Web Hosting Support

A lot of the time on web hosting sites – you’re seeing almost the same thing everytime.  Same plans, same prices, same features, and the same control panel. What’s the difference between web hosts these days? Well…it’s pretty simple – Customer Support and Service.

So many web hosts are running cpanel web hosting control panel these days. It’s a great tool that makes it easy to run one of the best web hosting services for the lowest cost.  In fact, BlueHost and HostMonster use it exclusively. As does LunarPages, Globat, and many other top web hosting companies.  Free web hosting companies are also starting to use them.

What can you expect from a web hosting provider? Where is the customer support bar set? Well…it depends…most hosts are very large and do experience some wait times.  We have heard that some of the largest web hosting companies have up to 5000 customers for 1 support staff.  Then there were some newer companies that started in the last 3 years or so that are trying to lower that to the 2000-2500 customers per support staff member. 

These numbers may seem crazy, but it really is a numbers game. A lot depends on how fast the company is growing in users per day terms. If they are growing really fast they will need more support staff because most people call customer support in the first couple weeks a lot. Then they have their site up and don’t make too many changes once they have done so.  It’s all front loaded.

If you’re worried about hold times – a good idea might be to make sure your host will have toll free customer support lines and 24 hour support. These two items are good to have when you have a problem. It’s nice to get someone on the phone if you can’t sleep in the middle of the night and you decide to work on your website. 

Before you signup it might be a good idea to call the support lines and see what kind of system they have. They don’t ask any information upfront usually except where to direct your call – tech, billing, or sales. So you can choose the tech support and see just how long the wait time is once or twice before signing up. Then when they answer – ask yourself – Is this an acceptable amount of time to wait to get someone on the phone for potential questions?  Some hosts can wait times in excess of 30 minutes. 

Also – check around to see what kind of trouble ticket system and knowledgebase they have online. If it appears to be a high quality system they have probably invested a lot of time and money.  Then go to web hosting review sites and see what other users are saying about the host.

Good luck in finding your new web host.

BlueHost Review

Today we are reviewing BlueHost. It’s an excellent web hosting company to host a wide variety of websites.  If you’re looking to host your blog, company site, or family website – these guys have the tools to do it.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT BLUEHOST!!!

We’ve read BlueHost review pages on the web, but most don’t go into much detail as to why BlueHost is such a great website hosting company.

The company was started by a guy who started 50megs.com which was later sold to the company that owns/runs freeservers. Then he started 0catch – another free hosting company that had a lot of features and some cheap upgrades. Free web hosting is a whole different business where you have to keep on top of server resources and problems because hackers and other troublesome customers try to bring the system down. This experience gave the founders of BlueHost the experience to know where those problems are with servers and software so they could create a solid system with low downtime.

BlueHost offers unlimited web space and traffic as well as unlimited domains on your account. The servers run Cpanel as the hosting control panel – which is very easy to use and includes tons of easy to use tools to get a website up and running in no time. 

From their plan details page:

Disk Storage (NOW MORE!)  Unlimited 
Host UNLIMITED Domains (WOW!)   
Free Drag and Drop Site Builder (NEW!)   
Free Domain Name   
Support International Domain Names    
 POP3/POP3 Secure Email Support  2,500  
IMAP/Secure IMAP Email Support  2,500 
3 Different Web Based Email Solutions   
Forwarding Email Accounts  Unlimited 
Email Autoresponder  Unlimited  
Gigs of Site Transfer (NOW MORE!)  Unlimited 
Add-on Domains  Unlimited 
Parked Domains  Unlimited  
Subdomains  Unlimited 
Additional FTP Accounts  1,000 
MySQL Databases  100 
PostgreSQL Databases  100  
CGI-BIN    
CGI Library    
 Server Side Includes    
Frontpage 2000/2002 Extensions   
Account “Control Panel”   
FTP Access   
Shell Access (SSH)   
Override .htaccess Support   
Anonymous FTP   
Webmail (Browser Based Email)    
Log Files + Site Stats   
Web File Manager    
Fantastico Script Support   
PHP 5    
Perl 5    
Python   
Ruby / Ruby on Rails   
MySQL 5 Database Server   
PostgreSQL Database Server   
Javascript/ DHTML   
Message Forum (PHPBB and More)   
Form-mail Scripts   
PHP Nuke / Post Nuke    
Guestbook (Multiple Options) 

Web Blogs / WordPress / b2evolution    - Easy to use blog software!
Image Galleries / Coppermine (More!)   
Poll and Survey Software   
Moodle   
Tikiwiki   
Mambo and Joomla    
phpForm Generator    
SSL Secure Server    
OS Commerce Shopping Cart   
Agora Shopping Cart    
Cube Cart Shopping Cart    
Zen Cart Shopping Cart    
Password Protected Directories   
OpenPGP / GPG Encryption    
Supports Streaming Video    
Supports Streaming Audio   
Real Audio & Video Support    
Flash Support    
Linux Operating System   

In our opinion – BlueHost – is one of the best web hosting companies out there today! Give them a try! I have personally hosted a site there since early 2004 and have only had minor issues that were easily solved with a quick call to customer support. The response times for trouble tickets are awesome!  They also have their own ICANN registrar – FastDomain so it’s cheap to add on more domains to your account. You could actually host hundreds of sites on one account!

Blogger vs. WordPress

This post might cause a little stir, but it’s not meant to.  I love both! I have blogs on both networks and also use the WordPress software on a different domain as well.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both Blogger / Blogspot and WordPress.  I just wanted to share my thoughts on both here.  So I decided to do a Blogger Review and WordPress Review.

Benefits of WordPress.com hosted service:

1. It’s got a lot of cool tools built in – widgets, wordpress themes, and the ability to add a domain.

2. I love the spam filtering tool.

3. Lots of good control over the layout/links/categories/look/feel of the blog.

4. Well…this one is obvious  – IT’S FREE!!! WOOHOO! Most free web hosting companies suck, but these guys rock.

5. They have quick responses to email questions and I heard they just started 24/7 support which rocks because the internet never sleeps.

6.  I love the tag tools. Instead of just searching tags on your site – it allows you to find topics on other peoples blogs. So if I make a post on a random topic – what good would a tag do if it’s the only post on that subject on my site – I wanna see what others are saying about the same thing!

Benefits of Blogger and Blogspot:

1. It’s completely free. Same as wordpress software and service.

2. You can add a domain which points/accesses your blog for FREE! We love free stuff. Actually, you can add a domain or subdomain. I point my blog. subdomain to the blogger on a few.

3. Easy to upload your own header and make it look like other pages of your hosted website.

4. You can make money on your blog. Blogger allows you to integrate your blog with adsense. WordPress.org software allows this as well, but you just have to insert the code into the page. WordPress.com doesn’t allow this because that’s what they do to make money.

5. Clean look and feel – lots of add-on tools.

Drawbacks of WordPress:

1. If you don’t use wordpress.com – you probably have to pay for a web hosting account. WordPress.com is ok, but to add a domain it costs money. But you get full control over layout and themes when you host it yourself.

2. One account per email address. What if I want to blog about diff. topics? And what does wordpress.com care if I have many blogs? The more content – the more adds they show. (actually, I was corrected in comment below…woops!)

3. No way to really monetize the site – I can’t add popups or other ads so it’d all be done with links.

Suggestion: If you pay the ad removal fee – you should be allowed to add your own ad codes to the site.  Just like a free hosting company would do.

Drawbacks of Blogger:

1. That stupid bar on top of every page! What if I don’t want people to know I’m using blogger. I guess it’s free and they don’t do ads, but I help google by putting google ads on the site.

2. I would like to control which blogs are associate with my profile instead of them listing all of them. What if I want a public profile, but want my blog to be anonymous? Well…you need to have sep. google account for that.

3. Hex code customization sucks.  You pretty much have to use the standard sets.

Suggestion: take that bar off if I add google ads.

I love WordPress.com, WordPress.org, and Blogger – the differences are many and WordPress seems to be a much more powerful solution and has many advanced tools for social tagging and other things.  Anyone care to share their other thoughts? Let me have it!

Powweb vs Globat Web Hosting

Today we’re reviewing PowWeb and Globat.  Head to Head comparison of two medium sized web hosting companies.

Similarities – I just noticed this today but Globat offers a first year price and then the second/third year prices go up. Powweb is doing almost the exact same thing.  Globat is starting with $4.44 then jumps to $6.95 if you signup for 2 years, but if you signup for 3 years with Globat you go to $5.95 after the first year. With Powweb you start at $5.77 and then go to $7.77 if you signup for 1 year. Now…if you signup for Powweb you can get the $5.77 pricing for the 2 years if you prepay the entire amount.

I would recommend that you go with the Powweb and prepay for the 2 years. It’s the best deal you can get between the two…BUT WAIT!!! If you’re not confused yet – just wait – with Globat you can get a free domain, but with Powweb – you have to pay $15/year to get one so that raises your price to about $7.00 anyways. So for $6.95… I would go with HostMonster over either!!!

Powweb includes:

UNLIMITED Disk Space
UNLIMITED Data Transfer
FREE Domain
Host Unlimited Domains
MySQL, PHP, CGI
SSL, FTP, Stats
Point & Click Site Builder
$100 in Yahoo & Google Ads Credits
E-Commerce Included
FrontPage/Dreamweaver ready
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

source: powweb review

 

Globat Includes:

Web Space 1000
GB Bandwidth 1000 GB
Free Domain Registration
Zero Set-up Fees
Expert Customer Service
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Host Additional Domains 9 more
E-mail and Web Mail Accounts Unlimited
MySQL Databases 3
Fully-Featured Control Panel
1-Click CGI Scripts
E-Commerce/SSL Mambo® Content Management System
GloBlog Blogging Software
Globat Photo Gallery
Easy Site Builder w/ Templates
QuickTime™ Streaming
RealAudio™ & RealVideo™ Streaming
Perl and CGI Support
PHP Support
FrontPage® Extensions
24/7/365 Phone and Chat Support
FTP Access
FTP Accounts
PromoPak™ Site Promotion Suite Over $1000 in Savings & Coupons

Source: Globat Review

So either look pretty good as far as features go. I’d still look for another unlimited plan like the hostmonster that includes a domain name and doesn’t have intro pricing because they will jack you when you renew.

GoDaddy Review

If you need a cheap domain name for your website – GoDaddy offers some really neat tools.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT GODADDY

Here are just some of the cool features we found:

Register a domain name for just $1.99 – they would actually lose money on this if it were just the domain name, but to get this pricing you must checkout with something in your cart that isn’t a domain name. So you could do this with hosting, privacy, or a number of other products.

CashParking – this is a really neat tool that you can use to monetize your domain names. I’m not aware of any other domain registration company that allows you to do this. You can pay an annual fee and get up to 80% of the revenue from your domains. Watchout though – you might want to make sure that you actually will get enough type in traffic to support this – otherwise – godaddy just owned you! They are the king of upsells and will make you think that you need one of everything they offer. Just make sure you can make more than what they will charge you for the service.

Web Hosting – they offer plans as cheap as $3.65 per month. I tried one of their hosting plans and found that the hosting control panel was a bit confusing, but after a while – I finally got it. It’s not as easy as Plesk, Ensim, or CPanel.   Watchout on the pricing though – to get the best price you have to signup for 36 months – as you do with almost any web hosting company. If you just do the 2 month plan it’ll cost you $4.29/mo. It’s always better to check out the refund policy of the web host to see if you can get your money back if you’re not satisfied. Then signup for the big discount plan which is usually 2-3 years – as a percentage – the savings is HUGE!

Domain forwarding, domain masking, domain parking, for sale pages, etc. These are almost standard now, but their interface is really easy to use in the Domain Control Center.

Full DNS Control – Manage MX Records, A Records, CNAMES, and more with this feature. This will enable you to point different subdomains or send all wildcard traffic to your domain name – which is really cool! If you want to host your email on a different server – this will cut down on your server processes and save you bandwidth, server resources, etc.  This also allows you to host blog.domain.com at a different server than domain.com – so you can host different elements of your site on different servers.

SSL Certificates – these are some of the cheapest SSL certificates we have seen on the web – they offer different levels of SSL so you want to make sure you get the right encryption level and service.

Site Builder, Logo Design, and Web Templates – these are some cool tools. WebSite Tonight is an alright service with rivals that of Ipowerweb’s vDeck – which has a built in web builder.

For more information – there is a godaddy review on a review site of domain name registrars.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT GODADDY