OK I'll answer because I was the one who posted the honest review about our hosting. (And because the topics there are closed, which is okay.)
@DanielP, 1 dollar may be too cheap to provide anything reliable in this world but:
a) for some people earning USD 1 is not that easy. There are many poor areas and poor people around the world. For some of the a dollar is something like a treasure.
b) even you pay more, like USD 88 or USD 199, there is again no guarantee that you'll get that reliable thing (service).
About the free hosts, well, it's the best for us from economics point of view but we were often strongly advised to avoid them because they do not provide good support. I don't know if it's 100% true. Just that time me and the people around me here didn't have any hosting related experience.
@HRR, everyone can get different jobs (like to work at a fast food restaurant) but the problem is that once you decide that you provide $1 hosting and you promise to do your 99.99%, 24/7, etc. your best, you have to do it. Otherwise just really don't start something like this if it's so difficult and so unrealistic.
@Mike - MDDHosting,
1/ If the 1 dollar hostings already many years are doing so maybe it's not very "high-volume / low-profit operation". Or what? They're not clever enough to stop this years ago? Sunk cost fallacy?
2/ Maybe. But if you have many clients you'll have enough money to motivate you. For example, you own a shop and you're selling drinks. You're earning only a dollar per drink but if today there are 5000 customers and you can have USD 5000 maybe you'll find enough will, desire and helpers to serve them. Just a possibility.
3/ The poor people "tend to be the most unreasonable with the highest expectations."? You again are repeating this conclusion of yours. Let me explain you why, probably, some of them do so. When you're poor and you rely on your website to earn some money, for example, and every day when your website is down it makes you to lose some cents or more, than you'll be more sensitive to the problems with your website than if you're rich and you have a website just for hobby or for showing off, or for some idealistic goals like how to enforce the feminism.
People who value their 1 dollar will protest and fight more for it than those who think that 1 dollar is just a 0.0000001% of their income.
Well, to be honest with you, I think that you're spending so much time to post about these 1 dollar hostings because you're thinking something like "Why these people want to go to pay 1 dollar to the competitors?! Why they don't come to pay me more money?! I need the money!" (And/or you're posting often to remind the readers about your hosting service? It's okay but repeating one and the same points is sort of... "this guy makes me tired.")
@selinux -- I have no idea what he/she is talking about.
@CrocWeb, we'd like to. Really. But until we're not earning at least 1 more dollar than we spend for hosting and domain (which is around 2 dollars per month) we can't afford to lose more money. We're not so idealistic. If we'll spend time and more money than we earn just for posting here... well, honestly, we better to go to watch a movie, to do some sports or just to cook something or to sleep.
@Phil McKerracher, if they and others already so many years are doing this, probably it's possible and they earn some reasonable amount of money. I don't think that they're low IQ guys who make it just for charity and for fun. Also, the USD 1 is their silver plan. They earn more or less with other plans. Whatever.
I can't see how an omnilogy forum may harm any server. There are so many forums around the internet. Come on...
Marketing tricks? Okay but it means that hosting companies which charge more can use the same marketing tricks, right? So, what? Just as I mentioned above, don't trust and... just do your best to save your money. What else you have as an option?
@Postbox, I see your point but we can't just assume that everyone who charges USD1 is the same. We have to search, to understand better, to compare, to analyze... we can't just "jump into conclusion" (to judge or decide something without having all the facts). Of course, maybe you're right and maybe the rest of the users there are right that there are better hosting companies which are charging more expensively... maybe someday we'll know the answer.
Best wishes!