British-based Free Virtual Servers (FVS) started life in 2001 as a free hosting provider. It is part of the Easy Internet Solutions company that delivers innovative hosting solutions. The solutions offered by FVS include shared web hosting, dedicated servers, VPS, WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, and domain name registration.
Today, this provider has over 75,000 customers inside and the United Kingdom. Its website is in English.
Features and Ease of Use
FVS offers free web hosting for life. With this plan, you get a fully-fledged hosting account with your own domain name. It includes 100 MB disk space, 200 MB monthly bandwidth, a choice of three free webmail platforms, and a free FTP account with 24/7 access. You also get to use the Weebly website builder and the popular cPanel control panel for free. A more complete list of the hosting features is as follows:
- Free domain
- Free website builder
- 99.9% uptime guaranteed
- Softaculous one-click installer with over 200+ scripts
- cPanel control panel
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- SSL certificates
- Instant setup
FVS also offers flexible and customizable semi-dedicated and fully-dedicated servers that feature Intel Xeon processors, ECC memory, and at least 2 x 1 TB hard drive.
Servers are housed in a data center located in Bournemouth, U.K. They come with hardware RAID configurations for reliability, and what’s more, the enterprise-grade HP servers come with powerful and reliable CPUs to ensure fast page loading speeds and a 99.9% uptime (guaranteed).
FVS provides free, unlimited offsite backups that are performed on a daily basis and include a fast restore procedure for when disaster strikes. However, customers are encouraged to also keep their own backup copies just in case.
Pricing and Support
At this point, it’s worth mentioning that a popup on the FVS website suggests that it has transferred all its customers to its NetNerd.com cloud platform, such that all hosting – apart from the free hosting – is now offered via the NetNerd.com vendor website.
Apart from the free web hosting, all the pay-for hosting plans are expensive, but they come with few feature restrictions. Plans are priced in euros, and they can be purchased on monthly or annual billing cycles (depending on the plan). There is a 14-day free trial and a 7-day money-back guarantee.
You can reach out for 24/7 support by telephone, ticketing system, or contact form, but there is no live chat or email support. Unfortunately, I never received a response to my test support ticket.
For self-support, the NetNerd (not FVS) website provides an adequate knowledge base:
How much does Free Virtual Servers cost?Free Virtual Servers offers plans from $6.49 to $11.70. The price depends on which type of hosting plan you choose. You can see the updated pricing table (updated weekly) below.
Which Free Virtual Servers plan should I get?My recommendation is to start with a cheaper plan. You can always upgrade later on. Free Virtual Servers can help you with the migration to a more expensive plan. The increase in visitors many times takes longer than expected and you shouldn’t pay a lot of money until the need arises. Of course, your needs may vary, and you can consult with a hosting expert from Free Virtual Servers here.
How good is Free Virtual Servers’s customer support?Free Virtual Servers is not ranked as one of our top web hosts. But that can also be a result of Free Virtual Servers being a small, under the radar, hosting provider. There are advantages to a small hosting company – as a customer, you are more important to them. You can also check out our comparison of the most popular web hosting services here.
