Allow me to make this easy for you :
Pro’s :
Free
Fast
No Advertisments or Popup’s
Availability
ASP and .Net enabled
Excellent Codebank
Helpful and very useful support forums
Con’s :
500 mb data transfer a month (which works out to 16.67 mb per day)
Inconveniently long URL (for the free version)
Cumbersome uploading process
Slow admin page (if you’re on a dialup)
No PHP or CDONTS
One site per email address
Now, the explanation :
Let’s say you’re a basic user - a maximum of 10 pages in your site, no ASP, no database, a few images (10)... this is the site for you.
Why ?
Because there’s no way that you are going to reach the transfer limit of 16.67 mb per day. You don’t have too many files, so the uploading is not too much of a problem, around 5-10 min on a dialup. You dont need PHP, ASP or the CDONTS (which is for mailing from your site; which quite a few free sites dont provide anyway)
Let’s say you’re a semi-advanced user, which quite a few people (including me) are - you don’t know ASP, but are using it, you’re using CSS, Javascript etc. that you’ve got help with from the brinkster forums and Codebank. You have quite a few files, but not too many images….this is still the site for you.
Why?
You won’t go beyond the data transfer limit, ASP enabling allows you to have dynamic generation of content.
One way to escape the bandwidth limit problem is to distribute your content over a couple of sites.
The problem ?
Well, since you do have a large number of files, the uploading becomes a pain, but once you’re done with that, no problems.
Another problem with brinkster is that if you want more than one site, you’ll have to use a different email ID, though that can be tackled if you have more than one email address (which you probably do have).
Now why should you choose a site like Brinkster over any other ?
Websites that provide webspace need to charge for something, so they charge for the ideal website that they give you, and make a few things tougher for you if you get the site for free. That’s what brinkster does with its free accounts, as does every other webspace provider.
If you’re looking for free, then there’s only one site that I know of that comes close - https://dotnetplayground.com . dotnetplayground has an irritatingly long name, but it still works out to be shorter than a brinkster one. dotnetplayground doesn’t have as impressive a codebank, but it’s getting there. It has FTP uploading which is a big big plus over Brinkster. Unfortunately, dotnetplayground has suspended registration. Also, dotnetplayground does have server trouble from time to time. I know of a friend who eventually shifted to Brinkster from dotnetplayground. It seems, reliability is a problem with dotnetplayground.
Brinkster Specifications :
For a free account :
Your brinkster address is in the form www<number>.brinkster.com/<your username>
You’ll get 30 MB of space
500 mb of data transfer ( which is 16.67 mb per day, upload + download)
My sites – www16.brinkster.com/nikhilpahwa
https://5.brinkster.com/linkex