Interspeed offering free website hosting service

By ADAM GIFFORD

Free internet access seems to have come and gone in New Zealand but now service provider Interspeed Web Solutions is offering web hosting for free.

FreeHost, at freehost.co.nz, will allow people who register or transfer a domain to put up a 2Mb site. They can also have unlimited POP (post office protocol) mail accounts or web mail to that domain name.

If the site grows, or traffic exceeds 100Mb a month, customers will be invited to shift to an Interspeed hosting account, which starts at $14.95 (or $240 for 24 months) for 30Mb of disk storage and 1 gigabyte of data transfer.

Manager Craig Beecroft, who runs Interspeed from a Ruakaka bach, said that as most people would be uploading simple brochure sites, 100Mb of data transfer a month would be sufficient bandwidth.

"Eventually people will exceed the disk space limit, so we will recommend they upgrade to normal Interspeed hosting."

Unlike some free hosting sites overseas, FreeHost won't insert ads on sites or e-mail.

Mr Beecroft said the revenue would come from upgrades and from domain name registration; $39.95 plus GST for New Zealand names and $44.95 for global names.

He said Interspeed was already the sixth largest Domainz-accredited registrar of local domain names.

Interspeed leases servers from two United States-based hosting companies, meaning it is not constrained by the premium for outbound bandwidth that affects New Zealand-based hosting. It offers both Linux and Windows NT hosting.

"We have servers configured with our own software in the US because we can get very cheap bandwidth there and pass the savings on to our customers."

Many of the features of the site, such as the online home page creation tool, were modified from software available for free on the internet.

He said the company was also building control panels so users could run their sites and set up e-mail without talking to the ISP, which would reduce maintenance costs for the free sites.

He said hosting was a worldwide market.

"We don't see ourselves offering web site hosting just in New Zealand. We have clients in Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Thailand."

Chris Miller of Auckland web hosting specialist Kiwilink said he was not concerned at the competition from free hosting.

"During the period all the free access providers were round, we only lost a few customers," Mr Miller said. "One thing we have is a reputation for reliability, and you can't do that for free. Equipment is not cheap, nor is bandwidth."

Richard Shearer, the general manager of Taranaki web hosting firm WebFarm, said a free service was possible. "We had thought of launching such a service when the market was ready and we have some domain names for that purpose. We will watch what is happening in the market closely."

Webfarm pioneered free services here with its freeparking.co.nz service, which allows people to warehouse domain names, with a free URL redirection service.

Links


Interspeed

FreeHost

WebFarm

Free Parking

Kiwilink