The "free" hosts were already harbingers of the end times. Once, having a dedicated IP address per machine stopped being a requirement, the personal website that would be casually hosted whenever your PC is on was done.
I don't think that was ever really a thing. Which isn't to say that no one did it, but it was never a common practice. And free web site hosting came earlier than you're implying - sites like Tripod and Angelfire launched in the mid-1990s, at a time when most users were still on dialup.