Free Forum Hosting

[nomad]

What are your thoughts on free forum hosting like proboards? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of using these free forum hosting services? How do you compare free forum hosting services with open source forum software. I have never used free hosted forums but I am running a couple of forums with open source forum software. I like open source.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I think free forum hosting is fine for those who are brand new to owning a forum and aren't too bothered about being locked to that one platform. Of course not all free forum hosting is like this though, you can get a database backup of your forum if you use jcink and createmybb. I believe these are the only two free forum hosts that allow this though. I started with Forumotion and it helped me learn a lot about owning a forum.

 

[Cory]

I use free forum hosting on Jcink, mainly because it's free and I like to help those who are less fortunate and don't want/have the money to pay for paid software. I gain about a full page of new members every month, primarily because I hide the resources from guests to entice members to register. My community isn't very active in terms of posting activity, but it has been very useful to those in search of codes and skins. I don't mind free forum hosting one bit, it may not be as powerful as paid software or freely self-hosted software, but it suits my needs as a hobby and lets me enjoy what I do.