While checking out the new stuff on Ikiwiki, I noticed a mention of "NearlyFreeSpeech.NET" web hosting support added in the recent version... The name and the fact that there was something "special" enough about it to evoke a mention about Ikiwiki support drew me to check out and see what it was all about.
The most interesting fact about this web hosting service is that you pay exactly for what you get... No ugly large monthly/yearly fees. It also has some impressive features available, such as Lua, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl.... + ssh access.
The /only/ downside that I can see is the fact that its hosting does not allow for persistent processes (ex: FastCGI, mod_perl, ...) so certain things will be slower and may flat-out not work. On the other hand, you get what you pay for.
Their basic pricing model is this:
- $1.00 per GB per month of bandwidth (cheaper if you use more)
- $0.01 per MB-month of disk space
Pretty cheap! Especially since many sites charge ~ $30/month and give you some 30GB/month transfer (maybe less, maybe more)... making you pay for bandwidth you'll not likely use... and even if you did manage to use it all up, you could get extra charges or your site taken down until you pay up extra.... not to mention the fact that NearlyFreeSpeech.NET reduces the price-per-GB once you go above 1GB usage.
This is probably the 'perfect' web-hosting for those just getting started up w/ websites due to the low entry barrier. It's even good for those who have heavy-traffic sites with the bulk-scaling.
I plan on moving this web site there as soon as possible since it'll be a reliable web location, though I'll still have the local site available at the current location (at home)... especially since I probably won't fully move GIT up there since I'm not sure on how much they support it.... I'll have to check that out and report in another post on that.
