Cheap/Free ISPs for Non-Profit Organizations?

mhhelle asks: "I live in a co-op with non-profit status. We are looking at starting a website to distribute information for current and prospective residents. I'm wondering if there are any ISPs that provide discounted or free service to non-profit organizations. We have few requirements-- enough capacity for some nice graphics, possibility of database access (using MS Access (I know...)), posting PDF files for download, cgi-bin, and the ability to use our own domain name. I'd estimate less than 500 hits per day, so I don't imagine that we would require a lot of bandwidth. Does anyone have any suggestions?"

Sponsorship or such

[jpm242]

I'm pretty sure that there are ISP's out there who would participate in such a thing for free. It could be a tax write-off and it brings good publicity. Also, I doubt that a non-profit org's website would be a bandwidth hog, IMHO. Can't see why someone wouldn't do it...

JP

Check your local ISPs

[stienman]

An ISP I've done business with before gives free hosting to non-profit organizations, but they don't advertise this.

Ask around, you might be surprised how many companies would jump at this.

-Adam

Yahoo!

[Chris Pimlott]

First off, why are you asking for an ISP? You need a web hosting company...

Anyway, this took about 5 seconds:
Yahoo Search: "non-profit" and "hosting" [yahoo.com]

And for an encore...
Google Search [google.com]

Re:Yahoo!

[mhhelle]

Yes, I know-- I meant web-hosting. (But doesn't ISP stand for "Internet Service Provider", and isn't web hosting an internet service?)

I also did your "5-second" search and didn't find it very helpful. First of all, your search doesn't narrow it down to free hosting. Secondly, I included "free", but it's difficult to sort through all the hits-- many are only for religous or charity organizations. Thirdly, I figured someone else might have experience with this. Lastly, I submitted it under "Ask Slashdot", because I want information about people's opinions and maybe someone directly connected with a hosting company would read it. Search engines don't provide these services.

Re:Yahoo!

[Chris Pimlott]

Well, to most ISP refers to supply one with an internet connection. I can't think of anyplace that calls itself an ISP without doing that (be it via modem, dsl, broadband etc.), but there are ISPs that don't offer hosting.

Anyway, from your post it seemed to me you were looking for any listings at all. Regardless, I don't see anything wrong with looking for personal testimonies from people who have done this sort of thing in the past.

And searching for 'free' is probably a waste of time - you'll get lots of mishits ("1 free month of service with subscription!" etc.) and any place that is truly free (for anyone) will probably not be able to give you what you want.

Try a small local firm

[seaan]

I had the same need, low cost or free Web Hosting for a non-profit (my traffic is probably even lower than yours). I tried a number of different companies, but I found the small local providers were the most helpful.

"Got.net" provided their $20/month service for free, and also setup the domain name for free. We still had to pay the domain name registration fees.

Look Local

[bmasel]

The limited publicity and tax writeoff you can offer for free service are more valuable to a mom@pop scale host or ISP.

Just ask

[jon_adair]

My wife got free hosting donated for BonkFest.org [bonkfest.org] just by asking the web host she uses (and providing 501(c)(3) paperwork, etc.).

Re:Check your local ISPs

[Big Brass Balls]

I agree. In fact, you might want to check out newer ISPs, since they'd be hungry for some free publicity.

I helped out with organizing a student conference/competition [ensc.sfu.ca] one year, and one of the things we needed was a website. Naturally, since we're a student organization [ee.ubc.ca], our intent was not to gain profit - just to meet costs. That meant that we didn't have a whole lot of money to splurge on a website (in fact, our budget was already stretched to the limit). A few calls around, and one of the newest ISPs in town had jumped at the opportunity to provide free space for our website. In return, we offered them a spot in our "sponsors" listing, both on the website, and in the conference package.

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