username in Password Reset field. I was able to login to the cPanel of the deserted server with the new password that was sent to my email. I took a backup, and sifted my site to DreamHost. It was a bit of struggle as DreamHost doesn’t support cPanel. But I have succeeded after all! And now quite relieved!

The moto: Always keep backup! And more importantly never ever go for FusedHosting!

All the existing customers like me have suffered. As I am writing now, I have read a few customers have been able to login to cPanel recently. But if you still can’t, use http://oldipnumber:2082 (not http://oldipnumber/cpanel). My site was hosted on 67.228.116.181 (so the url address was http://67.228.116.181:2082).

Good luck!

I have lost my rankings, traffic in these few weeks. But I am at least happy that I put it back with all the content.

Images in Reply to Tom’s Comment(click to enlarge):

My email screenshot:

Here is my support ticket screenshot:

“I’m off to DreamHost!”

Then sign up for paid hosting for 2 years. In the “Promotional Code” box enter the url of the GeoCities page having the phrase. You will get hosting worth $214.80 for free. Don’t forget to register a new TLD for yourself.

If you like to know more, read it in DreamHost’s blog. But you are running out of time!