I tried populis.com
And I am very angry
The offer your own domain for free.
They verify that your domain is free.
You reserve the domain.
Now you have your own page on firstname.yourdname.com
Very nice, you have some megs, and you have ftp for utploading your html files.
Unfortunately, they server ftp.populis.com is never available : timeout waiting for connection at any moment of the day !
So, your domain name is reserved, you cannot buy it any more, but your site is unreachable because you cannot upload your index.html file !
So, what I recommend : if you want a domain name, don't even click on populis.com homepage !
Yordan

OK, I'm still disappointed, but for another reason.
Now the ftp server works, everithing is fine, except the huge ads at the bottom of each page.

I think I have heard of this awhile back, but not sure.

The FTP server was probably just down for a bit or really busy.

Really suck about the forced automatic advertisements though, they should let you set them up manually, atleast they could be placed in a more desirable spot.

Populis does not provide you with a free domain name. It can be put that they are just providing you with a subdomain of their available domain names and simply hosting that subdomain on their own servers. Pratically, you don't own the domain. You can get free domains elsewhere (but watch out, you have to pay for it somehow through completion of offers or posting). I don't think this is the kind of service you want.

Anyway, I signed up just to see how it works. So I decided to register:
the website 'staff.populis.com' and the email 'staff@populis.com'. Not a problem at all with the sign up. The only problem is waitiing to receive confirmation email through GMail.

It's really firstname.familyname.com and your mail is firstname@familyname.com
so, it's really your family name domain. This means that Populis probably bought the familyname.com domain.
If you go to www.familiyname.com, you arrive to populis.com site.
If go to firstname.familyname.com, you arrive at your own site.
And you have adds until you pay for removing the ads.