Data Storage :300MB Disk Space

Data Transfer : 10GB Bandwidth

Database Support : Yes

4 MySQL Databases

MySQL Version 5.0.45

Php Version: 5.2.3

GD Version : 2.0 or Higher

FTP Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: Yes (1 Catchall Account)

SMTP/Sendmail : No

Custom MX Records: Yes

Forced Ads: None

File size: Umlimited

Domain Hosting : Yes (5 add-on domains & 5 sub-domains)

Customer Support : Forums Support, Support Tickets, Email Support

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 29 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

HostWq is another Byethost clone. Differently from most of the other clones, it provides you add-free service. All companies that is affiliated with Byethost uses the same infrastructure with Byethost, thus providing similiar features and server performance. They can differ the free plan features a bit, and decide if they add forced ads to member pages. The only revenue source for a ByetHost based host is the forced ads they add to members site, they didn’t get a penny if you go for a paid package from them, therefore it is hard to find a ad-free ByetHost based provider. If you are looking for a reliable free php host, HostWq is a good ad-free solution. My first impression about their support is also positive, I checked their forums and noticed that the admin replies almost every thread kindly.

Briefly it is one of the top ByetHost based providers, to see other Byet host based servers simply follow this link.

Go to the HostWq’s free plan

P.S: Submitted by Pete. 

It was so 8 years ago, and it is the same now! Nothing changed! If you are the guy that I described above, you don’t need suggestions from me, cause you are one step beyond me! But what if not? Don’t quail yourself, nowadays we have some other ways to start a hosting company. Additionaly, there are some companies that offers this service free. Now I am going to explain how to start a hosting company easily (compared the starting one physically) and some free or cheap solutions.

What is reseller hosting?

Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host’s services wholesale and then sells them to his customers for a profit. The certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to reseller account. (Source:Wikipedia)

Basically, you’ll buy a reseller package from a provider, and sell hosting services under your brand within the limits of your reseller package. With a reseller package, you don’t have to deal with hardware, software, maintenance, backups or anything technical. All you have to do is, designing a website or using a pre-built template, learning the simple to use control panel, and start marketing your company. Most of the reseller hosts even doesn’t provide support and outsource it to the main company. (Mostly applicable if you are targeting english speaking customers.)

Which companies provide reseller hosting accounts?

Actually, I can’t provide you a full list, or a suggestions for reseller accounts. The Web Host Magazine’s Reseller Hosting section should help you to find some paid companies that offer reseller hosting. (http://www.webhostmagazine.com/wh/re/), for free alternatives continue to read.

Free Reseller Hosting Alternatives

There are two free alternatives I know that serves for different purposes;

The first is resellers panel, which offers you a free reseller account that you can sell your own hosting services for a premium. Their free reseller hosting program offers complete automation for your web hosting business. They provide the hosting service, the billing and the 24/7 technical support to your clients. You have the freedom to set up your own prices and thus maintain full control over your profits. In addition, as a reseller you have full access to your clients’ accounts and to detailed statistics of all your sales. Follow this link to start your hosting business at resellers panel.

Resellers Panel is a great free way to start your own paid hosting company. I said paid, cause there is another alternative to start your own free hosting company. As you know there are many free hosting providers that offers visitors free web hosting with some limitations. They give the service for free for either making money by adding advertisement to users pages, and/or forcing them to upgrade paid premium packages.

ByetHost allows you to start your own free hosting company for free. You will have your own free hosting company under your brand, add advertisements to users pages, and make money from this advertisements. You will get 100% of the ad revenue, but nothing if someone signup for a paid package, or upgrades their free hosting account. Honestly, I don’t think that the ad-revenue is a big amount. A friend of mine operates a free hosting site (not at ByetHost), makes about $300 monthy with 2000 active users.

You can find a list of ByetHost resellers I’ve found at ByetHost Clones post. This people started their free hosting companies at ByetHost and giving out free hosting to the community under their own brand. The post may give you an idea what type of features you can offer to your potential users.

If you want to operate your own free web hosting business for fun, you should start with ByetHost immediately, otherwise Resellers Panel is a better solution for starting a web hosting business, especially if you have a good customer potential.

Dedicated Servers

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. (Source: Wikipedia)

If you want to increse your freedom on your hosting business, offer customized hosting packages and services to your clients, and have a total control of your servers, you should lease a dedicated server from a provider. Although it offers more, you should also have the technical knowledge to get all this additional opportunities, otherwise you will use it as a regular reseller hosting package. The only difference will be all your clients sites will be on your own dedicated servers and didn’t affected from other clients of your provider.

Unfortunately there are no free dedicated server providers that I know as reseller hosting, but if required I can suggest you some software to use for your hosting business in my later posts. That is all for this post.

Feel free to ask a question, or giving a feedback using the comment form below. Moreover, I’ll be glad if you add the other free services you know.

Data Storage :300MB Disk Space

Data Transfer : 100GB Bandwidth

Database Support : Yes

3 MySQL Databases

MySQL Version 5.0.45

Php Version: 5.2.3

GD Version : 2.0 or Higher

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: Yes (1 Catchall Account)

Smtp/Sendmail : No

Custom MX Records: Yes

Forced ads: Yes (A large adsense block at bottom of your pages)

File size limit: Unlimited

Domain Hosting : Yes (1 domain +5 subdomains)

Customer Support : Support Tickets

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 29 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

It is a common ByetHost clone, meaning that using the infrastructure of ByetHost under its own brand. There are better ByetHost clones. Click here to see other ByetHost clones.

Go to the FastNFree’s free plan

Data Storage :250MB Disk Space

Data Transfer : 5GB Bandwidth

Database Support : Yes

3 MySQL Databases

MySQL Version 5.0.45

Php Version: 5.2.3

GD Version : 2.0 or Higher

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: Yes (1 Catchall Account)

Smtp/Sendmail : Yes

Custom MX Records: Yes

Forced ads: Yes (An adsense ad at bottom of your pages)

File size limit: Unlimited

Domain Hosting : Yes (5 add-on domains +5 subdomains)

Customer Support : Support Tickets, E-mail , Forums

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 29 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

It is a common ByetHost clone, meaning that using the infrastructure of ByetHost under its own brand. There are better ByetHost clones. Click here to see other ByetHost clones.

Go to the iziHost’s free plan

Data Storage :250MB Disk Space

Data Transfer : 6GB Bandwidth
Database Support : Yes

3 MySQL Databases

MySQL Version 5.0.45

Php Version: 5.2.3

GD Version : 2.0 or Higher

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: Yes (1 Catchall Account)

Smtp/Sendmail : No

Custom MX Records: Yes

Forced ads: Yes (An adsense ad at bottom of your pages)

File size limit: Unlimited

Domain Hosting : Yes (+a subdomain)

Customer Support : Support Tickets

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 28 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

It is a common ByetHost clone, meaning that using the infrastructure of ByetHost under its own brand. There are better ByetHost clones. Click here to see other ByetHost clones.

Go to the ShopXTs free plan

Wordpress is a blog publishing system written in Php scripting language and backed up by mysql database management system, therefore it needs a server that is capable of PHP (at least PHP 4.2) and a mysql server (at least MySQL 4). To publish your own wordpress blog you need either host your own wordpress blog, or create one on a wordpress based blogging service like wordpress.com.

What do you need to host your own wordpress?

Although the webserver (php side) and mysql database server can be on different servers, most of the providers (either free or paid) does not allow you to connect an external mysql database from their web servers. It means to host your own wordpress blog you need a host supporting PHP and MySQL. In addition to this basic requirements, you may need some other software, or functions depending on your needs. Some wordpress features require special php functions & rights which may be restricted by your hosting company. Most of the free providers set some restrictions, either for security reasons or to convince you to upgrade a premium paid package. For example, If your provider doesn’t allow you to send mails from your php scripts you can’t use the registration feature of wordpress because it sends users password to his/her e-mail address or any other feature or plugin that requires sending mail. If you are going to use a free hosting provider, I strongly recommend you to find one that allows mail functions.

Detailed Wordpress Requirements

WordPress server requirements for Version 2.2:

• PHP version 4.2 or greater
• MySQL version 4.0 or greater (3.23 is also okey for versions below 2.0)
• (Optional) Apache and mod_rewrite module (for clean URIs known as Permalinks)

It is also essential that your host allows remote connections.

How to install wordpress on your own computer?

If you want to install wordpress on your own computer and use it as a testing environment you should install PHP, MySQL and Apache softwares to your computer. I suggest you to use the opensource software called XAMPP instead of installing all of them seperately. XAMPP is a very easy to install Apache Distribution for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. The package includes the Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, Perl, a FTP server and phpMyAdmin.

After installing the required software and making the configuration, your computer will be ready to host a wordpress blog! You can use it for testing purposes and also to host your wordpress blog or any other php based page. Notice that it will be less reliable, less secure and slower than a real hosting provider, therefore I suggest you to get a hosting package either free or paid.

How to install wordpress on your own host?

If your host provides you a one click application tool (names may vary, Fantastico Installer, Auto install, 1 click install etc.), you can use this tool to install wordpress easily, otherwise you should install it yourself following the steps below.

First you need the latest wordpress packages which you can find at download section of wordpress.org. Next send the extracted packages into your web directory of your page. (Some providers have tools to extract the zip file on the server, which takes less time.)

Now the scripts are on your server, if you enter your site you will see a wordpress installation page. There are a few simple steps, which asks for blog name, blog description, the name and e-mail of the blog administrator (you), and the mysql database configuration.

The mysql configurations varies depending on your host, you may be supplied with a predefined database name with predefined username and password by your hosting provider, otherwise you should create them using your control panel. You also have to know the mysql hostname of your hosting provider. (The registration e-mail or the control panel may include this information. Otherwise you should ask it to your provider.)

After completing this easy installation steps your new wordpress blog is ready to use.

How to migrate from a wordpress blog hosted elsewhere?

If you were hosting your blog on wordpress.com or any similiar blogging service, you need follow some steps for migration.

• The new wordpress installation only includes a few basic templates. You should find a theme to use on your wordpress blog. There are tons of free templates at http://themes.wordpress.net/. Select a theme to use, edit it as you like, upload it to the themes directory (wp-content/themes) of your wordpress blog, and set it as your blogs current theme using the presentation menu on your admin page.
• Download the plugins that you use on your old blogging service. Differently from the past, now you are free to use any additional plugin you need. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ is a good starting point to find some plugins that are usefull for your purposes.
• Export your posts on your old provider, and import them to your new wordpress blog using the import tool under manage tab on your wordpress admin panel.
• The categories may mess up after the import, you should put them in order yourself!

If you have any questions or need further help, please feel free to leave a comment. It is hard to cover all topics in one simple article. Moreover I can’t imagine all possible uses and problems. I will edit the article, or write specific ones depending on your future questions.

Data Storage :1GB Disk Space

Data Transfer : 10GB Bandwidth
Database Support : Yes

5 MySQL Databases

MySQL Version 5.0.27

Php Version: 5.1.6

GD Version : 2.0.28

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: No

Smtp/Sendmail : No

Forced ads: Yes (A large banner ad at top)

File size limit: Unknown (Please leave a comment if you know the exact size.)
Domain Hosting : Yes (+a subdomain)

Customer Support : Support Tickets

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 48 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

In general Hostpresso looks like a good free host, but the banners they add to your pages are really annoying. The banner broke down even the layout of a simple phpinfo page. Usually if a host adds banner to your pages, the banner slides down the page to down, complex styles may still affected from this banners, but I never saw a simple page like php info is affected from this banner ads.

Go to the Hostpresso’s free plan

Data Storage :30MB Disk Space
Data Transfer : 4.5GB (150 Mb Daily)

Database Support : No

Php Version: 4.3.4
GD Version : 2.0.15

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: No

Smtp/Sendmail : No

Forced ads: No

File size limit: Unsure

Domain Hosting : No (no domains, no subdomains, instead www.ripway.com/you)

File size limit : Unknown (Please leave a comment if you know the exact size)
Customer Support : Support Forums
PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 100 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

The offers of Ripway is really low, a small amount of disk space and bandwidth, no database support etc. There are better free hosts at the market. You have better to check others…

Go to the Ripway’s free plan

Data Storage :1000MB Disk Space
Data Transfer : 5GB (They advertise it as 7gb on the main page, but the value in the control panel is 5000MB)

Database :

3 Mysql Databases
Mysql Version: 5.0.27Domain Hosting : Yes (+ a subdomain)

Php Version: 5.1.6

GD Version : 2.0.28

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: No

Smtp/Sendmail : No smtp

Forced ads: No (But they add a text link promoting their free service at bottom of all your pages.)

File size limit: Unsure

Domain Hosting : Yes (+1 Subdomain)

I’ve uploaded a 5.7MB file without any problems. Most of the free hosts restrict the file size to 8MB or 10MB, it must be something like that.(Please leave a comment if you know the exact limit)

Customer Support : Support Tickets, Forums are also present but seems like they used frequently)

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 57 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

HomeBlock provides average services compared to its competitors, it seemed reasonable to create account at homeblock! Until I notice that there are no details about their services, no a FAQ page, no details at the homepage, almost no posts in forums, it looks untrustrable! In addition the bandwidth limit they advertise at their homepage is also different from the one in control panel, I don’t like services that fool the users by false ads! Anyway, you can create an account at your own risk!

Go to the HomeBlock’s free plan

Free plan features

Data Storage :1000MB Disk Space
Data Transfer : Unlimited Bandwidth
Database :

3 Mysql Databases

Mysql Version: 5.0.32

Domain Hosting : No (Only a subdomain)

Php Version: 5.2.3

GD Version : 2.0 or higher

Ftp Access : Yes (1 Account)

Pop3 E-mails: No

Smtp/Sendmail : No smtp, but you can use sendmail function if you provide a smtp account of on your own.

Forced ads: No

File size limit: No filesize limit!!!

Customer Support : Support Forums

PHP INFO RESULTS

Benchmark Result : 39 MS

BENCHMARK IT YOURSELF

A SHORT REVIEW

Kilu provide a storage limit that will be enough for most of the people, and there are no bandwidth limits at all! Additionaly, there are no forced ads, or file size limit. There are not so many hosts that provide unlimited file size option. It means that you can host your own videos or other big files on your own webpage! Another interesting feature is that they allow you to use mail() function if you provide a valid smtp account of your own. There are a few free providers that allow php mail function either for a one time fee, forum posting or with some restrictions. Rather than using this methods to prevent abuse, Kilu find this smtp account requirement for it. This way you can use sendmail feature, while they protect theirselves from bad uses of the service. If kilu had a domain hosting option, it woul be in top 10 free php hosts.

Go to the Kilu’s free plan