I agree for the most part of your points but for free web hosting. I've known several and tried 10s of them, most of them are like you said : they always try to monetize their service. But some, do it, in a way that it won`t affect you, like they`re selling services (related to web) off their main website and that way they monetize their free web hosting services. It's true that you won't have leverage compared to paid hosting, but if you don't have a too much professionnal website, it worth a try. Oh yea, let me present one i'm using right now which is pretty good. : Cixx6 at http://cixx6.com

If you know others like this, let us know.

Best regards,
Dan.