" we are thinking of hosting our moodle site online for free"
Hosting will cost someone somewhere some money, so the short answer is no. The longer answer is that there is relatively affordable hosting but that is really outside the scope of the advice you should seek here. You need to understand the essentials of what is required for Moodle and this is typically the LAMPP stack.
To give you an example I pay around $USD12 a month for some hosting that might support perhaps 20 to 40 simultaneous users. But I have 20 years of Moodle and related technical experience. To economise on the technical support someone has to learn a bunch of stuff or you have to persuade them to work for free/cheap.
Hosting will cost someone somewhere some money, so the short answer is no. The longer answer is that there is relatively affordable hosting but that is really outside the scope of the advice you should seek here. You need to understand the essentials of what is required for Moodle and this is typically the LAMPP stack.
To give you an example I pay around $USD12 a month for some hosting that might support perhaps 20 to 40 simultaneous users. But I have 20 years of Moodle and related technical experience. To economise on the technical support someone has to learn a bunch of stuff or you have to persuade them to work for free/cheap.
The MoodleClouud offering mentioned in this forum is quite affordable and is delivered by the worlds greatest experts on the topic, so you should consider it.
Good luck and do come back with the results of your research and any more questions you have.
Good luck and do come back with the results of your research and any more questions you have.