How to get a FREE domain name and a FREE hosting plan

Part 1 - Introduction

Article version 2.0
Author : Karydis Anastasios aka TrustFm
Date : 14/Oct/2024

In this article i will cover how to get a free domain/subdomain and combine it with a free/economic web hosting plan.
Notice : The date of this article is critical : [14/Oct/2024]
Older version [22/Sept/2014]
It is useful to have the knowledge to obtain a free domain for test projects or even for semi-professional applications.
In the first part i will talk about how to get a free domain/subdomain name which is the hardest part and next we will talk about the free and low cost hosting.

It is important to understand that a domain name can NOT be changed so if you lose it you lose everything.
On the other hand if your hosting provider closes down you can always move to another one by changing your nameservers and re-uploading your files via FTP into the new hosting provider.
In order to have a web site up and running you need :
a) a domain name registered to you
b) your domain registrar should allow you to change your domain nameservers
c) you have to find a hosting provider that gives you it's nameservers in order to connect your domain name with their web host plan.
Schematically you have :
DOMAIN -> NAMESERVERS -> WEB HOST

1) Get a FREE Domain and a FREE Subdomain

Before taking a free domain you should always ask yourself these questions :

a) Is this free domain name banned from Google or other search engines?
Example the us.to domains are banned from Google or from your browser.
Firefox says to me : us.to is blocked!

Eu.org domains are not banned from Google.
Uk.to subdomains are not banned from Google.


b) Does the registrar allows nameservers (NS)?
Two valid examples :
Eu.org free domains supports NS and
freedns.afraid.org free subdomain uk.to supports NS

c) How old is your registrar ?
To answer this question you can use Wayback Machine or getfreedomain.name
A good rule of thumb is 10+ years

For more than 28 years eu.org works like a charm.
For more than 23 years uk.to is active.


d) Does your registrar has any quality sites ?
Google is your friend : find eu.org sites

Some important eu.org websites are :
     openweb.eu.org (alexa rank : 98.719)
     best.eu.org (alexa rank : 640.737)
     melusine.eu.org (alexa rank : 882.090)
     elcorreo.eu.org (alexa rank : 1.789.832)
     gnome.eu.org (alexa rank : 2.284.681)
     odse.eu.org (alexa rank : 3.947.427)
     opcode.eu.org (alexa rank : 4.316.365)
     mayrhofer.eu.org (alexa rank : 4.608.346)
     pyro.eu.org (alexa rank : 4.705.717)
     porady.eu.org (alexa rank : 4.924.515)
     doors.eu.org (alexa rank : 5.932.134)
     drfugazi.eu.org (alexa rank : 6.323.355)
     coriolis.eu.org (alexa rank : 7.664.123)
     acro.eu.org (alexa rank : 7,853,218)
     prima.eu.org - an extensible Perl toolkit for multi-platform GUI development.
     orchestre-brest.eu.org - A symphony orchestra of musicians of all ages

find uk.to sites Some uk.to websites are :
     ancardia.uk.to
     briefly.uk.to
     frydefm.uk.to
     sd4st.uk.to

e) Who is behind the domain registrar ?
You always have to investigate in order to find this information.

From the eu.org home page we copy paste :
EU.org, free domain names since 1996
"Companies have voted with their feet [on the issue of domains], they want to have domain names that are international or at least country neutral.
The same freedom should apply to individuals; all individuals should be able to have and own their own domain names".
Paul Mockapetris, creator of the DNS, in On the Internet, September/October 1996.

By doing a gandi whois search for the eu.org we will see that it is registered to Pierre Beyssac which happens to be the co-founder of gandi.net.
Gandi.net is leader on the domain name registration.

For uk.to we can see that the domain was registered 14 Nov 2003 - tonic.to whois search

Some important notification.
Notice that the eu.com domains are sold regularly 40 Euros/year.
More info about the eu.com domains can be found in the official page

So in conclusion after all these years i think that the only decent free domain registrar remains eu.org
In the next pages i will also present you and a free subdomain solution offered by freedns.afraid.org - uk.to.
If you know any other solutions with these characteristics please contact me via email.

In the next part we will see how we can obtain a free eu.org domain name and a free uk.to subdomain name.

[[ Part 1 - Introduction ]] - Part 2 - Domain Registration - Part 3 - Hosting-Plan