This company 1and1.com is offering 500 mb of web space for 3 years for free. Seems like a strange business model. I signed up and so did Ron. He bought the domain name manilaice.com for 6$ too.

I don’t know if these people will bail or get sketchy, but 500 mbs of space is cool. All I gave them was a phone number, and then this robot called to give me a PIN.

This is what their site says:

Why are you giving away a Professional Hosting Plan for free?

Our advertising agency asked us the same question! This is what we told them. We’ve been providing service to top US companies for years. So, when we wanted to expand to the end-user market, we decided to go with an offer only a global leader like ourselves could make. To show our confidence that at the end of the 3 years, you’ll be so impressed with our service, you’ll continue to work with us, and even recommend us to others. In other words, we’ve decided to invest more in you and less in our ad agency. Granted, this wasn’t the answer they were looking for, but we don’t exist to please them. We exist to please you.

How can you pay for this promotion?

Cutting our advertising budget allows us to use the money to pay for the promotion. Less ads and the maximum use of grassroots word–of-mouth movement is our objective. We’re not worried about losing our shirt because, as the biggest web host in the world, we’re profitable, stable, and have been in this business for over a decade. Also, we control the entire value chain so we can buy servers, routers, connectivity and bandwidth in bulk and that benefit is passed on to you.

Posted on Friday, November 7th, 2003 in Tech.