Free Web Hosting – No Strings Attached
Profound Hosting stands out from the rest of the hosting providers reviewed in this category thanks to its unique offer: completely free web hosting. This might sound too good to be true, and in some ways it is; nevertheless, Profound Hosting still offers considerable value, especially for those who are just starting out.
Not Ranked8.4 out of 10Background and Privacy Reminder
Profound Hosting is run by a guy named Tim, who maintains the service as a side project. That should tell you a lot about the kind of service you can expect from Profound Hosting: this isn’t a large-scale company with full-time operations, and its web hosting service is understandably simpler than what you’d usually get.
You sign up by filling out a secure web form, following which Tim will contact you with the details of your account. It’s important to remember that this isn’t a professional outfit, so there aren’t formal agreements or policies regarding your privacy: you’re essentially handing your personal details over to another person, without any legal safeguards clearly set out on the website to cover you, so keep this in mind.
Hardware and Performance
Profound Hosting uses Intel Xeon servers equipped with SSD storage and Linux CentOS operating systems, so you get good performance despite the price. All of these servers are divided among three data centers in Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide, so you can count on good coverage and speed, plus low latency, for your Australian visitors.
As for network connections, Profound Hosting claims 100Mbps connections for each of its servers, plus 1 Gbps speeds for its Varnish Cache server and a total network throughput of 2 gigabits per second. Profound Hosting doesn’t skimp on performance, and you can expect fast speeds on par with many hosting providers out there
Limited Features and Resources
Where Profound Hosting does fall short, however, is in its hosting plans’ accompanying bundle of features – or lack thereof. Unlike most other hosting providers, Profound Hosting doesn’t give you free use of cPanel or any web application installers like Softaculous. Perhaps more disappointing, Profound Hosting doesn’t offer you email or FTP services either.
In fact, there are a lot of limits to the resources that the plan puts at your disposal. You can only host up to one domain, for example, and there are memory and process limits that put the brakes on your PHP usage.
Paid Upgrades
While Profound Hosting’s main product is absolutely free, you can subscribe to paid plans for some resource upgrades. It’s questionable whether these are worth it, though; while they do tend to cost less, or at least equal, to most other paid shared hosting plans, you don’t get quite as many features as you’d expect.
The same lack of cPanel, email, and FTP are big downsides, for example, and those persist even for the highest-priced plans. While you do get a bump in resource allocations, these packages still look considerably underpowered compared to many competitors.
Here’s a quick summary of all the hosting plans offered by Profound Hosting, as well as each plan’s limitations:
| Feature | Free | Lite | Standard | Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Price | $0 | $5 | $10 | $20 |
| Domains | 1 | 2 | 4 | 10 |
| Storage | 512 MB | 2 GB | 5 GB | 10 GB |
| Bandwidth | 10 GB | 20 GB | 40 GB | 100 GB |
| PHP memory limit | 32 MB | 2 x 64 MB | 8 x 96 MB | 30 x 192 MB |
| Max PHP processes per domain | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Databases | 1 | 2 | 4 | 10 |
| MySQL storage | 50 MB | 100 MB | 250 MB | 750 MB |
| Automatic HTTP compression | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Custom SSL allowed | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Support | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Billing and Guarantees
Profound Hosting runs mainly on donations, and all users are encouraged (but not required) to chip in. For those who opt for the paid plans, Profound Hosting takes payments via PayPal and offers monthly or annual billing cycles.
Since Profound Hosting is largely a volunteer effort, it doesn’t offer any service level agreements or uptime guarantees. There are no money-back guarantees or refund policies for paid subscribers, either, and you won’t find a clear compensation matrix for incidents of unscheduled downtime.
Customer Support
Profound Hosting doesn’t have a dedicated support staff or customer support system, or guarantees of all-hours availability – it’s mainly Tim (the owner) providing you technical assistance via email, whenever he might be available. Paid subscribers will get priority and access to the support ticket system, but that’s about it. Tim does guarantee best-effort support for all his customers, but for the most part, you’ll have to rely on your own skills or through any guides turned up by Google.
What's the Verdict on Profound Hosting?
Profound Hosting Review 2020 – Conclusion
Profound Hosting is very much a DIY type of hosting service, providing you with the barest essentials for absolutely zero cost, and with no strings attached. All the bells and whistles you might expect from a corporate provider are largely absent: no free cPanel licenses or web application installers, no round-the-clock instant support, no unmetered resources. The paid plans don’t seem worth the cost, especially with better-stacked packages available from other providers at similar price points. However, if you’re just looking for a cheap and quick solution to get you started, Profound Hosting does use top-shelf hardware and offer comparable performance, and there’s no beating that zero-point price.
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