It would be great if they were because some of the scripts - who may work for example as an internal API - may require such support.
Only PHP and HTML are supported. Obviously client side scripts like javascript also work, since they are served the same as HTML, and them processed by the visitors browser.
Since the service is only for hosting so API’s can’t be hosted here. Even internal API’s may not work depending on how they work
Shame. As far as I know, if there would be a goid wilk then there would be an easy way to implement it.
The proposal has been made because PHP has a very limited possibilities in some ranges, with could become easyly filled out by other languages.
For example, Python3 allows to use within many languages (for example, in one of my project, I was able to bridge in between c++, java, php, html (with css, react and if I would like too, then I could expand it into others, like for example: rust, go, perl, etc.)
I understand why. I’ve said before that I think Python support would be amazing. But thats the limits on free hosting.
Maybe if many enough users would support this idea then maybe they would implement it for every one (there must be a explict mention of that, so it would be also avaliable even for free members, who can’t afford themself to purchase an (too expensive) paid plan
I have the distinct feeling that the limit is implemented by IFastNet. And not something Admin can do anything about. But don’t quote me.
I’m not sure because I don’t know what kind of agreement they have . Admin may just not have configured and/or enabled it…
The free hosting platform does not currently support Python (Or any other backend language outside of PHP/SQL). Adding any additional languages to the current infrastructure would have to be done by iFN. I know it has been brought to their attention in the past, and they have not shown any indications of adding support.
Maybe there is a too weak “pressure” on implementation of if. If I’m not wrong (if they haven’t changed it yet), they seem to still use outdated and obsolete (and thereof insecure) versions of the software.
When I was administrating for some period of time someone’s hosting, I had at latest once per week checked for updates
It’s probably more so of the fact that they don’t want to spend hours of implementation, troubleshooting, and training support staff with no clear revenue increase.
The use of obsolete software is mostly gone (As far as I am aware). Although upgrades to new MySQL/PHP versions don’t happen immediately, there is a much better process in place now to preform those upgrades when compared to a few years ago.
With how many free hosting services IFastNet support, even if every InfinityFree member asked them for these features, it would hardly be anything compared to the total numbers they deal with.
Also, given the premium hosting supports Pything, Ruby on rails and Node.js… So it doesn’t make commercial sense to add these to the free plan.
@Greenreader9 As dan3008 wrote, they have it already implemented, but made it avaliable only for paid members, so it looks more like either leak of good will or too weak preasure to make more features avaliable for free 
@dan3008 there is a commercial sense to make it avaliable because this way people do a free promotion, so they wouldn’t need to spend so much money on marketing, with may get expensive 
From IFastNet’s side, no it doesn’t make commercial sense.
If they put the money in to upgrade the free hosting infrastructure to support python ect, it would probably mean less people choose to upgrade to Premium Hosting.
Less people upgrade to premium, the less money they get.
Now debating this further here isn’t going to make any difference. If you’d really like to, I’m sure you can reach out to IFastNet and ask them. But I doubt you’ll get a different answer
That’s not the case. Premium hosting uses cPanel, which costs a huge sum of money, while free hosting uses a custom panel (that only looks like cPanel). So free hosting don’t have those feature implemented. It’s not a problem of “enabling these features or not”, it’s the problem that these features don’t exist on free hosting.
Python is quite a capable language, but even web hosting that supports Python (like premium hosting) is still web hosting, and so what you can do with Python is limited. And compiled languages like Rust, Go or C++ are just fundamentally incompatible with web hosting.
Also, modern PHP might not be as bad as you think it is. While it’s still very much possible to write horrible spaghetti code with it (and many still do), it has really evolved in the last 10 years with many OOP features, strong typing, and a very mature ecosystem of powerful frameworks. Yes, it’s still an evolution of that loosely typed language from 20 years ago, and still has some quirks in the standard library from that, but if you really think PHP cannot be used to make high quality applications, I highly recommend to try Laravel for a chance to see what PHP can be in 2025.
Also, to call PHP limited and then advocate for adding Perl seems backwards to me. Perl is just a worse language in every way: it’s less versatile, has less clean syntax, and a worse ecosystem around it. I don’t think it’s a good choice for any project starting today (or anywhere in the last 15 years), and we’re not going to add support for a language that is mostly obsolete now.
With that in mind, you are calling Python “very limited possibilities in some ranges”. Could you clarify what exactly Python gives you that PHP does not? Maybe then I can say something about whether the Python support on premium hosting would support this. Otherwise, we might “add Python”, but still offer it in such a way that it doesn’t work for your project.
Please understand that free hosting and premium hosting are technically completely separate. With premium hosting, Python support is mostly just ticking a few boxes in the cPanel setup. For free hosting, it actually has to be custom built.
You misunderstand. For a big part, free hosting IS the marketing for premium hosting. It’s the carrot we offer to get people in the door.
We’re not spending money on marketing the free hosting. Free hosting is the money we spend to market premium hosting.
Adding more features to free hosting makes it more attractive, yes, but also removes incentive to upgrade to premium hosting. Finding the balance between providing a good enough service (to attract people and gain their trust) but not give too much (which can be too costly for us and result in people not needing to upgrade anymore) is a difficult thing when providing a free service.
We aren’t running the latest and greatest software. But you have to consider that when hosting millions of websites, you can just hit the “update now” button once a week and assume everything will be fine.
Updating a PHP version WILL break some websites. With so many websites hosted, that’s basically guaranteed. But with some diligent planning (i.e. not upgrade versions the day they are released) you can mitigate it.
With so many websites hosted over so many years, you’re bound to run into some skeletons when doing updates. We’ve seen databases break during fairly minor updates due to lingering consistency issue that had been there for years, but never broke before so we didn’t know.
So a weekly update check which you can apply easily is fine of you’re running one website (which I assume the “someone’s hosting” refers to), but not if you’re running a million.
@Meishin No one forces them to use the expensive CPanel… there are many cheaper or even free solutions
@Admin I was focusing more on Python and other languages were mentioned more as a an optional addon, in reference to an programing project on with I’m working in spare time 
I didn’t wrote that PHP is a bad language (I used to write in it as well), but there it takes bit more efford to implement some things.
As for Laravel, among many frameworks, it has a syntax that not every may be comfortable with 
As for asking for what Python can give with PHP can’t, for example, it’s interoperatibility in between different programming languages.
Good example of above is that in my project, I was able to manage that code wrotten in Python3, C++ and Java were able to work as one
You know, Admin is not actually asking for your reasons. He’s just saying no while trying to make it not harsh…
I know… I just had clarified it to avoid potential missunderstandings
I did actually specifically ask for reasons. I am open to the suggestion of pitching for more programming languages, but I need something more specific than “I like Python, Python is cool, you should add Python”.
Consider that Python support in web hosting is limited, so even if we were to support Python, that doesn’t mean that you’d be able to host your Python application with us.
So that’s what I’m trying to find out: what are you actually trying to do, why that is not possible/feasible/practical with PHP, and if that would be possible if we’d support Python in the same level as with premium hosting.
That… tells me absolutely nothing.
“Interoperability” and “work as one” can mean many things. It just means two codebases can talk to each other, and PHP is absolutely capable of that. I can think of a few methods which are not so easy with PHP, but I’d like to hear from you what you are missing.
So can you please point out what specific language features Python has that PHP does not have for your use case? And do you think that that would make sense in a web hosting context?
I’m bad in explaining things, but if I may, I would like to describe (in simplizezed way) my project, with hopefully could partially explain it.
I cooperate with development of Mush/MUD server (wroten mainly in C++) and in my project, I’m attempting to create a more optimized variant of it, that would have:
a) comnon protocol in with each bridge will safelly communicate with each other in a kind of mesh
b) bridge for each language with would:
a) connector
b) internal API
c) fully dynamic:
d) internal communication system
e) display of interactive map for the world (in meaning of in-game one, created by the server), with require access to some protocols
The project is quite complex and I’m not sure if PHP could fully handle all of above .
The modules, bridge and partial python3 functionality will be server-sided and I would like a part of it make hosting-sided, like for example: connector, dynamic user interface with map display and communication systen, etc.
The hosting-side files are expected to be rather small
