[leepowers]

One major issue I see with free: there's no implicit contract and thus no expectation of long service life. Which is a real biggie when it comes to hosting.

Even paying a nominal fee for hosting (see https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net) is better than paying nothing. Because the exchange of money creates the expectation of services rendered.

The issue is security. Not in a technical, hardened web-server sense. But in the legal sense. A shared web host has root access to your databases. It has access to your API keys. It controls what files are served for your domain name. Paying for a service creates a business relationship, and at least the expectation of liability should a web host act maliciously.

[MatoBo]

Hello, We've developed a sustainable business model. Without the free hosting, OneSite wouldn't make sense. Our main objective is becoming a high quality cheap web hosting. To do this, instead of spending a lot of money on advertising, we are providing free hosting, to reach the same point, at a lower cost. Free hosting is what will make OneSite make sense. We will make a profit with AdSense in our website and with paid upgrades. But we do not plan to discountinue free hosting, and I even believe it would be illegal to do so.