Per title I own a small webhosting sidehustle. I have a few thousand email users, and a few hundred websites. Normal POP/IMAP/Wordpress stuff running on Ispconfig.

These are mostly leftovers from my MSP business I owned that got Covided into oblivion. They bring in a few freedom tokens every month, and allow me to cover the costs of the extra services I run as my new hustle (app dev for platforms such as slack and teams) and the odd purchase for my homelab.

For all intents and purposes my hosting is paid for by itself, and thus is "free"^(TM) for me.

That allows me to give myself those feel good dopanine happy juice in my brainhole by once in a while offering a startup or mom and pop business free web and email hosting. Sometimes if I know them well I'll even throw in the domain registration for friends and family, if it is a cheap domain, or they can pay for that. If they want a website I will plonk together a wordpres thingy for them for a minimal cost, or if they have a web dev friend or someone that does web dev I will give them teh ftpees.

The caveat is that this is for the first year only, and stuff that costs me money I will bill for. I make sure to put the terms in an email and also a short little PDF contract that stipulates the limits of this free service.

I have been doing this for many years, at least since 2015, maybe before that even. Made some long term clients that way, and it often led them to introduce me to people they know and has paid good dividends for me.

Lately though, I have gotten sour with a certain subset of humanity. The Apple users. PUT DOWN YOUR PITCHFORKS AND HEAR ME OUT. Some of my best acquantances are Apple users, I might even like to hang out with some of them from time to time, but I will not give them free anything.

Look. My issue is this: For most Apple users everything is somehow magically done, "there is an app" or "I have found a wordpress extesnsion for this" or "hey this $shinynewcompany does this now".

Almost every time I have done the "Oh you are just starting out, you need email or a website? I have space on a server I can host your stuff for you for a bit..." thing described above for Apple types, I have had them move to paid platforms elsewhere and not made a real cent from them.

Just today again.

Have a lady that moonlighted as a aerobics coach for extra bucks, and she wanted a place to have her students get stuff like class times or training programs etc. Ok so maybe she is more than only an aerobics coach, she helps people train for ultramarathons as well. So training programs and so on needs to be made available to people, you get the idea.

Now over the year that she had the free hosting she messaged recently to point her web records to squarespace. It was almost time for her to start paying for the web and email hosting, so I saw it coming. Then today it is time for the email hosting to come due, and now she wants me to point her mx records to another more expensive email host.

And this has happened over and over again with Apple users.

• using icloud mail after the year is up instead of paying for the email hosting, even though my basic small website package includes a few mailboxes (you pay for your server storage usage website and email combined.) Then wanting to know if I can't lower my price since they are no longer using the email part.
• if I don't want to charge them just for the website hosting, they move to squarespace or something else that is more expensive than my hosting, but for some reason that is more reasonable to them than paying me what I bill for the service.
• Upgrading their Macbook and iPhone to new versions and asking me to set up the email on both, expecting it to be free, and then eventually moving to another service when I insist the free ride is over.

Don't even mention the out of the blue transfer request for the domain name that I paid for and then questioning why they need to pay for the domain name I paid for before transfer since they already paid the new hosts a transfer fee.

And of course the references I mentioned earlier, rarely happens with Apple users.

Never had this issue with Windows users. The best clients are the older folks who start a retirement sidehustle or just a retirement hobby site for them and their friends. Like a model airplance club or something.

Set up email on one of their phones? "Remember to bill me, you give the hosting for free, the least I can do is pay you for your time." Hosting time is up? Sometimes they contact me to arrange payment for their hosting going forward.

I dunno, it's like the people who are beholden to the Apple way have a jobsian expectation that they are owed the fruit of your labors, and that they can move on from you to the ivory towers of a brand named slick Insta-Advertise service without paying one moment of thought to actually paying you the minimum that this is already priced at.

Now, given the minimum amount that this service is actually priced at, I have never deemed it worth it to load a lawyer in a trebuchet and fling one over the walls of Villa-Du-Jobs at them, but at least the little email and pdf has protected me from having a lawyer flung at my front door when demands are made of a domain transfer without payment.

If you came this far, thank you, and if you are an angery Apple user, come at me I can take it.