Why By-Hoster is a non-profit, and what it changes for you
No shareholders to pay, no planned exit: a French loi 1901 host whose surpluses go back into infrastructure and support.
Introduction
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By-Hoster is a French loi 1901 association (RNA W162005815, SIRET 92395660100010), not a commercial company. This is not an administrative footnote: it shapes every decision. A classic hosting company must generate profit for its shareholders; every extra euro of margin is a goal in itself. An association has no shareholders to pay: surpluses must by law be reinvested into the association's purpose — in our case, infrastructure, network and support.
Concretely, this removes the mechanisms hosting customers know all too well: the teaser price in year one followed by the silent renewal hike, basic features moved behind paid add-ons, degraded support designed to push you to a higher plan. Those practices exist because they maximise revenue per customer. We have structurally no reason to apply them: our statutory purpose is to provide the service, not to extract the maximum from it.
The other consequence is stability. An association cannot be sold: no acquisition by a group that "rationalises" pricing, no forced migration to the acquirer's platform, no overnight team change. The founding members operate the DC-FR_NA(01) datacenter in Nouvelle-Aquitaine and answer support themselves. You know who hosts your data, where, and under which legal framework — and that framework cannot be bought.
What the non-profit status guarantees
Loi 1901 legal framework
Registered association (RNA W162005815, SIRET 92395660100010). Public statutes, member governance, association accounting: the purpose is to provide the service, not to pay dividends.
Surpluses reinvested
French law forbids profit distribution. Every surplus funds hardware, network capacity, redundancy or support time — never dividends.
Stable pricing
No unsustainable teaser prices compensated by renewal hikes. The displayed price reflects the real cost of the service plus what operations and investment require.
Cannot be acquired
A loi 1901 association has no share capital to sell. The "bought by a big group, pricing and support degraded" scenario is structurally impossible.
Named, accountable team
The founders are publicly named, operate the infrastructure and answer support. No anonymous call center: accountability is direct.
Fully French anchored
French legal identity, single datacenter in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, French jurisdiction, native GDPR. The whole structure lives in the same perimeter as your data.
What it changes day to day
No-surprise renewals
Your renewal price is the price you already know. Any increase follows real costs (energy, hardware), not a monetisation roadmap.
Support is not a cost center
In a company, support is a cost to compress. For us it is part of the association's purpose: a human from the team answers, 24/7.
Included features stay included
Anti-DDoS, SSL, backups: what is included when you subscribe does not move behind a paywall six months later.
Reversibility by design
Your data is yours. Simple export, outbound migration and cancellation: we retain clients through quality, not lock-in.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. A French loi 1901 association may run an economic activity and invoice its services, as long as surpluses serve its purpose and are not distributed. By-Hoster is registered (SIRET 92395660100010), invoices normally, collects VAT where applicable and keeps accounts. The difference with a company is not the ability to sell — it is where the money goes.
Through service revenue, like any host: web hosting, VPS, dedicated server and housing subscriptions. "Non-profit" does not mean "at a loss": we do generate surpluses, and the law requires them to be reinvested — hardware, network, capacity, support — instead of being distributed.
The status replaces neither skills nor infrastructure: it sets the incentives. Our seriousness can be checked on public facts: legal identity (RNA W162005815), datacenter operated in-house (DC-FR_NA(01)), named team (team page), live service status (statut.by-hoster.net) and a 48h money-back guarantee.
Not necessarily "lower": more honest over time. Commercial hosts often sacrifice year one and catch up at renewal. Our initial price is close to our renewal price, because no shareholder demands revenue-per-customer maximisation. Over 3 years the total bill is often lower.
As with any provider, continuity rests on the health of the structure — and ours is healthy precisely because it carries no acquisition debt and serves no shareholders. In case of dissolution (a members' decision), loi 1901 requires an orderly liquidation: clients would be notified ahead of time and assisted in their migration. Reversibility is already part of our contractual commitments.
Membership is not automatic with a hosting subscription: being a client and being a member are two different things. Applications from active members (technical or not) are reviewed by the board. If the project interests you, write to us via the contact page.