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I would like to take this opportunity to shill for my shared hosting provider, as a satisfied customer (I have not other relation with them). I was going to say that these guys offer $1 per G bandwidth, and $1 per Meg per month disk space, strictly on a pay-as-you-go basis. What was my hosting fees over the last year? I don't know, probably around $10 -> that's $7 for the domain name, and $3 for MySql, leaving a few cents for storage & bandwidth. I'm a very light user, and well, I'm working on getting more traffic/revenue etc, but it's a while yet. Ok, now I also have "unlimited account" email forwarding at $0.02 per day ie anything, ***@mysite.com gets forwarded.

So, at my most wasteful "always upsize setting", that's a whopping average spending per customer, I'm probably a big spender!). Can anyone beat that? That was before. Just now, I check their news pages, and found that the bandwidth costs have just been decreased (and check this out for those rational-minded ones out there) on a log scale!

I quote

I recommend Nearly Free Speech - this will suit your needs incredibly well.

http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ I use it myself. From their info pages: "Due to our libertarian Terms & Conditions of Service we allow many things that other hosting companies do not. Consequently, we receive a large number of abuse complaints. Unfortunately, most of them are spurious or non-actionable. This page will help you determine whether to submit an abuse complaint, how to do so, what supporting material you will need to include, and what to expect afterward. Despite the relatively few restrictions in our Terms & Conditions of Service, there is one particularly important point for abuse issues. When our members upload content to our service, they are asserting two things: That the content is legal in the United States. That they have the legal right to make the content available. As part of the contractual relationship formed with our members before they upload content, they are legally obligated to adhere to these two restrictions. It is typical for us to receive complaints alleging that our members have violated this contract with a certain degree of skepticism. However, members do occasionally violate our Terms & Conditions, and we react appropriately to such betrayals of our trust. We will not usually be able to respond in any specific way to an abuse complaint. Our Privacy Policy prevents us from discussing our interactions with our members, including adverse actions we may take in response to abuse complaints. Please do not assume that we support or endorse all the content posted by our members. We believe that freedom of speech is the inalienable right of all people. Consequently, we do not censor our members on the basis of content, no matter how offensive or repugnant we may personally find that content to be. Our company would have to have a different name if we only allowed members to publish uncontroversial content that we happen to agree with."

Untrue.

Their website disagrees with you.

If you wish to pay us anonymously, contact us in advance to request special arrangements. As we have a very protective privacy policy, such requests will be granted only if there are extenuating circumstances.

They allow you to pay with a money order. They do not accept cash:

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq.php#Payment

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ They will allow you to pay in cash, anonymously.

I like the hosting philosophy of NearlyFreeSpeech.net. So far as I'm aware, they rank pretty well in the "not evil" department. I am a customer of theirs -- a happy one, at that (especially cool pricing model) -- but I'm always on the look-out for cheap, ethical hosting services to recommend to friends/family/clients. Thanks for the link.

You might want to hire one of those $40/hour consulting monkeys to setup your DNS records and get your Web site working.

Host was moving to a new data center, took 2 days instead of a few hours:

http://status.nearlyfreespeech.net/

Jackass.

"Many of you might remember the previous story about LiveJournal erroneously deleting hundreds of users as suspected paedophiles, spurred on by pressure from the group, Warriors for innocence. Since then, they've been taking action against users hosting material on their servers that they believe to be illegal."

There are a few webhosts out there that advertise as "free speech". I have no experience with any of them, but they may fit your needs.

http://www.anonhost.org/
http://hosting.dod.net/
http://www.crisishost.com/
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
http://www.secureservertech.com/
http://www.ctyme.com/

Take a good long look at NearlyFreeSpeech.net
They have been really good for me, and their prices can't be beat.

My only relation is a happy, new customer. It may not be the best fit for Cryptome, but there are at least hosting providers that do give a shit about not bowing down to the status quo.

I've been thinking of doing the same thing. Try out NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They are awsome. You get ssh and ftp access and only pay for what you use. I think my domains are about $8 / year, hosting costs me about $1 a month on a busy month. This is more then $3 / year, but it's a really good price IMHO and scales easily. I could easily decrease my costs by turning off my email forwarding and deleting some stuff, their base price is 1 penny / MB stored and $1 per GB transfered each month.

I haven't seen it here yet, but I use NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They now offer their own domain registration service. From their ideals listed on the page. I can't imagine them caving to any bogus threats. Their prices and support are also great!

satisfied customer

I use NearlyFreeSpeech.NET for my domain registration. They're a web host, but they offer great domain name prices ($7.50 for .com/.net/.org). If you plan on using all of the crappy bells and whistles that come with most registrars (like email forwarding and WHOIS privacy), it'll cost a little more -- $0.01/day for WHOIS privacy, and $0.02/day for email. So that's $3.65 a year and $7.30 a year. But the email forwarding is nice; they let you create unlimited addresses that can 1) forward to any address 2) POST the message to a CGI script (!) 3) bounce messages or 4) discard messages, and you can select any of those options as a catchall.

Their hosting is also wonderful for personal sites that don't get a ton of traffic. (It's probably good for larger sites, but I only host my personal website on it right now.) They charge a flat $1.00/GB for transfer and $0.01/MB/month for storage. Bandwidth is available in discounted "buckets" that contain a certain amount and expire after a certain date. Storage might be available in a similar way soon. MySQL is $0.01/day for the first process, $0.02/day for each extra (normally you only need one), $0.01/day/process for InnoDB, and $0.01/day/process if you're in the top 10% of activity (not likely). They have every CGI language known to man, but of course they don't support things like FastCGI and mod_perl, since FastCGI would require a ton of persistent processes, and mod_perl allows one user to crash the whole server. And their control panel is really simple and intuitive (although they're scrambling to create better reporting/statistics tools).

Nearlyfreespeech.net costs $7.30/year for email forwarding? Apparently you cannot discover the features offered unless you are already a customer: "Visit the Domains tab in our user interface for more information."

Nearlyfreespeech.net costs $7.30/year for email forwarding? Apparently you cannot discover the features offered unless you are already a customer: "Visit the Domains tab in our user interface for more information."

http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ -- these guys are the best. Check out their site, you'll understand.

I don't work for them or get commission.. but http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ is a pretty fantastic domain registrar (and also a very nice webhost). You should check them out.

Hi, Try http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/. They are extremely cheap. From their site: Data Transfers (Bandwidth): $1.00 per gigabyte Disk Space (Storage): $0.01 per megabyte-month And if you don't use it, they don't charge. I have a small blog (http://dkell.nfshost.com/drupal/) that costs me something like 3 cents / month to keep up. It's great for me, because I don't expect to receive a huge amount of traffic, so I don't need to pay for any super great plan. Of course, you don't have to have a blog. They don't care. It's whatever you like. Anyway. Check it out. I'm happy with it.

The difference is that real-space is a limited resource, while cyber-space is not. If you don't like your real community, then it is really hard (and expensive) to find some unused land on which to build a new one. On the Internet, it is much easier to get like-minded people and form a new community. Web hosting is almost free, and so you can implement your own moderation system (or just install one of the hundreds of free off-the-shelf systems).

But there's a proper way to get anonymity, and it doesn't involve providing false information to your registrar. I use an anonymizing service with a couple of my domains (it's cheap too!) that provides valid information but doesn't reveal my identity. I'm sure something equivalent exists for .ca domains, though it's no lock that it's as cheap. These means of keeping your identity confidential fit within the registrars' frameworks and protect you cancellation by a malicious entity. If there's nothing illegal about your site, the anonymity is as good as providing false information. Maybe better, being that, having violated no rules, your registrar is actually incented not to give up your info, if you're doing nothing illegal. Anonymity is legitimate, but you need to play by the rules to stay online.

Since I haven't seen it yet, I'll put a shoutout to nearlyfreespeech.net.
I really enjoy their service, and the price is definitly right, kind of pay as you go.

I don't know what your exact requirements are, but http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ is the best hosting provider I have ever stumbled across.

They charge *only* what you use, and I havent had any problem with my webstie. Even when once they reported some sort of attack, nothing seemed particulary at issue in any of the sites they host.

You can also host anything you want.
Check them out.

-AC

Thanks for the info.
Reading their TOS, it appears that they restrict their low-end customers to files under 10 MB, and attempt to regulate how the bandwidth is used (HTML pages vs zip/bz2 files, etc.).
Since I may eventually have archives and other files over 10 MB on my site, this makes globat.com unsuitable for my needs.

Since I made the GP post, I have signed up with nearlyFreeSpeech.net (mentioned elsewhere in these comments), which has an innovative payment scheme that charges you for what you think that you will use (disk space and bandwidth), paid for in advance.
Their FAQ specifically mentions Slashdotting and how to limit financial liability when it occurs.
They are missing some features (e.g., anonymous FTP, virtual servers, co-hosting, etc.), so they may not be suitable for everybody, but they look like they will meet my needs just fine.
Also, they are in the process of revamping their "control panel" system to get rid of JavaScript, which is great for me, because I have all scripting disabled in my browsers due to my extreme paranoia.

The timing of this article was very fortuitous for me, as I recently switched from dialup to DSL, and have been looking for a web host provider to replace the miniscule free space that came with my dialup account.
As soon as I finish getting my new nFS sites set up, it's bye-bye, Earthlink.

http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ Best host I have ever used. You pay for the bandwidth/storage that you use. That's it. My personal domain I use for development and testing and selling small website services to people... I initially put $10 in my account with them over a year ago, $6.50 still remains. A website I designed and maintain for a singer/songwriter friend who has a good amount of traffic, costs her roughly $1 - $2/month (she gets ~ 10-20gb of traffic per month.)

http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ Read the FAQ for details, but the gist of it is dirt-cheap prices and enourmous flexebility.

Even if they get rid of free hosting, you can find something pretty close -- http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/. As long as what you're saying doesn't use too much bandwidth, you can run a site for ridiculously little.

Better hosting will cost you a fraction of what frontpage would for a very long time. And if your time's worth anything, this looks like an even better deal... Try these guys. No setup fee, no monthly fee. You just pay $1 per GB transferred and $0.01/MB/Month for disk space. php and mysql are included. To set up an account, you just transfer some money to them. If you use more bandwidth than you've paid for, they just stop serving your pages, so there's no risk of running up a huge bill if you get slashdotted. I'm not affiliated, just a really happy customer.

(My experience: I run a lightly used download site there along with a personal bookmark synchronization php/mysql app to share my mozilla bookmarks between machines. I've spent just under $1.50 for credit card fees, transfer and disk space since October.)

Check out Nearly Free Speech. They have a really neat plan set up, where you only pay for storage/bandwidth costs that you actually USE. In other words, they keep track of what you have stored on a daily basis and the bandwidth used on a daily basis and charge a flat fee per that unit. I set up a site 15 months ago for $35 and still have $7 in my account with them. You can cancel at any time and get the balance of your account back.

I've been very happy with NearlyFreeSpeech.net for web hosting. PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, is the stuff I use. Oh, they have https too.

My favorite thing is that they have a subversion client running on the ssh service they provide, so all you have to do is 'svn up' to upload all your changes. No monthly fee, just pay bandwidth and storage ($1/gig x-fer, $0.01/meg storage/month)

What's amazing is that this dude in Bum#@!$ Egypt can get nice service like that and, ta-da, run a web site

Nope, the web site is hosted by Interland in Atlanta GA. He is paying no less than $16.95/mo (their cheapest plan).

where most people in the US have to beg their ISP or Tripod or some other advert hole for 10 big megs of space.

Only if they spend more time whining than looking for an alternative. Check out Nearly Free Speech. $1/1GB transferred, no monthly payment, no setup fees. For a personal site you can just put a few bucks in your account and they will last virtually forever. Even a slashdotting shouldn't hurt too much - other providers charge much more than that per GB if you exceed your monthly limit.