AFreeCloud - Free cloud-based, Interworx powered web hosting. (Look it says cloud, it must be magica

[KuJoe]

Who doesn't love free stuff? Here's a project I've been working on in my spare time and it's finally ready to go live. It's 100% free Interworx powered web hosting that's hosted in the cloud (QuadraNet's Infracloud that is).


AFreeCloud is a project by myself that I started working on in June of last year so I've invested quite a bit of time and money into this project already so hopefully it's apparent for our users. I used to be very active in the Free Web Hosting community until Secure Dragon came along in 2010 and ate up all of my online time. I've run a handful of successful free web hosting companies in the past, written an ebook about it, and used to be the sole administrator for FreeWebHostingTalk.com (WHT's little sister, also owned by iNET).

 

Our goal is to provide free web hosting to those that need it. It's that simple. If you need web hosting and do not have the means or the requirement to purchase web hosting then you're in the right place. It's 100% free, no ads, no spam, no gimmick hosting. The only possible "catch" is that if we grow too fast we'll have to stop accepting new orders, but that's only a bad thing if you don't sign up in time.

 

The main platform for AFreeCloud's services is QuadraNet's Infracloud service utilizing the Interworx control panel held together with a completely custom client area written by me (with a nice base thanks to The PHP-Login Project) and some other custom goodies in the background. To ensure as close to 100% uptime as possible, we've thrown KernelCare, the rebootless kernel patching software, on our servers.



So what do you get for your $0.00 you ask? You get...

256MB of Disk Space on SSD SAN Storage

100GB of Bandwidth over Redundant 10Gbps Ports

Interworx Control Panel

Softaculous Premium Auto Installer

Hosted on QuadraNet's Infracloud in Los Angeles

Nightly Off-site Backups

KernelCare for rebootless kernel updates

99.999% Uptime Guarantee

Use your own domain OR Get a FREE Subdomain (.clouded.us, .sitezombie.com, z1h.net, and z4o.net)

100% AD/SPAM/GIMMICK FREE!

Included Features:

UNLIMITED E-mail Addresses

UNLIMITED E-mail Lists

UNLIMITED FTP Accounts

UNLIMITED MySQL Databases

UNLIMITED Subdomains

Parked and Addon Domains will be offered in the future (waiting for Interworx to fix a bug with them)

SpamAssassin Inbound Anti-Spam Protection

ASSP Outbound Anti-Spam Filter

POP3/IMAP/Webmail

MX Control and Filters

Backup + Restore Wizard

File Manager

Logs

Statistics

Resource Usage

Log Control

IP Deny

SSL/TLS

Hotlink/Leech Protection

Redirection + DNS Control

phpMyAdmin

Database Wizard

Index Manager

Custom Error Pages

Cronjobs

 

There are some requirements you must meet in order to get this service though:

 


+ Order from your home ISP, we don't accept orders from Proxies/VPNs

+ Provide a real name, obviously fake names will fail review

+ Provide your correct country, your IP will be checked but this is about honesty

+ Provide a valid e-mail, you must verify your e-mail address and disposable e-mails will fail review

+ Be patient, manual review takes some time depending on how many new orders are in the queue

+ Be good, any suspicious behavior or contact will result in a failed review

+ Agree to our Terms of Service and Acceptable Usage Policy



You can read over all of the other details here.

We also have a nice little FAQ here.

Lastly we have a, very empty, forum here (no posting required, it's just something to build community involvement in the project).

I know, I know. Most of you have more VPSs than you probably know what to do with so why would you want a free shared hosting service right? Well at the very least you can consider it a free introduction to the Interworx control panel that I feel does not get enough attention so go ahead and check out how it compares against cPanel.

Please note that AFreeCloud is not a registered company and is a project run by myself as an individual and is not related to Secure Dragon LLC. in any way except that I work there.

 

[Kayaba Akihiko]

I doubt that I'll be using this but I'll sign up just in case(Am I a bad person?)


Thanks for this! I have no doubt that you guys can successfully run this.


Edit: I get a SSL error on chrome on the phone

 

[Wintereise]

I doubt that I'll be using this but I'll sign up just in case(Am I a bad person?)


Thanks for this! I have no doubt that you guys can successfully run this.


Edit: I get a SSL error on chrome on the phone

The SSL error is most likely due to a missing intermediate certificate.

 

[KuJoe]

I'll be moving the main website to a new server in the next few days and I'll get all of the SSL stuff straightened out then (currently only getting a C on Qualys SSL Labs' test).

 

[Artie]

Oh man, this was priceless to read!
 

OMG! My site is offline or my data is gone! How can I sue you for every penny you're worth?
Call up your lawyer, tell them you put your priceless data on a free web hosting service without any backup plans in place, after he's done laughing hang up the phone and place your complaint in a bottle and throw it in the nearest body of water. It'll find us eventually I'm sure.

 
Bahahaha!

 

[RLT]

Looks interesting. I would be interested in it for a simple fall back site in case one of the servers for my forums takes a dump. A pretty site with updates keeps them happy. Besides I need more experience with interworx.

 

[matt[scrdspd]]

Good luck with the project @KuJoe

 

[wlanboy]

Good luck too.

Hopefully your screening for new registrations works.

I like the idea to keep an offer like this online.

 

[souen]

Thanks for putting in time and work to run a free service. Good feature set with a very reasonable AUP too. All the best with the project!

 

[Nyr]

I think this is a very nice service and knowing you are behind it is a great assurance.

That said, I can't bear with providers forcing me to use a domestic IP while ordering from them. Most of the time, I am untrusted connections. The peering at one of my homes sucks too, so I am always using a VPN. I understand your motivations and it's fine, just wanted to tell my point of view.

Best of luck with the service!

 

[Nyr]

BTW:

What are your nameservers?

ns1.afreecloud.com | ns2.afreecloud.com | ns3.afreecloud.com

Nyr@localhost:~$ host ns1.afreecloud.com
Host ns1.afreecloud.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Nyr@localhost:~$ host ns2.afreecloud.com
Host ns2.afreecloud.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
Nyr@localhost:~$ host ns3.afreecloud.com
Host ns3.afreecloud.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

 

[KuJoe]

Not sure why the nameserver is so picky sometimes.


I wish Interworx supported multiple DNS servers also but who needs redundancy when it's hosted on the same server as the websites.


QuadraNet also has me rethinking this whole "cloud" idea. I might just go with VPSs for better control over the infrastructure.