I had a much longer reply @ItsGamingTube, but I don’t think it was particularly useful. But almost all suggestions can be answered by one of the following:
- The hosting platform has limited APIs, and you can’t just make an API to someone else’s system. I’d love to make my own panel and add more features, but that’s just not possible.
- Free hosting isn’t free. You get it for free, but especially iFastNet spend a HUGE amount of money on server space and staff to make this all work. Of course providing more stuff for free makes people happier, but someone still needs to pay for it. iFastNet does this primarily by selling premium hosting. But if they start providing all premium features for free, then they have to spend much more on free hosting, and people will have fewer reasons to upgrade. Going to other way and nerfing free hosting so it’s completely useless doesn’t work either, so balance must be found between these things.
- Other companies need to make money too. Website builder makers and email providers also want to make money, so they are not going to give their product away in bulk to a free hosting provider for a pittance to provide for free. Just because they offer a free trial doesn’t mean they are going to provide a free reseller program.
- Just because you like something doesn’t mean it’s objectively better. Like we’re talking to you, we’ve talked to hundreds or even thousands of other people. We’re trying to make a service that works well for as many people as possible. Just because you’ve used WHMCS and like it doesn’t mean that everyone who has used it liked it, and everyone who will use it will.
- We’ve been doing this for a while. InfinityFree has been providing hosting for almost 10 years now, and iFastNet for closer to 25. We’ve hosted many millions of websites. And we welcome feedback. But don’t come here and tell us “your system sucks, just migrate to software X, it’s so much better”. iFastNet knows cPanel, I know WHMCS, we’re both using that software to this day, and we’ve both decided to not use it and develop our own for free hosting. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if we were idiots, so please understand that if we do something, we have good reasons for it.
- Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it a bad idea. See above. The limitations in terms of features and server power are well considered based on many years of experience. You don’t have that experience and insight, which is fine, but then don’t call things useless if you don’t understand what it’s for.
- Features trump design. I like a slick coat of paint too (look at the client area compared to the control panel), but at the end, a service or tool has a job to do, and the tool that’s best at that job wins.
Now for a few specific points.
Case in point: your domain got marked as fraudulent for a weird reason. I can’t in good faith promote a service that does that.
I have looked. I have checked MANY site builders. They all fall in the following categories:
- Open source tools which let you drag some text and images around.
- Hosted website-as-a-service platforms (like Weebly and Squarespace).
- Website builders for hosting providers that charge per site. And those prices are always unsustainable for free hosting.
- Desktop software.
I would very, very, very much like to offer a full website builder (no free trials of Site.pro or SitePad) with our free hosting. But that’s too complex to make myself and I don’t know anybody else who provides this.
So if you know any, please share, because I can’t find them.
People who come here asking for help generally have an issue and they don’t fully understand what’s wrong exactly. Because if they knew what was wrong, they wouldn’t need help.
And if your website is not working, it’s not always easy to say whether that’s a problem with the domain name, the software or the hosting. So why force people to have to determine that instead? Why not just dump it into a big bucket called “support” and let the experts determine where the problem is?
And this is not hypothetical. We had a category “Website Development”, and there was no difference in content between it and hosting support. So I decided to just lump them together.
And please don’t forget: just because there isn’t a specific category dedicated to it, doesn’t mean it’s forbidden to discuss it.
You can just put bug reports in Hosting Support, and website optimization tips in Informal.
I have actually been thinking of something like that for a while.
I implemented the free SSL certificates, and that’s not paid advertising. I do also build stuff because I think it makes the service better. It does need to be financially sustainable of course (I can’t just go and spend thousands per month on third party software licensing), but it doesn’t need to be profitable by itself.
I have a list of ideas of things that I can add that iFastNet doesn’t have, or I can do better than iFastNet, even within the limited access I have.