Make the Charity Pay for good web host technical support
Phil Winstanley posted an article highly recommending ORCS Web Hosting Services. As I commented to Phil's article, there's no way I would need a $65 a month ORCS site when I have all I need with a WebHost4Life $9.95 package. I recently moved to WebHost4Life.com from a provider I thought was excellent, but I didn't want to continue to pay $29.95 a month and I didn't want the charity to have to pay $29.95 a month when $9.95 would get the job done and then some.
I've blogged before about the site I'm building for a local charity during my latenight hours (close to releasing it!), and I am thinking that I made a mistake setting the charity up with WebHost4Life.com. Doing sites for free as personal research projects are a very good learning experience for the developer if taken on for purely selfish reasons from the gitgo--its been great for me!--and the charity happens to benefit as a bi-product. But hell, they're getting a site for free. The developer putting a site online for free should not have to spend more time with technical support than absolutely necessary.
Technical support at WebHost4Life is decent, especially when you consider the price. There's a certain dweeb on their staff who unfortunately was the first responder to the last couple of incidents I've encountered, but my experience with their support staff has been overall quite positive, particularly when you consider the charity is paying $9.95 for a very robust site package.
All I'm saying that if you're considering doing a site for some charity for free and are recommending the host provider, don't try to save them money and then personally pay the consequences by spending more time with host provider support than you planned, time for which you're not getting paid. After the site's online, you've gained from the experience what you wanted to get, and you're ready to cut and run, you can say, “Hey, did you ever think about changing host providers? WebHost4Life offers a full package at $9.95 a month. It would save you...let's see...$141.05 a month in hosting fees!“