How to Select A Reliable Web Host for Your Virtual Corporation
With thousands of web hosting companies to choose from, you have plenty of opportunity to select the one that’s right for your business. It is always a good idea to research web host companies before signing on with one, especially one that requires a certain term of service.
Though there are a large number of free web hosting services, there are many reasons to select a paid hosting company. In order to be a professional and successful virtual corporation, you need your own domain name. If you use a free service, your domain name will be something like bluehost.
This is difficult to remember, and it’s a big-time hint to savvy internet users that you’re running a small-time company. Also, free web hosts don’t provide you with your own e-mail addresses. An e-mail address of flowersforever@yahoo.com is another tip-off that you’re the sole employee of your business. Fortunately, you can find a good web host for a low price. A basic package for web hosting will generally run you between $5 and $10 a month at www.DomainAbbey.com far less than the cost of your internet connection.
Other than the ability to have your own domain name, there are several things you should consider when selecting a web host.
Free e-mail addresses: you@yourdomain.com. Paid web hosting services generally provide you with a certain number of e-mail addresses that match your domain name. You can configure them to be sent to an offline e-mail program such as Eudora or Outlook Express, or to any web-based e-mail account like @yahoo.com or @msn.com. You can also distribute free e-mail addresses to any employees or contractors you hire, and configure them to be sent to their primary email address. As mentioned before, having multiple e-mail addresses helps you to create virtual “departments” that make your company look bigger and more competent.
Storage space. Web pages you create are stored on a file server maintained by your web host company. You should ensure your web host provides you with sufficient storage space for your files. If you plan to have several dozen (or several hundred) pages with product pictures or other multiple images, you will need more storage space than if you run a consulting service or other business that relies on text-based information.
Bandwidth. Though not as much of a problem as it once was, you should make sure your web host provides enough bandwidth to keep your web site running smoothly. What is bandwidth? Technically, it is the amount of information that can be sent over a network connection in a given period of time. In plain English, it is whether or not your web site traffic will exceed the limits of the web host’s server. If you have limited bandwidth, at some points your site may become unavailable for viewing. Customers trying to visit your site will view either a generic Error 404 Page Not Found message, or a customized message from the web hosting company stating that your site has exceeded its bandwidth allowance for the day, and they should try again tomorrow.
Most will not. If your site is graphics-heavy, you should look for a web host that offers a higher bandwidth allowance (sometimes referred to as “data transfer allowance”).
Design options. Unless you are already a graphic designer or a computer programmer, you probably don’t know enough HTML coding to build a web site from scratch. Many web hosts offer customizable page templates or easy-to-use drag-and-drop design programs for site building. Templates are a great way to create a professional-looking web site with a minimal amount of fuss. If you plan to use an application like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver to create your pages, you don’t need this option. However, you will need an FTP (file transfer protocol) program to upload the pages to the hosting server.
Term contracts and discounts. Some web hosts require that you sign a contract for a certain term of service with them, usually 12 or 24 months. Others offer service on a month-to-month basis. It is better to find a host without a contract; that way, if you are dissatisfied with the service you can switch web host providers (and keep your domain name) without having to pay a cancellation fee. Also, many web hosts offer discounts for long-term customers or those who pay for several months of service up front. A few offer bundled packages, such as a web site and a shopping cart system for one lower combined price.
Customer service and technical support. Just as you plan to provide outstanding customer service for your clients, your web host company should provide outstanding customer service for you. Be sure the company lists a phone number on their main web site, and has 24/7 technical support available, either by phone or live web chat. Because your virtual corporation exists mainly in cyberspace, you will more than likely need technical support at some point—and you don’t want to have to wait until “the next business day” to find out why your site is suddenly displaying Japanese characters or empty boxes with little red X’s where your images used to be.
Expandability. As your business expands, your web site should have the ability to grow with it. A good web host will offer the option to upgrade your hosting package to include more storage, bandwidth and features as you need it. If you find that your company has outgrown your current host’s capacity, it can be a nightmare trying to switch your domain name to another providers and transfer all of your files to another server. You can eliminate this potential for disaster by ensuring the web host you choose is flexible and reliable.
Add-ons and additional services. Would your customers be interested in knowing their local weather and news headlines when they visit your site? How about taking a fun poll and seeing instant results? Or the ability to listen to audio clips? Many web hosting companies offer a variety of fun, free add-ons to make your site a great place to visit.
You can get free traffic counters, site-specific search boxes, interactive forms, and even mini-games that display right on your site. Some web hosts also offer additional services such as web tracking (so you can find out how many people visited your site and how they found it), shopping cart services (which automates your purchasing process for you without relying on a third-party payment system) and more.
Glossary of Web Hosting Terms
Glossary of web hosting related terms
| Access | Microsoft’s advanced database creation and maintenance software. It is very popular among developers who maintain online databases with Windows NT. | |
| Active Server Page (ASP) | ASPs are HTML documents embedded with scripts (typically Microsoft’s VB Script or Jscript). These scripts are processed by the server prior to being transferred to the user. | |
| ActiveX | A set of properties that define how applications are to share information with each other. These properties are known as controls. | |
| Aliased Nameservers | An aliased nameserver is a nameserver that has been labeled as yours (the reseller’s) despite the fact it actually belongs to your Web hosting provider. This ensures that domains located on your server are listed as “ns.yourservername.com” instead of “ns.yourprovidersname.com”. Also see NAMESERVER below. | |
| Apache | One of the world’s most popular Web server programs, Apache was built by a group of open-source programmers and is often used because of its outstanding performance, strong security features and the fact that it is free. | |
| Application Service Provider | A third party that manages software applications for servers and networks. |
Different Kinds Of Web Hosting
There are different kinds of web hosting setups and dependent upon your website and budget, any of these may be the right type. This is not a discussion of the features a web hosting plan may offer – just a description general types of web hosting
1. Free Web Hosting
It is possible to get free web hosting accounts. These are great for small websites, but normally you have to have a banner ad at the top of every page. Some free accounts let you use your domain name (free virtual hosting) and with some your website address is a subdomain of the free hosting company (www.yoursitename.freehosting.com). This second type is called Free Sub-domain hosting.
Hosting for small websites can be very cheap, but If you can answer yes to all of the following questions, then free web hosting may be right for you.
- Don’t care about having ads at the top of every page in my website
- I don’t care about the performance / reliability of the website
- I don’t expect any customer support
- My website is very small and will never grow
2. Shared Hosting
This is the most common type of web hosting account and can be very low cost. With paid shared (virtual) hosting you pay a monthly fee and get a share on a server. For very low cost plans you may only have a small amount of disk space and a low amount of bandwidth (although this will probably not be a problem for the vast majority of websites). With cheap virtual hosting plans you maybe one site amongst hundreds on the same server – in this case reliability may suffer. For slightly more expensive plans you will probably find better reliability.
3. Dedicated Hosting
With dedicated hosting you have a full server dedicated to your website. This gives you a lot more freedom and you can host potentially hundreds of your own websites. Typically you will have access to the server just like you have access to your PC at home. Dedicated servers are normally reserved for large ecommerce type websites, sites that get a lot of visitors (thousands a day), or for people that want to start their own hosting company and sell shared hosting accounts. A dedicated server is more reliable, but also much more expensive being at least $100 a month vs $1 – $20 range of a shared hosting plan.
4. Colocated Hosting
This is very similar to dedicated hosting, except that you own the server rather than rent it. Your server is placed in the datacenter and connected to the Internet through the web hosting providers fast Internet connection. You will then pay a fee for maintenance and bandwidth.
IXWebHosting Review
IXWebHosting have been around since 1999 providing first class hosting services. They are a global company with offices located on nearly every continent, IX Web Hosting promise they have the right solution for your needs however big or small they might be. IX web hosting operates its own data centre which currently house over 750 servers. They own and maintain all of there equipment and rely on CISCO 12000 series routers and SONET reliability. They have a 100% 30 day money back guarantee, price freeze guarantee and promise 99.999% up-time. IX Web Hosting hosts over 200,000 domains.
web hosting plan
IXWebHosting have hosting plans suitable for the beginner, small business and enterprises offering something for everyone. These include IX Expert Plan for just $4.95/mo, with unlimited disk storage space and unlimited data transfer. IX Business Plus for $7.95/mo and IX unlimited Pro for $12.95/mo. Both packages include the award winning guarantees of 99.9% uptime with track record, 30 day money back and their price freeze and 1 hour support guarantee.
Specials
IX Web Hosting has several Linux and Windows platform hosting plans available at super low prices and with unbelievable amounts of storage/transfer allowances. You don’t have to worry about that unexpected price increase, due to their “Price-Freeze Guarantee”. They also offer an “Any-Time” money back guarantee and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This, along with a tech support response guarantee of 1-hour makes their offerings nearly unbeatable. They also offer 2 free domain names, free setup and a number of features not found at other web hosts, such as a comprehensive site builder program, scripts and more. Each account also comes with 8 dedicated IP addresses, which is not usually offered at other hosts and also rare for an account priced this low. Now, also with each new account, comes $50 advertising credits at Microsoft AdCenter, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords and more discounts, totalling over $458!
I took a more in depth look into the key features of the IX Business Plus package; this package includes unlimited disk storage space with the ability to add up to 8 domains and 300 sub-domains. 6 dedicated IP addresses with unlimited data transfer. SSL hosting and shared SSL are included as are cold fusion, ASP and Frontpage extensions. CGI-BIN, PERL, PHP and SSI support is included also. This plan also includes 2 free Domain registration for life.
Reliability
IX Web Hosting maintains an excellent datacenter, with lightning speed web page load times, from its fault tolerant, redundant and secure network. It employs over 750+ servers in-house and are adding more daily. Cisco routers and Sonet reliability ensure your web site is always up and running. Their 99.9% uptime guarantee also helps you rest assured your site is in good hands. As quoted on the IX Web Hosting web site, “A Host Without Its Own Data Center, Like A House With No Foundation.” We firmly believe this is the case and that you should always choose a host with it’s own in-house datacenter, as IX Web Hosting capably maintains.
Control Panel
IX Web Hosting utilizes the easy-to-use H-Spere Control Panel. Being icon based makes building, or making changes to your site a breeze. It also offers realtime e-mail account management, domain management and installation of scripts, or databases, at the touch of a button.
Support
Full online support is given in 3 easy ways, by phone where you can reach and talk with a “real human being” 24/7 toll free at anytime day or night. Live chat giving you the opportunity to chat one on one, anytime day or night. A ticket service is also available allowing you to e-mail any questions or concerns you might have. Along with toll-free 24/7 phone support if your problem needs to be dealt with verbally. That said, customer support is not an area of service IX Web Hosting takes lightly!
Basic Knowledge of Web Hosting
What is web hosting
Since web hosting is one of the foundations of the internet, do you really understand what is web hosting? A simple illustration is your computer. Imagine you home PC with a quad core processors, a few Gigabytes of memory, a server motherboard and an extremely big hard drive. That sounds like a server computer in data centers and the storage space in the hard drive is what we call web hosting. Not forgetting a quality fiber optic connection to the internet access point making the files stored in the hard drive accessible by the world.
What do web hosting company do
What web hosting providers like Bluehost and Lunarpages do is to provide the storage space in the hard drive. They divide the hard drive into small partitions and let subscribers to store their files and data there. While preparing the storage, they also need to maintain and safe guard the internet connections making sure that no traffic congestions will happen. And in return the subscribers will pay them monthly for the service.
Why do I need web hosting
Basically you can do a lot of things with web hosting. One of the most popular things to do is blogging you can either write a hobbyist or a business blog. With hobbyist blog you can share your thoughts and hobby while building up a online network; with business blog you can share your products online and have some customer service there. Besides blogging, you can build an internet business that make money from affiliate programs and Google adsense or even better you can have your own online store. Also you could use the web space as a data back up centers for your data and files.
What do I need to do to get a web hosting
You need to shop for web hosting. You need to properly choose a web hosting service. Read some hosting review and do some surveys on hosting providers. Something need your attentions is that the cheapest web hosting doesn’t mean the best and also the most expensive one might not suit your needs.
I would like to emphasize again that the evolutions of internet is quick. If you would like to be advance in online tech stuffs, web hosting is something you must learn about. If you are going to host your first blog or website, get your own hosting and you will discover a lot more fun with it.
Jumpline Web Hosting – Free Trial for 90 Days
Jumpline was founded in 1997, Jumpline, Inc. has been servicing over 75,000 small business owner’s web hosting needs. Jumpline.com offers every level of web hosting from simple shared solutions up to complex (VPS) and dedicated servers.
The availability of your webtime is a major concern. Jumpline offers 99.99% server uptime – for a 30 day month it’s less than 5 minutes when your site is unavailable.
You will have access to 24/7 email ticket support. You will also receive toll free phone support Monday-Friday 9am-9pm.
3 Months FREE Web Hosting
Get a 3-month free trial of Jumpline Basic Plan (shared webhosting server). Jumpline requires you to have a valid credit card number to secure the free shared server hosting offer, but you will not be billed unless you choose to keep the service after the free hosting offer expires in 3 months. The webhosting server includes Plesk web panel, Shared SSL support, Front Page server extensions, addon domains, and cron jobs allowed.
No hidden cost, no hidden agenda, and not a scam! This 90 days trial period gives customers the full feature of Jumpline’s Basic Plan. Your free web hosting account will be set up within a few hours. Jumpline can assist you in transferring your domain name to their nameservers.
Dotster.com Coupons: Get Cheap Domain and Web Hosting
Dotster.com is one of the world’s largest domain name registrars with more than 3 million domain holdings. Dotster.com provides a range of advanced and easy-to-use Internet solutions and customer support.
The New Dotster: Buy A Domain, Get One Free! Use Coupon Code GETONEFREE
Dotster.com helps you set up your own website with their domain name search, domain name registration, web design, web hosting, and virtual private servers. Dotster.com also offers domain services including transfer services and privacy protection.
Set up your own website with affordable domain name registration and web hosting services using Dotster.com coupon codes. With Coupon Saver’s selection of Dotster.com promo codes, saving money for Internet solutions is easier.
Now register a domain for $2.99 only. Cheap domain registeration offer ends this Saturday and is not advertised on Dotster.com as it is only for Dotster’s existing customers. Once you are about to complete the process of registering the domain, enter the coupon code 299domain in the check out section of the billing process to avail this offer.
Dotster also offers discount on Domain Transfer. To transfer one domain all you have to pay is $7.99 and get a year extension on the domain. To take advantage of this offer, enter the coupon code: DEC799 into the coupon box during checkout.
Transfer your domain for just $6.99* and get a year free!
Dotster.com now provide coupons for all annual hosting plans! 25% for Dotster.com and Hostlane.com, 15% for Domain.com and Mydomain.com.
Coupons:
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Hostlane Hosting Coupon: HostlaneAnnualHost25
Domain.com Coupon: DomainAnnualHost15
MyDomain.com Coupon: MyDomainAnnualHost15
Some Tips for Cheap Web Hosting
We are going to talk about some of the great features that cheap web hosting companies offer that makes getting your new web site up and running super easy.
Live Customer Support
You are going to want to make sure that the company that you are going to be hosting with offers live customer support. This way, if you have any kind of problems while setting up your web page, you can ask them for help. Most cheap web hosting companies even offer 24 hours support. So no matter what day it is or what time it is, you can find the help that you need. Be sure that the company that you are signing up with offers this feature.
Site Builder Hosting
Site Builder Hosting is great if you don’t have your own program such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver to design your new website. Web hosting companies that support fantastico has a one click install for website builders and template programs such as template express. Some hosts have their own templates that they have designed themselves that they offer for free if you are hosting your webpage with them. Hostmonster and Bluehost both offer a very good Drag and Drop site builder. There are also other programs free with fantastico and Simplescripts with dozens of templates and site building tools.
No Start Up Fees
When it comes to cheap web hosting companies and cheap web hosting plan you are going to want to make sure that they do not charge start up fees. When you are starting up a new web page, the last thing that you want is a start up fee. Thus, this is one of the things that you are going to want to check for before you get involved with a company. Otherwise, you may end up spending more than what you want to spend.
Lunarpages Hosting Review
Lunarpages basic hosting plan has attractive features that are perfect for building either personal blog or business website. lunar pages hosting has recently gone unlimited for their storage and bandwidth as well as add on domains. This means subscriber can host as many website as they wish in just 1 account. This is indeed good news for those who plan to have a few websites.
Lunarpages Features
Lunarpages is rather comprehensive with unlimited POP3 email accounts, MySQL databases, different e commerce features and etc. The hosting supports PHP4 and PHP5, PERL, PHYTHON, SSI and etc. Besides Lunarpages web hosting is compatible with Frontpage and Dreamweaver. With all these features, you can easily come out with some great websites.
On top of the hosting features, the free website scripting is included to enhance the performance of website. Fantastico script library, blog software such as wordpress, content management system, b2evolution and etc are all powerful scripts provided in the hosting. If you are planning to have an auction website, PHPAuction is perfect for you; if you want to have a business customer support section, there are 6 tools available for you; of you want an image gallery, 4Images gallery is available. The list goes on and on. Basically you can have whatever you can imagine with Lunarpages basic hosting.
Lunarpages Performance
As one the leader in the web hosting industry, Lunarpages has very stable uptime. 99% of uptime is what Lunarpages has achieved. Lunarpages has a proprietary Active Response Protocol that not only monitors the system for attacks and outages, it continuously benchmarks the system for web, ftp, and email performance – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their staff addresses the issue before it is a problem, which ensures that your website stays on line.
The shared hosting plans are very generous and given LunarPages history of reliability and service, companies and individuals in need of unparalleled reliability and scalability to unmanaged platforms ought to strongly consider LunarPages Web Hosting. LunarPages Web Hosting delivers precisely what it promises – the speed, reliability, and service demanded by those who have the highest expectations in web hosting. LunarPages is a favorite among web hosting enthusiasts on the major web hosting forums.
Lunarpages Customer Support
In generally, lunarpages hosting is a large web hosting company offering wide range of web hosting services which including shared hosting, windows hosting, reseller hosting, vps hosting, dedicated server, and web design services. A complete range of web hosting product and services can be found at lunarpages web hosting.
A good web hosting company need to have a good technical support team. How good is lunarpages support team? Is lunarpages support team easily accessible? What is the waiting time and response time from lunarpages support team? You need to find out these!
Lunarpages support team can only be reach through phone support or email support. Either you give them a phone call or create an email ticket to reach lunarpages support. Lunarpages problem is that they not having live chat support available online!! Lunarpages live chat only available for sales chat, no technical support chat available at this moment.
Lunarpages Pricing
Lunarpages is so far the lowest price hosting that I have come across. With all the above mentioned features, how much do you think they charge for the basic hosting? Make a wild guess. It is only $4.95 per month. This pricing comes with 12 and 24 months plan. Indeed the price is more than reasonable for what you get. Perhaps Lunarpages is promoting hard to fight their competitors now.
As conclusions Lunarpages hosting is a good plan no matter for business owners or hobbyist bloggers. Their hosting features are more than enough to build something decent online; their customer support get your back covered; their hosting technology is world class. Albeit they are now not as popular as compared to 1 year back, their experiences and background in the industry are solid that definitely could help the subscribers up.
Visit Lunarpages Web Hosting Official Website
FatCow Hosting Review
Around 2,000 new customers sign up for FatCow web hosting each week. Any host who is growing as fast as FatCow must be an exceptional web hosting provider. In our Fatcow review you will find that the host offers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, and even a free domain name for only $66 per year!
What’s Included With FatCow Hosting Plan
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- FREE Domain Name
- Simple to use site builders
- Easy online store tools
- Blogs, photo galleries
- Legendairy Support
Compared to other web hosts, FatCow provides packages that only cost $66 per year. This packages offers unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage space. It also comes with great tools to help you build your website. You can have shopping carts, MySQL databases and others. Your FatCow Plan includes: Google Webmaster Tools, $50 Google AdWords credits, $25 Yahoo! Search credits, RatePoint, WordPress, phpBB, GBook and ShopSite Shopping Cart … we warned you. They are so confident in their service, they also offer a full 30 day money back guarantee in all their packages.
Then, there is question of the reliability and I must say that FatCow comes with an amazing reliability with superb security. Their support provides 24 hours service everyday with data backup done everyday. They also have power generator and network monitoring done constantly. When there is any problem, the staff in FatCow will solve the problem in the fastest time possible. Each technician is skilled and can handle the task with assured trust.
There is 24 hours of support, daily backups and skilled technician ready to back you up anytime. All this comes at an affordable price. With huge amount of bandwidth and disk storage at only $99 per year, users can also get their hand with the unlimited databases, email functions, FrontPage extensions, PHP, e-commerce and much more. This is not mentioning their super customer support that users can access via online support, toll free numbers and support tickets. This is definitely a great value for money.
FatCow Coupon
Fatcow is currently is running limited-time promotions on its popular hosting plan by providing a $30 discount on its fatcow hosting plan. Also, any new coupon code or promotion offered by Fatcow will be identified on this page as soon as the special offers become available.
About FatCow.com:
FatCow began in 1998 in Albuquerque, NM. They are committed to providing the best value and customer service to small and medium-sized business users and aim to make web building a fun process. They offer all the tools a small business needs to get started, including add-ons and marketing services for search engine optimization. Clients can be sure that their site is safe as FatCow uses a load-balanced platform and has backup generator system for maximum uptime. Customer testimonials can be found on their website.
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