I apologize in advance: this is going to read like an ad.
I don’t want your money, and I don’t care where you spend your money; but some things do cost money; and then there are choices to be made, and some choices are better than others; and it would be useful to know which.
I have an idea which. So, I will share.
For web hosting, domain name management and email forwarding, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET (NFSN) is excellent.
Web hosting and domain management is a very busy space; and almost without exception it seems you have to hold your nose to use these services.
They bombard you with special offers for whatever useless “value add” they’ve come up with, accompanied by glossy stock photos of happy people using The Web.
I was forced away from NearlyFreeSpeech.NET to register a country-specific domain that they don’t offer; I created accounts at then immediately quit several services before settling on the least-worst. One offered “will make sure you don’t lose your domain” as a fairly expensive value add. Great—now we know how good your base level of service is.
Against this background of shady dealings and misleading advice NFSN stands tall.
NFSN offers hosting on a “pay as you go” basis, not by fixed subscription.
So the minimum charges are very low—under a dollar.
Money transfer costs are made explicit, so you know how much of a cut your bank is taking and can choose the transfer method appropriately.
All the services are perfectly tailored to hobbyists and enthusiasts, with clear docs and a clean ad-free web UI that does not patronize or mislead.
Hosting access is by SSH and/or SFTP.
By default you get “community support” on a forum and the docs; if you need direct support that requires a (cheap) subscription. I never have.
You can share SSH+SFTP access to your hosted sites to anyone with a free “adjunct member” account.
This is a perfect setup for running a community of self-managed mini sites.
Who can gain access to your host/domain, and how?
At NFSN this is well defined and configurable.
First, there are a set of recognized “recovery actions” that range from providing photo ID to failing to respond to a recovery email:
You choose how many of these recovery actions must be successful before your account can be recovered. Not enough actions? No account.
We believe our members know that we are serious about protecting their privacy and security. We believe that’s at least part of the reason a lot of them pick us. We believe that they expect us to live up to that in situations such as these so that when they emerge from it, they can be supremely confident that their membership can’t be hijacked by the first person who comes along with a good story.
Domain hijacking in particular could be incredibly serious—so it’s good to use a company that takes it seriously.
This should go without saying by this point, but the number of marketing emails you’ll receive from NSFN is precisely zero.
I’ve been using NFSN for domains, email forwarding and hosting for around 17 years and have never been anything but happy and satisfied.
It’s a fantastic service, a welcome respite from the tribulations of lowest-common-denominator providers, and comes highly recommended.
So far today, 2023-06-16, feedback has been received 106 times. Of these, 97 were likely from bots, and 9 might have been from real people. Thank you, maybe-real people!
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