While this is true, I think that the publicity of people struggling with it might play a role. While both of those platforms technically have community support forums, said forums aren’t quite as… prominent as what you’ve built here. If you take a look at the “Free Hosting General” category of iFastNet’s community forum, the latest new thread is from August 31st of this year. If you sort by newest first, you only have to go four down before finding one from July 23rd. They may have customers who struggle with that who just give up rather than asking for help from the community, though I admit that’s only speculation.
Part of it might also be the fact that you’ve successfully made getting started seem so much easier, that it’s attracting more first-time webmasters. Or, maybe they only have experience with cPanel, which is what vPanel’s front-facing design is meant to mimic. I could see someone used to the addon domains page in cPanel getting confused with the InfinityFree client area. Greenreader makes a good point on that I think:
It also probably doesn’t help that a lot of premium hosting providers give you the option to add a custom domain at sign-up. Granted this is free hosting and expectations should be different, but if someone who wants to start a website is told by their more experienced friend “this is how it usually works” I could see why the deviation would throw them off track (Not to mention they do it that way so using a custom domain is easier). InfinityFree had that option for a moment but removed it. Yes, the client area does say you can add one later, but I know from my experience in customer service that many customers are great at missing things that have to be read like that, especially in the tech industry.
On that note, I’ve actually been curious about why it was removed. I remember you mentioning that it was done to “reduce friction”…
…if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly does that mean? Was it simply causing extra stress on the server and iFastNet told you to remove it, or was there something else going on?