I have used free hostia to build one or two small sites as sub domains. .freehostia.com's.
I signed up to one of these free, monitor you site places. I think they said my site was down 15 minutes last month, in one consecutive period.
I don't complain at that considering it's free.
I am now hosting my domain here for free as I build it, and am still monitoring it. No problems.
I have spent a serious about of time researching paid hosts, and free hosts. There are others out there that offer more. But if you sign up, and stick around, you get to see some problems.
Having an open forum here can be a blessing and a curse. When people go to a forum it's usually because they have a problem. Hence you read complaints. When there is no problem, less complaints. Have a look at the dates people write in recently. There are usually long gaps, meaning not so many complaints. Which is good.
Other places I noticed want you to sign in every few weeks, or place banners or offer other strange things. Free hostia does exactly what it says.
Now, add on the great support. And you got a good service. When ever I have got stuck with a technical thing, albeit something I should know. Tech support have been there, within 20 mins, usually less.
The only things I would like to see better here would be a larger bandwidth allocation, both on free and the first package. And... well that's it really!
Ok, I wrote a long reply, no I don't work for them. Nor are they paying me to write this. An offer of a free package would be nice?
Anyway, I hope my experience of freehostia can help you. Feel free to PM me if you want any more details.
Dave