Can I host a community with over 100+ Members on the free plan?

[tacforce]

Hello,
I have a small community which is growing rapidly up to 100 Members. I wish to host an Xenforo website similar to yourself which I have legally obtained a few years ago, I was wondering if the free plan has the infrastructure to be able to hold up to and over 100 active daily members per day without me having to pay a penny? I have a custom .co.uk domain I wish to add to the free plan and I read your terms and I am happy to log into the portal each month to stop it expiring.

I really want a stable service without the hosting being cancelled and me losing SQL data. Is this something X10 can do? Or should I consider paying for the premium version or looking else where?

Many Thanks,

 

[essellar]

That depends on a couple of things. The most obvious is "how active is 'active'"? You are only allowed 64MB of RAM at any given time, and there's a maximum of 300 core-seconds per hour available to a Free Hosting account, so if your forum is approaching something that looks like a suite of chat rooms (with a bit of delay and a long memory), then 100 concurrent users probably wouldn't fit — you would likely encounter the hourly resource cap too often for the site to be reliable. If it's a more laid-back and considered sort of environment (people read carefully, digest, then post thoughtful responses; flame wars are unheard of) then it might work well.

The second major consideration is the existing data (if any). Initially, and for at least seven days, you will have a 1024MB disk space allowance. That includes everything (user files, database, logs, etc.), so if you are at or over that, you'll either need to prune (at east temporarily) or find another solution.

Note, too, that service here on Free Hosting can be a little spotty at times because you're sharing a server with a very large number of other users who (a) have nothing at stake, (b) aren't necessarily competent, and (c) don't always play nice. If the site is actually important (let's say you're using a forum for user-to-user product support or some such), then the reliability issue is going to far outstrip any minor cost savings.

I hope that's given you enough information to make the right decision for your use case. Please feel free to ask for more if necessary.