[eminents]

Do you guys know any free hosting server for proxies websites if there any?

Thanks for your time.

[AirborneKim]

You probably won't find many, if any, free web hosting providers that will allow proxy websites, even those offering paid web hosting services are cracking down on such websites due to upstream service agreements.

[Ashley]

I don't think many free providers would provide the bandwidth you would need to run a proxy. Even some paid providers don't allow proxies because they oversell their bandwidth and can't afford for every user to make use of what they pay for.

[AirborneKim]

I agree with Ashley, a great deal of web hosting providers do in fact oversell the bandwidth they have available. They don't honestly believe any website is going to use over 30-40GB's of bandwidth per month so they offer 100's of GB's and now, even multiple TB's (TeraBytes) of data transfer for next to nothing knowing they will never be able to honor that offer.

It's that type of marketing that is killing the web hosting industry and putting a bad taste in the mouths of customers when they are searching for a web host.

[bigdanny]

Not only are the bw used up fast and a lot, the server load is very high. proxies are known to destroy the server load. Taking up memory and being memory hogs.

[lafsunlmtd]

aside from that, they don't really make too much money. people who are using proxies are not as likely to divulge their personal information in order to sign up for stuff you may be promoting. we owned a few proxy sites and they had alright traffic but the bandwidth costs to sales didn't make sense

[cybermatic]

Proxy Hosting Plans - Proxy Host | PHP PROXY HOST - Not free, but pretty damn cheap!

[AirborneKim]

I would say that they target low-traffic proxies and not the normal proxies you see online.

Hosting multiple proxies on a server with 2GB's of RAM is asking for trouble if you ask me. Proxies are known to eat up memory, as noted above and 2GB's of memory is nothing given the amount of hits well known proxies receive on a daily basis.

While I can see a need for the service, I honestly believe they need to rethink the business decision.

A popular proxy would take down a dual xeon server, regardless of speed, with only 2GB's of RAM quite easily. Given they are offering shared hosting for proxies forces each one to compete for the server resources.

[Ashley]

I agree 100% with AirborneKim. It would be impossible for someone on your standard shared hosting account [and considering that PHP Proxy Host have hidden whois, I expect they are simply reselling from a bigger host] to be able to use that amount of bandwidth and space without using an amount of CPU and memory resources which will affect other users on the server. That's how the biggest oversellers [i.e HostGator] can offer masses of bandwidth and space for few $s per month - if you actually have a site big enough to use the quota, they suspend you on the grounds of using too much CPU time.

[AirborneKim]

In all reality, it'd take 1-2 websites to kill the server, that's it. If they load, let's go with a low amount, say, 100 clients on the server, 2 clients are going to kill it for everyone else if they receive the desired traffic. Getting traffic to a proxy is rather easy if you market it correctly through MySpace. That's how the majority do it.

Now, given the circumstances, if 2 clients bring down the server, the other 98 are going to get a bit upset, which is to be expected. That's when the PayPal and CC disputes come rolling through and what was once (possibly) profitable is now on the verge of going out of business.

A chargeback is expensive, ranging from $20-$50 per 1 incident on merchant accounts. Couple that with the refund that's going to go to the client and you're out quite a bit of money if you're a small operation. In addition, if you go above the common 1% chargeback rate with most merchant accounts (can't speak for PayPal), they will generally tack on another fee as this then affects their business.

As with any web hosting service, what can you really expect for $2.00 per month? If you expect enough power to power a proxy website or any substantial website with traffic, I believe you're going in above your head and the water is getting too deep.

If you expect traffic and expect to generate any sort of revenue, anything short of starting with a dedicated server isn't truly thinking it through clearly in my opinion.

Running a proxy isn't the same as an online community or a dynamic website. While the script may be small with little coding, it still loads up the server which is the primary reason so many upstream providers (i.e. Data Centers) are not allowing any form of proxies to be hosted on their networks.