My wife recently became the director of a small non-profit organization – a senior center.
We’d like to set up a web site to consolidate info about the place etc. But their budget is very tight and many things are competing for the limited funds.
So does anyone know where we could find a free or very, very cheap web hosting service for the site?
GoDaddy.com has spectacular low-level hosting packages for just $3.60/mo (price goes down the more months you buy at a time)
I say they’re spectacular because I just started work on a Web site for a friend (I’m a professional Web designer and run a Web hosting business) and he uses GoDaddy as a host. I was really amazed at all of the services and features they offer for that price.
Cool.
Thank you for your veery quick responses I appreciate that.
More responses are welcome. I will proceed to investigate.
A second for Godaddy. They. Are. Awesome. I do some web publishing on the side and now host about 6 pages through them. When I started, I didn’t know jack shit and don’t know much more now. IME They have little problem spoon feeding newb web folks through DIY hosting issues.
Take a look at google:
Their webpage hosting is free, and pretty good. But it is very basic, you can only choose from 2 or 3 layouts, and about 50 different looks (colours/fonts/etc). Its really easy to get going, just type in whatever text and upload pictures which it resizes/crops/etc for you.
The only cost is registering a domain name, but this is cheap $10/year or so.
You also get all the other neat google stuff in the one package, such as gmail for any e-mail accounts you want to set up, which will be yourname@yourdomain.com - not just someone@gmail.com
Was just clicking around there and saw this: I’m a non-profit organization. Is there an edition of Google Apps for me?
Warning! Get your own domain name account on your own registrar like Godaddy, etc. I’m sure google is a pretty cooperative company, but some webhosts are famous for making it a royal PITA to transfer a domain name from a bundled service package.
I’m a fan of www.nearlyfreespeech.net. They have an extremely simple “pay for what you use” model which is really great for small sites. My site, which I just set up to do programming experiments, post a few pictures on, and share files with my family, literally cost me something like 3 cents per month at the beginning (I’ve since started storing lots and lots of photos there so I’m up to a couple bucks a month in storage fees).
They have a really no-nonsense support team that addresses most issues without the usual tier-1-did-you-plug-it-in runaround, and a system whereby you can set up multiple accounts that can modify a single site. They’re a little leaned towards the “I know what I’m doing and don’t need a lot of hand-holding” crowd, however.
The other feature I like them for is their “funding account” approach. You don’t get a monthly bill or charge on your credit card; you use your credit card to put $5 in an account, and they just deduct money from it in tiny amounts (e.g. 3 cents for my first few months), and send you a warning when it gets down to a certain level. You can put as much or as little in the account as you want, although I think there’s a $5 minimum to open an account. One nice thing about this system is that you can’t suddenly get hit with an enormous bill if your site’s popularity spikes due to a slashdotting or something – it just eats the few dollars you have in the account and temporarily disables the site until you put more money in. Their faq says the average slashdotting costs about 10 bucks to cover without shutting the site down. 
It’s also trivial and free to set up a new site for some temporary purpose. Look, I just created one: http://sdmbexample.nfshost.com
Cheap webhosting abounds. There are services that advertise exorbitant amounts of storage and bandwidth (I think my account at an unnamed provider is up to 250gb store and 2.5 terabytes of transfer for $9.95/mo), but the problem is finding one that actually delivers on all those features.
Overselling of bandwidth is extremely common. As far I’m concerned it’s downright criminal, but that’s probably best saved for IMHO…
Thank you everyone for your input.
I am book marking this thread for future reference.
Dreamhost offers free hosting to any registered US non-profit.