Hello, I have been doing this since 2007. So let me share some experiences:
1. Every average customer would find free hosting websites on google and then get it blocked/deleted due to inactivity(no logging into control panel every 7 days) or not doing 10 forum posting/month or some other silly rule they are new to/unaware of. There are also bottom links, ad blocks with which the customer is really helplessly angry at. No body would tolerate free house with ads plastered all over it which they dont have any control over type of ads shown to their visitors and then been asked to leave at end of 4 days due to some silly rule. The land loard/webhosting provider doesn't understand the effort the customer spent in working/customising on the house in the past 4 days and the emotional connect and hopes they had with it. On the reverse Adsense blocked many free hosting companies with excuses like it isnt 6 months old, there has been click fraud etc jokes.
2. Next time they will go and compare free hosting on directories like free-webhosts, top free/hosts etc
3. Now they get frustrated as they are spending more time on searching, changing and managing free hosting providers and free websites and they haven't got any business/sales so far over the last few months. They are also forced to compare worthless things like CGI ONLY VS PHP, CPANEL VS VISTAPANEL, WORDPRESS VS FLAT FILE HTML, THIS TEMPLATE VS THAT MOBILE DESIGN instead on focusing on the real thing.. the website itself. I did all that and now realize that you can build achieve any type of website without all of those and I CAN BET ON THAT.
4. They see BLOGGER, WIX, WEEBLY etc offering free hosting. They start getting confused.
4. BAM comes AWS, DROPBOX, GOOGLE CLOUD, etc. they all have ad-free free web hosting tiers. Customer doesn't know how to use these ? and their paid version pricing seems un-understable like $0.0001/hr for 0.5 cpu $0.0002/hr for 512 mb ram etc is the worst to understand.
5. Now comes time They Go ahead an build a mobile app for some payment to freelancers like me that they hope will increase sales.
(OPTIONAL) APART FROM THIS POST IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW PEOPLE COMPARE AND USE FREE HOSTS I HAVE AN OLD BUT VERY HELPFUL ARTICLE:
http://ajorganized-blog.tumblr.com/post/32261098126/best-free-web-hosting-providers-list
Conclusion: They have wasted too much time in looking for and changing, managing free hosting provider. There has to be an end to all this. No body is thinking how to ease customers headache and think of the customers emotional connect with their first free website. No body is willing to make such cool UI that customer would like to stay with the same provider in future even for payment of few bucks for an upgrade. .......... but those who do get a hell lot of money. See the sales price of blogger, tumblr, etc. If you think small, you get smaller CENTS. If you think big.. you get bigger BUCKS!
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