Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

General (*)

What's the most important thing to know about your service?

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is a do-it-yourself service, designed to allow experienced webmasters and people who are strongly self-motivated to set up low-cost hosting by only paying for services they actually use.

Support is a great example of a high-cost service that's typically bundled into hosting offerings. But it's also a great example of a service that most of our members don't use and don't want to pay for. As a result, our system is designed to be used without individual private support, and our baseline membership does not provide it. Nor do we offer "pre-sales" support; it's up to you to figure out if our service is a good fit for your needs. (Meaning that if you email us almost any question prior to signing up, there's no one here being paid to answer that, so you're going to get a link to this FAQ entry in reply.)

If you do want support, we do provide a wealth of documentation, self-support and community-support options. There is also a higher-cost subscription membership available that offers limited individual private support via email and our website. But this doesn't change the do-it-yourself nature of our service: individual support provided to subscription members is limited to guidance, you'll still have to do all of the heavy lifting yourself.

This means that if you don't want to pay for individual private support, you don't have to. But it also means that if you don't pay for it, you won't get it.

If one of those options works for you, great! If, on the other hand, you're looking for a more "high contact" approach to support or if you're looking for someone to create or manage a site for you, that's absolutely fine, but a do-it-yourself service like ours may not be the best fit for your needs.

To put it another way, some people change their own oil. Some people pay a mechanic to do it because although they could do it themselves, they want to spend their time another way. And some people pay a mechanic to do it because they just want their car to work and the details don't interest them. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is a service for people who want to change their web site's oil.

What's the most common mistake people make while signing up for NearlyFreeSpeech.NET?

Why do I have to enter my real/legal name when creating a membership?

Can I beat your pricing if I get my own VPS?

Do you provide email hosting services?

Is your service easy to use?

Do you provide DNS hosting services?

How many web sites can I host with a NearlyFreeSpeech.NET membership?

Do you register domain names?

How will I know if my account is about to run out of funds?

Why do you only offer prepaid service?

My web designer says I should use somebody else instead of you. What do you say?

Do you price-match your competitors?

How can you make money at these prices?

What is the minimum deposit?

Will you design my web site for me?

Do you offer collocation, dedicated servers, or VPS services?

What happens if I get slashdotted/reddited?

Are you about to pop up a "chat now with sales!" ad on me?

What if I want to set up a web site but don't have a domain name / don't want to fool with DNS?

Why don't you have a free tier?

What's the difference between bandwidth and storage?

Why doesn't your website look like other hosting provider sites?

Are your domain registration services intended for general-purpose usage?

What if my web site gets attacked?

Is your service only for controversial or extreme websites?

Should I set up my new small business website at NearlyFreeSpeech.NET?

Will you pre-approve my web site content or proposed use of your service?

How much will my site cost to host with you?

What kind of uptime can I expect with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET?

Is this cloud computing?

Where are you located?

Do you offer telephone support?

Someone else uses your service and wants my help with it. How do I help them?

Should I use NearlyFreeSpeech.NET or a VPS?