# Creating a private forum without paying for hosting
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [January 19, 2021, 11:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549 "2021-01-19T11:16:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@technoshaman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/technoshaman)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2021, 11:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549/1 "2021-01-19T11:16:10Z")
Can I create a private forum on the public Discourse, without having to pay for hosting, similarly to how i can create a private group on Facebook?
If yes, how?
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### Author:  [@Thomas\_G](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Thomas_G)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2021, 11:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549/2 "2021-01-19T11:47:07Z")
> [@Can I Create A Forum With This Template For Free?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-i-create-a-forum-with-this-template-for-free/166312/6):
>
> OK, now I’m following. Discourse, the software, is free. You can follow our [official install](https://meta.discourse.org/t/142537?silent=true) instructions to install Discourse on a server of your choice. Note that if you don’t already have a server you’ll need to pay for one, for example via [Digital Ocean](https://www.digitalocean.com). Regarding [discourse.org hosting](https://discourse.org/buy), we do offer free plans to open source software developers and crowdfunded groups at [free.discourse.group](https://free.discourse.group/). If you qualify for one of our free plans, submit an application on that page.
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### Author:  [@osioke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/osioke)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2021, 11:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549/3 "2021-01-19T11:49:09Z")
> [@technoshaman](#):
>
> Can I create a private forum on the public Discourse, without having to pay for hosting, similarly to how i can create a private group on Facebook?
Nope! As Thomas shared, the software is free for you to install on a server you own.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2021, 4:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549/4 "2021-01-22T04:30:56Z")
The software is free! Computer time, unfortunately, isn’t free.. 😉
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### Author:  [@PleaseCycle](https://meta.discourse.org/u/PleaseCycle)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2021, 11:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-private-forum-without-paying-for-hosting/176549/5 "2021-08-14T23:16:34Z")
Ahhh, but there does seem to be available options to freely host:
Multiple online cloud vendors will give free credits worth about $2-300 USD.
These are all the cloud vendors with free options for resources:
Google Cloud compute offers a free credits,
Microsoft Azure compute offers free credits,
Amazon Web services offers free credits,
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers free credits.
Oracle Cloud also offers two free compute instances with 1 cpu, 1GB RAM, and 40 GB of space which is plenty of space to get started.
> **[Always Free Resources](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm)**
>
> Learn what Always Free resources are available to all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure users.
CloudFlare offers free DNS tiers,
>
And plenty of email providers out there like Mailgun offer free email services for a term:
> It’s Free to Signup! Get 5,000 free emails on us for 3 months! Why do we need a credit card for a free account? It helps us prevent spammers from signing up, which means better deliverability for you and everyone else. You won’t be charged unless you go beyond 5,000 emails each month. This is a secure 256-bit SSL encrypted form.
> **[Sign Up Free | Mailgun](https://signup.mailgun.com/new/signup)**
> _Setting up your own self hosted instance takes some work, but with the easy docker image for_
> _Discourse the path to your own community is absolutely relatively cheaper than its ever been_.
If you are okay paying for a certain monthly fee for set resources, companies like Contabo offer a reasonable monthly price for a decent sized instance:
> **[Contabo🥇Cloud VPS & Dedicated Servers for a Price You'll Love](https://contabo.com/en-us/)**
>
> More Computing Power for Less | Award-Winning Support from an Actual Person - not a Bot! | 9 Regions, 12 Locations | 99.996% Uptime Over the Last 12 Months
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