Nonprofit organizations, especially small groups, continue to look for ways to take advantage of he benefits of the Internet while incurring the least amount of expenditures. While there are a range of services that provide free e-mail and other Web-based services, are there services that allow nonprofits to put up and maintain actual websites for free? If so, are they worth the price? For some nonprofits, simply interested in only putting up a few informational web pages, there may be a hesitancy to spend money for what amounts to more space or tools than they either have knowledge around or need for their work. As such, they may allocate little or no money and resources for hosting a website, instead relying on another entity to do so. While this may save money, it can also inhibit the growth of certain online activities, as organizations grow more comfortable and dependent on their online presence to engage their constituencies. More importantly, it reflects short-term thinking around what is potentially a long-term investment of nonprofit resources. The conventional wisdom on commercial free web hosting services is that in general, nonprofits get what they pay for in using these services: not much except space. These services usually do offer free space, but with requirements included in the fine print, which can include a requirement to use commercial banner ads. The commercial nature and content that may be required may potentially run at cross-purposes with an organization's mission. Support for free services may require fees and costs that might actually cost more than expected. Recipients of free services tend to rank lower than paying customers of such services, so if a technical support issue arises, it is not difficult to guess which needs take priority. Nonprofits should also consider how much control they may have over the look and feel of their sites, how frequently they can edit and update the information on their pages, how many pages and how large each page can be, how much functionality can be added to a page through use of outside-party scripts, among other considerations. Another consideration for nonprofits is that hosting under a free service often requires the use of a specialized domain, often ending in a ".com" extension. For nonprofits who currently have not registered and Internet domain, this is generally not a concern. For those organization who currently either have a website, or who have registered and secured a desired domain name in anticipation of a future Web presence, these services generally do not allow for migration of existing domain names into their services. If this option is available, it may require additional costs. One technical option around this issue is to supply a redirect feature on an existing web page to automatically drive traffic to the new hosting entity. In general, there is a relatively well-defined window of fees for Internet Service Provider access to the Internet, ranging from US$10 to US$20 per month. Under most paid plans, there are allocations for space on an ISPs server for hosting websites. In many cases, an ISP will allow users to maintain their own pages, uploading and editing pages using file transfer protocol (FTP) access to their own personal web directories, as well as scripts that can provide added functionality for user web pages. Moreover, these plans offer anywhere from a minimum of 5 to 10 MB of disk space-- more than enough space for a basic website-- at a fixed cost. One option for nonprofits to consider is to make a charitable request for website hosting, domain name registration, and server space from a local ISP, FreeNets, and Community Networks (the latter two are usually nonprofit in nature themselves, and may understand the needs of smaller organizations). In general, hosting can entail very little cost for ISPs, compared to the resources they must spend on the actual maintenance and acquisition of their servers. Keep in mind, again, that this level of service may entail volunteer technical support for organizations that require "customer-level" technical assistance. Any donation of space should entail a good-amount of technology support and training if possible for nonprofits to become acquainted with what is necessary to maintain their sites. Website hosting itself, overall, does not need to entail a great deal of expense. Nonprofits must, however, take a serious look at what the purpose and scale of their online efforts in order to identifying hosting needs that are inline with both organizational expectations and budgets. If online presence is a priority or activity of any significance, it requires resources to make it a success. Resources Cited Information on Planning and Developing a Website Website Hosting and Development services (TechSoup) Additional Resources Addlebrain.com Epinions Internet4Free WorldWideWait Organization For Community Networks