Angelfire gives away 2 megs of free web space to individuals or companies. While you are allowed to include commercial material in your page, you may not include any advertising banners. Pages cannot contain adult, copyright, obsene or offensive material. Their services include free editing of your HTML, as well as giving you the option of using their quick page creator if you have no HTML experience.

Fortune City is giving away free 20 MEG homepages. They do, however, impose some rigid restrictions on content. Obviously, your page may not include adult or obscene material but, apart from that, Fortune City doesn't allow you to place banner advertisements on your page (although you may participate in CDNow's affiliate program). Also, each of your pages will display a full-sized (460x68 pixel) banner at the top of the page. This banner earns Fortune City revenue (and clutters up your pages). You must also include a link back to Fortune City from each page. Still, Fortune City does provide good service, an easy-editor that allows you to construct your pages without knowledge of HTML, gives you access to a clip-art gallery, enables you to participate in chat rooms and, of course, you are given an amazing 6 MEGS of space! Sites are arranged according to the type of content (eg movie sites, games sites, music-related, personal etc.).

Free Sites Network offer free sub-domains and 10MB of space on which members can develop their sites. An advertisement will appear at the top of each page on the site, in addition to a small banner that appears on the bottom of each page.

Freetown offers a similar service to Geocities in that you search their various districts (Hollywood, Soho etc.). Their web site does not provide details regarding the amount of web space or any rules and regulations concerning content and advertising. I guess the best bet may be to sign up (since it is free) and then find out.

FreeYellow provides a very simple, but highly restrictive, free Web page service. If you are looking for an easily maintained, small site (commercial or personal), then this is a good choice, though. Why? Because you are not only provided with 5 template-driven (HTML free) pages, but a lifetime email address, a personal chat room, a free library of graphics, programming-free forms capability and your own search engine! The 5 page restriction may frustrate some budding Webmasters, though.

Geocities is the most popular provider of free Web space, and for good reason. Geocities provides their members with a lot of flexibility and creative freedom. You may upload files, create files on-line with their easy HTML editor, use template-based pages that don't require you to have any HTML experience and you are given 2 megs of space to work with. The one drawback is that you are not permitted to build the site as a commercial home page (or include advertising or links to commercial sites) on your page. Still, they are a great provider for people who are simply looking to set up a personal page (or a page about their hobbies etc.)

Hypermart are currently offering 10MB of free space. Perhaps their most salient feature is the potential for members to obtain their own sub-domains or top-level domains. This service is suppported by ads that either appear on each page, or on a pop-up Javascript window that initiates when one of your pages is loaded by a new visitor.

Muttle.com has carved out a revolutionary niche for itself in a crowded market. In addition to offering traditional free 100MB hosting accounts to individuals, they offer enterprising or community-centric webmasters the opportunity to launch their own free web hosting service through Muttle's co-brand feature. The co-brand option, which is also 'free' allows webmasters to host member sites within their own sub-domain space (ie membername.yourdomain.com). Each member site is allocated 100MB of space, and unmetered bandwidth. The webmaster presiding over the co-branded community collects a 50% share of the revenue that Muttle generates through the ads shown on the webmaster's member sites. Check them out!

Nitehawk has a 'Free-Org' system that allows non-profit organisations 3Mb of free web space, a free email-forwarding account, free Microsoft Frontpage access and more! While they do not specify rules regarding the hosting of banners on the pages, I would imagine that it is not allowed (as that would indicate that your organization is actually profiting from the page). This is a great deal for non-profit groups.

Personal Connections offers a complete set of free Web-based email, a free homepage, a free on-line notepad and a free personal details page. It is unclear as to how much Web space you are allotted, but the complete package is, overall, remarkable!

Spaceports.com is a massive free host run by the folks over at Tera-Byte. Members are provided with unlimited space, 5GB of monthly transfer, CGI, PHP and mySQL support and free support via the service's forums.

Sure Site gives away free starting pages. Your page will include search engines, personalised links to your favorite Web sites, a daily comic, news headlines, a weather report and Webster's dictionary. You are only given one page, and not much freedom, but the page is great to use as the homepage that loads as you boot up your browser.

Tony-Net provides free Web space to individuals who promise to design a "valuable and/or original" site. There is no mention on the site as to how much space is available, but Tony Knott, the site's administrator, noted in an email to us that there are no space restrictions. All member sites are provided with CGI access and the ability to stream G2 RealAudio/RealVideo content. Tony-Net promises not to place any ad banners on your site or in pop-up windows.

Tripod is quickly becoming the most popular provider of free webspace, and for good reason. They allow commercial content and advertising banners, and include all of the features of the other good providers (HTML-free page creation, on-line HTML editing, page uploading, free graphics etc). They now provide 11MB of free disc space to all members. In return, they generate advertising revenues from a javascript window that pops up each time a new visitor reaches your page. The presence of the ad is a small price to pay for the freedom granted by Tripod.

WebProvider.Com presents an incredible service to new webmasters (or those struggling to maintain their commercial hosting payments). They provide full-featured domain-name websites for free! Each site is loaded with the features you would expect from a more expensive provider, such as CGI access, FTP access, free domain transfer, 24/7 support, 5MB space, same day setup with no setup fees, Frontpage support, daily backups and log file access. All that you are asked to sacrifice is a 468x60 pizel space on your site where WebProvider.Com places a banner ad (or, alternatively, accept a pop-up window containing a banner). Not a bad deal, by all regards.

Webspawner offers free single-paged web sites. They don't allow HTML editing, but instead offer a very quick and easy method in which you input the text and images that you want to appear on your Web page and, in a matter of seconds, it will be so. The Webspawner system is the easiest home page creation tool that I have seen, but it offers very little creative freedom. Great for beginners or for those who want a simple, one page personal site.

Xoom is offering 11MB of free space. As a bonus, they also provide access to a free gallery of clip-art that members are free to use on their pages. At this stage, they don't place ads on member pages.

Zero Zone offers its members 100MB of free webspace, FTP support and free stats. There is no setup fee associated with the service, and domain hosting is supported.