I've actually thought of doing free panel-less hosting. Kind of a "smart guys' hosting". Maybe a small custom panel for dns & mysql db create, but otherwise just ftp/jailed ssh.
But there are so many free hosts out there already...
Speaking of smart guy hosting : NoSupportLinuxHosting.com is an interesting take.
Based on information from various sites, I created a Nginx configuration for Ghost which includes caching, gzip compression as well as direct static files serving by Nginx. These should help to improve performance and reduce resource usage.