Pricing
Thirty days free, then ninety-nine pence a month
One plan, one price, published limits. The whole cost of running a forum here is £11.88 a year plus whatever your domain name costs you.
The only plan there is
It is the same Traxio Free Start account sold on traxio.co.uk — one plan covers a first forum and an established community alike.
30 days free
Traxio Free Start
Free for 30 days, then £0.99/month
Start your forum freeNo card required to start · No setup fee · Bring your own domain
- 3GB NVMe SSD storageRoom for your forum software, its database, member uploads and attachments.
- 100GB bandwidth per monthTens of thousands of visits a month for a typical forum — plenty for a new or growing community.
- DirectAdmin control panelThe real thing: file manager, DNS editor, databases, email, cron, PHP switching.
- Free SSL certificate (auto-renewing)Members will not register on a forum the browser marks as insecure.
- Softaculous one-click installerMyBB, phpBB and SMF install from a form — no manual database setup.
- PHP 7.4 – 8.3, switchableMatch whichever version your forum software recommends, per domain.
- MySQL / MariaDB databaseOne included — what one forum needs — with phpMyAdmin for backups and imports.
- FTP & file manager accessUpload themes, mods and plugins, or edit a template in the browser.
- Email on your domainOne email account included, for registration and notification mail from you@yourforum.com.
- Cron jobsScheduled pruning, digests and maintenance tasks forum packages expect.
- AI-assisted help deskKnowledgebase first, then the help desk: AI replies, and a person steps in when a request is escalated.
- Add-ons if you need themExtra email accounts, domains, databases or FTP accounts are £0.99 each, once. More disk is £0.99/month per 5GB; more bandwidth £0.99/month per 50GB. All add-ons
Full technical specification: DirectAdmin hosting on Traxio.co.uk.
The six things worth reading twice
- Free for 30 days. A complete hosting account with nothing held back — no feature restrictions during the trial.
- No card details required to start. You can build and run your forum for the whole 30 days without giving us any payment information.
- Nothing can be charged automatically, because we have nothing to charge. Payment details are only taken if you decide to continue.
- Then £0.99/month if you choose to carry on. That is the ongoing price — it does not rise after the first year.
- No setup fee and no hidden charges of any kind.
- You bring your own domain. Domains aren’t included, so you’ll need one you already own or register at any registrar.
What it costs over time
| Period | You pay | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1–30 | £0.00 | Full account, no feature restrictions, no card details taken. |
| Month 2 onwards | £0.99 / month | Only if you choose to continue. No setup fee. |
| A full year | £11.88 | Twelve paid months at the same rate. |
| Your domain | Roughly £8–£12 / year | Paid to a registrar of your choice, not to Traxio. |
Why 99p and not free forever
Hosting costs money to run, so anyone offering a forum host for nothing is being paid another way. Usually that means adverts on your boards, a subdomain you do not control, an export button that does not exist, or limits set low enough that the free tier is really a demo.
Ninety-nine pence a month is small enough not to matter and large enough to pay for the server. It means Traxio's incentive is to keep your forum running rather than to monetise your members. There is no upgrade path being dangled, because there is only one plan.
The longer answer on traxio.co.uk goes through the actual numbers.
Where the limits really bite
Text is tiny — a board with tens of thousands of posts might use a couple of hundred megabytes of database, so 3GB holds a great deal of conversation. What fills it is image attachments, so a community that trades photographs will feel this limit first.
Bandwidth is generous: 100GB a month is tens of thousands of visits for a typical forum, depending on how image-heavy your theme and posts are. You can add more disk (£0.99/month per 5GB) or bandwidth (£0.99/month per 50GB) from the client area. A very busy forum will outgrow shared hosting eventually, and at that point it is the wrong tool rather than a cheaper version of the right one.
Pricing questions
Is there a free plan that lasts forever?
No, and we would rather say so plainly. Free-forever forum hosting is paid for by advertising on your forum, by locking you to a subdomain, or by a limit low enough to force an upgrade. Traxio charges 99p a month instead and does none of those things.
Will the price go up after the first year?
£0.99 is the renewal price, not an introductory rate. There is no first-year discount here that expires. If the price of the plan ever changes for new customers, existing customers are told in advance rather than surprised by an invoice.
Are there any other charges?
No setup fee, no charge for SSL, no charge to leave and no charge to take a backup. Traxio is not VAT registered, so £0.99 is the total — no VAT and no card or processing fee is added on top. The one cost that is not ours is your domain name, which you buy from a registrar for roughly £8–£12 a year.
How do I pay after the trial?
An invoice appears in the Traxio client area towards the end of your 30 days. You add a payment method there and the hosting carries on. Nothing is taken automatically before that, because no card details are held during the trial.
What if I decide not to continue?
Do nothing. The account is suspended 7 days after the invoice date and terminated after 14, and you are never charged. Take a full backup of your forum's files and database before the termination date if you might want it later.
Can I get a refund?
The 30-day free period is there precisely so you can decide before paying anything. Refund terms for paid months are in the Traxio Terms of Service, which cover both traxio.co.uk and traxio.uk.
Try it for thirty days before paying anything
No card details, no obligation, and a full hosting account while you decide.
Start your forum free Read the FAQ
Free for 30 days with no card details required. Then £0.99/month if you choose to continue.