If  you have been using Bravenet to host your business or personal website because of its free hosting, you may have gotten an unpleasant email recently.    An email sent yesterday by Bravnet News states the following,

“We have come to a time where we need to better define our Free Hosting services. With millions of members building free, ad-supported sites at Bravenet, we have been buying tons of hardware to store, backup and serve all of your sites to the world. In fact, it has been hard to keep up with all the storage required!”

Bravenet pricing model has been revised as follows:

“For a limited time we are offering you, as a valued Bravenet member, our 1,2 and 5 year Professional Hosting service for only $3.99 per month when you pay for at least a year (our regular fees are: $12/month or $99/year). If you want to really take advantage of this low price, you can sign up for 2 years, or even 5, and lock in the special price long-term!”

In other words, we didn’t really think this all through, (or maybe they did), and now we have to change our business model and charge you for what was previously promised for free.I just checked their home page and they are still offering Free web hosting?  Also, would you sign a 5 year contract with a company, as indicated above, when in the same email, they are telling you that they have changed their minds on their past hosting fees?

The moral of the story is that you get what you pay for.  If your website is important to  you, then it’s worth paying a reliable and reputable company to host it for you.  In addition, when you use free hosting for your website, what kind of message are you sending to your clients?

Please post notes of any other web service companies that you know of that have done the same.