On the one hand, it seems strange that a hosting provider would be giving out free VPS accounts. This seems like it would be the last act of a dying hosting pro

On the one hand, it seems strange that a hosting provider would be giving out free VPS accounts. This seems like it would be the last act of a dying hosting provider. On the other hand, this is probably not much different than what Heroku gives away. In fact, Heroku probably gives away a lot more resources (considering that AFAIK you can create as many free tier apps as you like.) Perhaps this will be the opening shot in a new trend which started with the PAAS providers. Provide free low tier space and make money off the bigger fish. Personally, I would rather not share my space with freeloaders unless that space is tightly restricted. If the providers are being squeezed on their margins from competition, then I would rather those low margins be spread equally through all plans with no free tier (which I suppose is what Amazon does, they are regularly dropping their prices but nothing is free except for the trial.) Free hosting isn't enough to move me away from DigitalOcean, especially given the SSD storage.