You can use Perforce for free with up to 2 Users and if you have to you can even share one account with several users, although it's a little inconvenient to do so (and it might be a license violation).
Personally i installed Perforce server on my Internet machine which is up 24/7. I'm using a dynamic DNS service to allow others to connect to my Perforce server using a sane address like "myperforceserver.no-ip.org:1666". My upstream is 1.5 MBit/s though so that's a speed others can work with on their end but if you happen to have no more than 128 kbit/s it can be a little slow. But it really depends on the project size. Plus there are ways to make working with a slow connection to Perforce easier, like the "reconcile offline work" menu item or by using a Perforce proxy.
I concur that SVN seems like a PITA when you come from a Perforce background. As soon as you do a lot of branching and merging, Perforce is still heaven compared to any other SC system.
