Hi everyone!

Im looking at starting a forum and was wondering how highly people rate free forum hosting services?

I've not looked into them alot, however i did take a look at forumer (seems the biggest of them all), and they seem pretty good.

Can anyone else comment?

Personaly i think that if you can afford to host your own, your better doing that.

I have previously run free forum hosting service, and have spoken many atime with some of the "big" forum hosting providers - many of them pay for the service out of pocket, which means one day they will have to close due to lack of funds.

Free forum hosts are also a lot more restricted and dont have many moding or skinning functions. You also cant get vB or IPB (2.1.x) hosted for free

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Rick
WSDeluxe | FMDeluxe | NMDeluxe

I was using Invisionfree for a while but left because it was quite slow and it lacked the same features that you get with hosting it yourself

There are a lot of free hosts out there, but most of them will fail you miserabley, as there is a lot that you will require that they wont have. Looking for a cheap host? I know of a good one, just PM me.

The short answer is that you get what you pay for. If you have a small forum you can host it for a few dollars/euros a month.

If it's a big board then obviously you need to make other arrangements.

If it's in-between that's when you need to make the hard financial decisions I suppose.

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Jim
World War Two Zone Forums
World's Best Sitcoms
JLK Hosting

Couldnt have been better said,

Personaly i think that if you can afford to get hosting (even just $2 p/m) then do it, its best hosting it yourself.

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Rick
WSDeluxe | FMDeluxe | NMDeluxe

Plus then you will get the premium support as opposed the brush off the shoulder.

Yes, good point.

You may find that some free forum hosts do offer a "premium" upgrade, i've never tried one of the premium upgrades myself, however many forum hosts simple remove adverts and alow you to use some sort of help desk or support forum.

Sometimes you find hosts that are mainly base around premium forum hosting, such as the previous phpBB host, Doreo.com - they are usualy highly raited and will go above and beyond the call of duty to help you with your forum.

Many of them will also enforce security updates when they are released, for both your and their benefit.

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Rick
WSDeluxe | FMDeluxe | NMDeluxe

I personally like offers of http://invisionfree.com/

The complexity of thier forus appeal to me.

Some more recommedations : http://www.myfreebulletinboard.com/
http://www.atfreeforum.com/

You can always try to code your own forum