HelioHost, 110 7th Ave S, Kirkland, WA (2026)

02/28/2026

Tommy Email Issues

It looks like the upgrades from yesterday broke some of the email functionality of the Tommy server. Webmail wasn't working and receiving emails was failing as well. However, sending emails continued working. Webmail and incoming mails should be fixed now. Any emails that were sent to domains on Tommy overnight should work now because the remote mail servers should continue retrying now that the server is correctly accepting mail again. So no emails should be lost, but rather just delayed a bit. Thanks to the users who reported these issues. Let us know if you're noticing any other issues on the Tommy server after the upgrades.

It looks like the upgrades from yesterday broke some of the email functionality of the Tommy server. Webmail wasn't working and receiving emails was failing as well. However, sending emails continued working. Webmail and incoming mails should be fixed now. Any emails that were sent to domains on ...

02/28/2026

Tommy PHP Upgrade

PHP 8.5 is now available on both our Tommy and Morty plans. We will be installing PHP 8.5 on the free Johnny server in a few weeks as well. We've also taken the opportunity to upgrade Plesk to the latest version and do a thorough upgrade of all system packages. The performance for the Tommy server has been a little slow for the last few hours due to high load, but things are going back to normal now. There may have been a few errors messages as various services restarted, but now that the maintenance is over let us know if any of the error messages persist. We try to avoid doing upgrades too often, because they can cause downtime and slow performance, but it's critical to keep everything up to date to avoid vulnerabilities.

PHP 8.5 is now available on both our Tommy and Morty plans. We will be installing PHP 8.5 on the free Johnny server in a few weeks as well. We've also taken the opportunity to upgrade Plesk to the latest version and do a thorough upgrade of all system packages. The performance for the Tommy serve...

02/12/2026

More Free Accounts

Since our Johnny server is scheduled to be upgraded to faster hardware soon, so we've decided to increase the number of free accounts that we allow new users to create each day. After increasing the limits a few days ago we've seen free signups stay open for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and even as much as 48 minutes.

Keep in mind we have no direct control over how long free signups are open.

We just monitor the uptime, speed, and load of the Johnny server. Then we take into consideration how many accounts get abandoned and go inactive each day. Finally we use all of that data to give away as many free accounts as we can, while still keeping the Johnny server "usable". Our goal is 97% uptime, and a load level of less than 20, which we consider good enough for a free service. If you need better uptime, or a faster loading website we have several upgrade options available.

At times we've seen 20 accounts get reserved in less than a second, so even after raising the limit, it's still possible for signups to fill quickly. It really just depends on how many people are trying to signup each day. We generally don't disclose the exact number of signups available each day, because it can vary from day to day, but since the recent increase has caused free signups to stay open for nearly an hour it may be worth mentioning.

If you're not very quick at clicking, this might be a good opportunity to get a free account, but if the uptime and speed of Johnny start dropping we may need to decrease the signups again. Our goal is to have free signups stay open as long as possible each day, but our free service is very popular so it tends to fill quickly. Let us know if you have any questions, or comments.

Since our Johnny server is scheduled to be upgraded to faster hardware soon, so we've decided to increase the number of free accounts that we allow new users to create each day. After increasing the limits a few days ago we've seen free signups stay open for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and even as mu...

01/28/2026

Domain Limits

We're increasing the domain limit on the Morty server from 10 to 15!

After a year of running our newest plan, Morty, we are still seeing great performance. This plan has nearly perfect uptime, great speeds, and Apache still restarts quite quickly. Therefore we are increasing the domain limit on Morty. If you need more than 15 domains you're welcome to create multiple Morty accounts, or switch to one of our VPS plans which allow unlimited domains.

On the other hand, our free Johnny plan is still quite overcrowded and slow. In order to help speed up the server we're reducing the domain limit from 10 to 5.

Our mission as a non-profit is to provide free hosting to as many people in need as we can. Our mission is NOT to provide free hosting to just a few people who each have a ridiculous number of domains. We think it best supports our mission to set a reasonable limit to make sure a few entitled people don't hog all of our free resources.

If you need more than 5 domains you can make a one-time donation of only $2 to move to Tommy and have 10 domains available, or upgrade to Morty or a VPS. There are a few Johnny users who currently have more than 5 domains, and they will be allowed to keep their current domains for now, but if they want to add or change any of their domains, they will be required to comply with our new limit or upgrade to a plan that supports more domains.

Let us know if you have any questions about the updating domain limits.

We're increasing the domain limit on the Morty server from 10 to 15! After a year of running our newest plan, Morty, we are still seeing great performance. This plan has nearly perfect uptime, great speeds, and Apache still restarts quite quickly. Therefore we are increasing the domain limit on M...

12/31/2025

PHP 8.5

HelioHost is happy to announce that we now support PHP 8.5 on the Morty plan. The Tommy plan will be upgraded to have PHP 8.5 soon, and after that Johnny will have it installed too.

HelioHost is happy to announce that we now support PHP 8.5 on the Morty plan. The Tommy plan will be upgraded to have PHP 8.5 soon, and after that Johnny will have it installed too.

12/23/2025

Power Outage

This morning the city in California where our datacenter is located had a power outage. It took the city a few hours to restore the power, but once the power was back on all of our servers booted up. Everything should be online and fully functional now, but if you notice any issues please let us know.

This morning the city in California where our datacenter is located had a power outage. It took the city a few hours to restore the power, but once the power was back on all of our servers booted up. Everything should be online and fully functional now, but if you notice any issues please let us ...

09/01/2025

Caddy Webserver on HelioHost

You've probably heard of Apache and Nginx, but have you heard about Caddy? In this video we show you how to install the Caddy webserver software on your VPS. Caddy is known for issuing SSL certificates automatically, and being easier to configure than his more famous relatives. It's worth checking out!

https://youtu.be/Vq-cKnQGevU

It's been a bit since we released a new video, but hopefully you enjoy this one. Some users find it much easier to follow a video guide rather than reading the text guides we have at https://wiki.helionet.org/ Please let us know if there is a specific topic that you think would be good for our next video. Also if you don't mind subscribing to our YouTube channel that would be a great way to get some free advertising. We are a small non-profit funded by donations so we don't have a huge budget to afford paid advertising, so the more word of mouth recommendations, the more social media likes, and the more subscribes we can get goes a long ways towards finding more users and continuing to grow. Even if you can't donate, this is a great way to help us for free. Thanks!

You've probably heard of Apache and Nginx, but have you heard about Caddy? In this video we show you how to install the Caddy webserver software on your VPS. Caddy is known for issuing SSL certificates automatically, and being easier to configure than his more famous relatives. It's worth checkin...

06/23/2025

Modded Minecraft on HelioHost

Here is the second video in our Minecraft series. This video documents how to set up a modded Minecraft server on a HelioHost VPS.

https://youtu.be/Fgmzvrtu7sA

We are going to try to continue releasing new videos every 2 weeks, because some users find it much easier to follow a video guide rather than reading the text guides we have at https://wiki.helionet.org/ Please let us know if there is a specific topic that you think would be good for our next video. Also if you don't mind subscribing to our YouTube channel that would be a great way to get some free advertising. We are a small non-profit funded by donations so we don't have a huge budget to afford paid advertising, so the more word of mouth recommendations, the more social media likes, and the more subscribes we can get goes a long ways towards finding more users and continuing to grow. Even if you can't donate, this is a great way to help us for free. Thanks!

Here is the second video in our Minecraft series. This video documents how to set up a modded Minecraft server on a HelioHost VPS. https://youtu.be/Fgmzvrtu7sA We are going to try to continue releasing new videos every 2 weeks, because some users find it much easier to follow a video guide rather...

06/09/2025

Minecraft on HelioHost

One of the most common questions we get is "Can I run a Minecraft server on HelioHost?" The answer is yes, and we've made a video tutorial on how to get started.

https://youtu.be/JAXDD7VYHUk

We are going to try to continue releasing new videos every 2 weeks, because some users find it much easier to follow a video guide rather than reading the text guides we have at https://wiki.helionet.org/ Please let us know if there is a specific topic that you think would be good for our next video. Also if you don't mind subscribing to our YouTube channel that would be a great way to get some free advertising. We are a small non-profit funded by donations so we don't have a huge budget to afford paid advertising, so the more word of mouth recommendations, the more social media likes, and the more subscribes we can get goes a long ways towards finding more users and continuing to grow. Even if you can't donate, this is a great way to help us for free. Thanks!

One of the most common questions we get is "Can I run a Minecraft server on HelioHost?" The answer is yes, and we've made a video tutorial on how to get started. https://youtu.be/JAXDD7VYHUk We are going to try to continue releasing new videos every 2 weeks, because some users find it much easier...

06/06/2025

Tommy Donation Amounts

When we started offering Tommy accounts as a thank you gift to people who donated $1 or more back in 2016 the fees on each dollar were 3 cents, and we got 97 cents. That's 3% fees. Fast forward 9 years, and that same dollar now has 52 cents of fees taken out of it, and we only get 48 cents. That's 52% fees. We think that is completely ridiculous!

PayPal and the credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard just keep getting greedier and greedier, and punishing the people who do small transactions. There's not a lot we can do about it unfortunately. We recently set up a Stripe account and the fees are about the same. The $1 donation was never meant to be a way for us to get rich. We just choose a small donation amount to help separate the donors from the free accounts, and make it easier for people who don't want to deal with the short signup window for free accounts.

With that in mind, we have reduced the price of the 7000 MB, 6000 MB, 5000 MB, and 4000 MB Tommy donations. The 3000 MB Tommy donation is staying the same, and we're increasing the donation amount slightly for the 2000 MB and 1000 MB plans. On the 1000 MB plan we will now be paying 27% fees which is still ridiculously high, but much better than 52% fees.

We have also added a cryptocurrency integration into the Tommy signup page. Depending on the wallet, the cryptocurrency, and the network you use the fees could be less than 2 cents. If you decide to use the new cryptocurrency integration we would love to hear some feedback on how it well it worked for you. If people like it we could add crypto payments to Morty accounts and VPS as well.

When we started offering Tommy accounts as a thank you gift to people who donated $1 or more back in 2016 the fees on each dollar were 3 cents, and we got 97 cents. That's 3% fees. Fast forward 9 years, and that same dollar now has 52 cents of fees taken out of it, and we only get 48 cents. That'...

06/04/2025

No More Ads

HelioHost is happy to announce that we're disabling ads across all of our websites and hosting plans, including the free Johnny plan, starting now.

Back in 2008 through 2016 or so HelioHost was 100% funded by ads, and we made so much ad revenue that we even managed to save up quite a bit of money in our bank account too. It might come as a shock to some of you, but it isn't free for us to provide free hosting, so we still have to pay for stuff like electricity and internet access. As the years went by Adsense kept paying less less and less each year, and our bills kept adding up to be higher than the ad revenue. So our bank accounts kept dwindling lower and lower. There were a few scary years in there where we had to make some hard decisions whether or not to just give up and shut down entirely.

We didn't think anyone would be willing to donate to us, but we didn't really have a lot of other options, so starting in 2016 we began asking for donations. We were then, and still are, completely shocked by how generous people can be. After finishing a record setting fundraiser to purchase a new server earlier this year, we discussed it and decided that we don't need ads at all anymore. As long as people keep donating towards our non-profit mission to provide free or low cost hosting, we don't need to bombard you with annoying advertisements. Thank you to all of our donors for making this possible.

HelioHost is happy to announce that we're disabling ads across all of our websites and hosting plans, including the free Johnny plan, starting now. Back in 2008 through 2016 or so HelioHost was 100% funded by ads, and we made so much ad revenue that we even managed to save up quite a bit of money...

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