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blog.nearlyfreespeech.net

79 pointsAndrewKemendo28 comments

I was a Nearlyfreespeech customer for years. I was taking a shower the other day and wondering what happened to them -- turns out, nothing! I should switch back.

I love them for their dirt cheap pricing, sure, but also their simplicity.

If you like the simplicity of Hacker News, you'll also enjoy the simplicity of Nearlyfreespeech.

I'm a very happy NFS customer. I give them money, and they host stuff for me. If I run out of money in my NFS account, they stop hosting stuff for me. Simple, fair, low-risk. (There are alarms, "suspended mode", etc., so they don't just pull the plug, either.)

My favorite feature of this way of doing things is that I never need to wonder how much they're going to bill me, because I've already pre-paid the maximum I'm willing to lose in one go should I fat-finger something. Compare this to the unlimited liability involved in using AWS et al., which should be a terrifying prospect for most individuals.

nfs.net has been around for as long as I can remember. They offered real shell accounts for a dollar, by snail mail (just to prove you are a real person). They continue to be awesome. Recently (uuh, maybe 15 years ago?) they have offered more capacity for good rates using a metering pricing model.

Is it possible you’re mixing up NFS with SDF? SDF has famously offered shell access for free or cheap forever. I have been an NFS user since 2003 or so, and the only shell access they offer is solely for administrating your web site and generally locked down.

Oh shoot, you are correct!

https://web.archive.org/web/20020329184845/http://www.nearly...

There were so many great shared systems that needed only a dollar or so and got you access to a shell and a community! I should go check out my sdf account!

Now that’s how you do grandfathering.

I love NFS but unfortunately with exchange rates it becomes quite expensive when compared with local (AU) hosting.

I’d always reach for them first for any real stuff I need to do outside of WP (which is most of my go-to atm for family stuff).

Why is this flagged? How can this be unflagged?

Probably because they allow free speech and that bothers some people.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33226944 where Nearly Free Speech is recommended as a hosting site for controversial content.

Of course, they're not really Free Speech. That explains their name "Nearly Free Speech". They say in their terms that they don't allow "racist" content, for example. (I don't like racist content either, for the record.)

Would love for people flagging to have to give the reason.

Indeed. I think that downvotes and flags out to require reasoning, more so than agreement. Agreement is in some sense congruency. "Me, too!" But something can be incongruent, wrong, unpalatable, slightly off in so many more ways than something can be correct, like having to show your work in answering a physics problem: where did it go astray?

First site I ever hosted was on NFS. Awesome they are still around.

Love their approach to simple hosting.

Been using them for my no-traffic sites for years. I always think about moving to a free tier of something, but meh because i'll have to move once the tier is done.

They've been rock solid for decades.

OK, it's a shared web hosting service, but with metered everything rather than flat-billing. Is this a win over HostGator, DreamHost, etc.?

Yes.

I've been hosting on NFSN exclusively for anything that I don't need google scale DNS/infra for or GPU workloads and it's a dream....mostly cause they keep everything basically unchanged since when I started doing computers (which is why this is a big deal post).

They care about the basic internet principles of freedom (like speech!) above all else, have the best customer support by far, and at basically the best prices.

No you're not going to get GPGPU workloads here but that's ok

Sure, their offering (in terms of features) is similar to most other shared hosting services.

But what I like is that they've consistently been no-nonsense, super fairly priced, and aren't condescending to technically competent people.

Sure, I could do this myself, but sometimes you just want to get a website online and have someone else worry about hosting it.

> Sure, I could do this myself, but sometimes you just want to get a website online and have someone else worry about hosting it.

Exactly, I run numerous systems at the VPS level, the OS, the libraries, the databases, the applications, the replication, the automation of all that, as part of my day job... but that's big production stuff with big production requirements. If I want to throw up a small static site (or even simple non static site), and forget about it, NFS is the place to go.

That the UI is exactly the same each time I login, even with years in between, is a huge feature, especially in the mess of UI/UX churn madness that is the rest of the web. NFS is the only shared host that is fair and trustworthy, and that is part aligned incentives, part being run by awesome human beings.

I have a web site that’s been on nfs since 2006. It’s sparsely accessed but I want to keep it online. I loaded $25 and it lasted a REALLY long time. Like 10 years! I monitor the site and really don’t record much downtime. It just works without thinking.

Despite the costs starting to creep up as my sites start taking up more space and bandwidth, I continue to host my sites and register my domains on NFSN because of the geek/DIY/libertarian ethos and the excellent support provided by Jeff the few times I've needed it. Though unconventional in a world full of cheap "unlimited" hosting, I trust that NFSN will conduct themselves with integrity if I have any issues with my site or domains, and that's a lot more important than saving a few dollars a month.

I wish somehow they'd also embrace anonymous accounts. I don't really want to give my full name and potentially photo ID to a random company to create an account to host $3 of content.

Anyone have any feedback on the recently discussed https://incognet.io/?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com