Tag: #webhostingreview

Web Hosting Reviews

Free vs. Paid Web Hosting Review

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imageofserverroom30-2When it comes to web hosting, you’ve probably heard of the terms free hosting and paid hosting. The difference between the two is like the name suggests – one is free and the other requires payment. The decision of whether to choose paid or free hosting ultimately lies in the nature of your website. Although the thought of saving money is attractive, free hosting, like many other free things has disadvantages that you should contemplate before making up your mind.

Free Hosting

One of the trends with free hosting services — and why they often suffer during the reviewing and ranking process — is the amount of advertisements that appear on each page of your website. Visitors may see an ad on each of your web pages or alternatively, they may be greeted with a pop up banner after each click. Either way, this does prove to be frustrating for the potential customer and portrays a lack of professionalism. If you are running a business website, this means lots of lost profits.

Be Prepared for Poor Customer Reviews

Your site may well experience an increased amount of downtime. When you don’t pay for a service, you can’t exactly make any demands. Free hosting sites rarely go out of their way to be reachable by their subscribers. They are not being paid for the service anyway, so they are not obligated to be dependable. This leads to the other disadvantage of virtually non-existent customer support. These free hosts rarely have live customer support and users often depend on the FAQ page for help. You should expect limited space with free web hosts. You are allocated a certain amount of disk space, and if you need more space, you will probably have to pay for it, by upgrading to the sites paid packages or perhaps moving to a paying service. If you are running an ecommerce website that requires customers to pay online via credit card, the chances of getting any sales are slim, since customers tend to be paranoid about fraud, security and privacy. Most free hosting companies don’t support secure server web servers. If you have an online business that depends on selling ad space to survive, you don’t very well on a free hosting service, since many of them don’t allow you to sell advertising space. The most obvious set back of free web hosts is the long domain names. They often require you to have a subdomain of the host company’s name. This will affect your traffic, as most potential customers will not be able to remember the website name. It also does not give a professional impression to your site nor will it earn you stellar reviews. When it comes to web hosting, you’ve probably heard of the terms free hosting and paid hosting. The difference between the two is like the name suggests – one is free and the other requires payment. The decision of whether to choose paid or free hosting ultimately lies in the nature of your website. Although the thought of saving money is attractive, free hosting, like many other free things has disadvantages that you should contemplate before making up your mind.

The Disadvantages of Free Hosting

One of the trends with free hosting services is the amount of advertisements that appear on each page of your website. Visitors may see an ad on each of your web pages or alternatively, they may be greeted with a pop up banner after each click. Either way, this does prove to be frustrating for the potential customer and portrays a lack of professionalism. If you are running a business website, this means lots of lost profits. Be prepared for an increased amount of downtime. When you don’t pay for a service, you can’t exactly make any demands. Free hosting sites rarely go out of their way to be reachable by their subscribers. They are not being paid for the service anyway, so they are not obligated to be dependable. This leads to the other disadvantage of virtually non-existent customer support. These free hosts rarely have live customer support and users often depend on the FAQ page for help. You should expect limited space with free web hosts. You are allocated a certain amount of disk space, and if you need more space, you will probably have to pay for it, by upgrading to the sites paid packages or perhaps moving to a paying service. If you are running an ecommerce website that requires customers to pay online via credit card, the chances of getting any sales are slim, since customers tend to be paranoid about fraud, security and privacy. Most free hosting companies don’t support secure server web servers. If you have an online business that depends on selling ad space to survive, you don’t very well on a free hosting service, since many of them don’t allow you to sell advertising space. The most obvious set back of free web hosts is the long domain names. They often require you to have a subdomain of the host company’s name. This will affect your traffic, as most potential customers will not be able to remember the website name. It also does not give a professional impression to your site.

Web Hosting Reviews of Free Hosting Services

Although, there are quite a few disadvantages of free hosting, it is suitable for beginners who want to explore with websites. It can also be a good option for people who simply want to run a personal or family website. If your website doesn’t require a lot of space or you don’t have the finances to pay for hosting, free hosting is available. Some of the free hosting companies out there are Weebly.com, Wix.com, Webs.com, Jimdo.com, and WordPress.com. These service providers offer site building tools that are easy to use and even a person who is not technically inclined can use them to create a fully functional website. These websites offer the best free hosting when it comes to customer support, features and overall navigation of the websites.

Web Hosting Reviews

HostNine Web Hosting Features

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hostnine300x300From its humble beginnings in 2006, HostNine is has risen to become an industry leader, and won various industry awards in the process — including NCM Online’s 2015 Award for Best Budget Web Hosting. With data centers spread across three continents, this host has the infrastructural footprint to offer its clients fast network speeds. Some of the main HostNine web hosting features include:

Shared Hosting

The shared hosting offering consists of three packages: Personal, Business and Enterprise. The Personal hosting package will only set you back $5.29 per month or $399 annually, $6.79 per month or $59.99 annually for the Business package, and $11.99 monthly or $99.99 annually for the Enterprise package. Standard features include cPanel access, one-click installation (Softaculous Installer), world class data security and backup, 99.9% uptime, Cron Jobs, AwStats, unlimited POP3/IMAP email account, SSH access, unlimited ftp accounts, and compatibility with popular technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP 5, CGI-bin, Zend, MySQL 5, Perl 5 and JavaScript.

Dedicated Servers

If you want to host your site on a dedicated server, HostNine has this base covered with three competitively priced packages. The first option comes with 1TB HDD (RAID 1) disk or 128 GB SSD, 4 cores, 8 GB of RAM, 500 GB bandwidth, and 4 IPs. For these features, you will only pay $109.99 per month for monthly billing and $99.99 per month for yearly billing. For individuals and enterprises that require more bandwidth, HostNine offers a package that comes with 1 TB HDD (RAID 1) disk or 128 GB SSD, 8 cores, 16 GB RAM, 1,000 GB bandwidth, and 8 IPs for only $129.99 for month-to-month billing and $109.99 per month for annual billing. If your site receives heavy traffic, go for the third package that comes with 1 TB HDD (RAID 1) disk or 128 GB SSD, 2 (×12) cores, 32 GB RAM, 2,000 GB bandwidth, and 16 IPs for $199.99 per month for month billing or $179.99 per month for yearly billing. Standard features across all packages include cPanel/WHM, Softaculous installer, KSPLICE, free migration assistance, weekly data backups, ClamAV antivirus, and SSD caching.

Cloud Hosting

For businesses that offer cloud-based services/solutions, HostNine has competitively priced packages compared to other players in the same space. For a cloud-hosting package with one core, 15 GB disk, 1 GB RAM, 1,000 GB bandwidth, and 2 IPs, HostNine will charge you $14.99 per month for monthly billing and $13.99 per month for annual billing. You can upgrade to a package with two cores, 25 GB disk, 2 GB RAM, 1,500 GB bandwidth, and 2 IPs for $24.99 monthly for month-to-month billing and $21.99 per month for annual billing. Additionally, HostNine has three other packages that range from two to three cores, 50 to 150 GB disk space, 4-16 GB RAM, and 2,000 to 5,000 GB bandwidth. Annual charges for the latter packages range from $420 to $720, but you can enjoy huge discounts if you opt for the annual billing option. In comparison, companies such as RackSpace, Liquid Web, and similar hosts charge from anywhere from $870 -$1,000 annually for cloud hosting services that in most cases are inferior to those offered by HostNine feature wise.

Reseller Hosting

You can start you own business by purchasing and reselling any of HostNine’s four reseller plans: 19 to 999 GB storage space, 500 to 5,000 GB bandwidth, 19 to 499 resold account, and Reseller Central TM. Prices range from $14.99 to $69.99 per month if billed monthly and $13.99 to $49.99 per month for yearly billing.

Domain Registration and Transfer

If you do not have a domain name for your website, you can use HostNine’s domain registration and transfer service to get one. Prices vary depending on the Top Level Domain (TLD) you would like to use. Nevertheless, prices range from $15 to $45 regardless of the TLD you choose. In addition, you can perform multi-domain or multi-year registration using a user-friendly domain dashboard.

Support

HostNine has a well-staffed support center that is available round-the-clock, seven days a week. The aim of this US-based team is to deliver a response to any client within minutes. To get in touch with them, you can send an email, use live chat, call via phone, or create a “trouble ticket” and submit it to the helpdesk. You can also follow HostNine on Twitter and Facebook.

Affiliate Program

If you are a web developer/designer or an IT savvy person constantly bugged by friends to help them set up sites, you can sign up to become an affiliate and earn $50 per customer referred to HostNine.

Conclusion

HostNine is a web hosting company that prides itself in having world-class infrastructure, a dedicated team and a wide range of feature-rich solutions. This means clients can expect minimal or no disruptions running their sites on secure servers that have redundant networks, fail-over protection and RAID-50 protected arrays. Click here to learn more about HostNine >>>

HostNine Coupon Code

Web Hosting Reviews

Is HostGator The Right Web Hosting Provider For You?

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hg-logoHosting a website can be a breeze even for the non-techies — thanks to professional hosting service providers offering a range of comprehensive hosting plans that cater to diverse web hosting needs. Inevitably, searching the web for hosting service providers is bound to draw attention to HostGator and several other popular hosting firms, making it mandatory to compare offerings before signing up for a plan. Is HostGator the right web hosting provider for someone who needs to host a personal blog? Can it handle the hosting needs of a mid-size business? How do they address the requirements of a high-end, data-intensive business that demands dedicated hosting with advanced security features? These are but a few basic questions that crop up when talking about website hosting. To begin with, HostGator offers shared hosting services — the most basic hosting plan essential for almost anyone wanting to host a website, even if it’s going to be a single page site. Advanced plans are available as well to meet evolving requirements of a growing company, with dedicated hosting and virtual private servers to help scale-up operations, as and when required. It is possible to smoothly ramp up operations as a business expands its scope and geographic presence across the world.

Signing up for HostGator services ensures:

  • 24×7 customer and technical support throughout the year — via email, phone and live chat.
  • Potent hardware infrastructure to meet specific requirements and software capabilities.
  • The latest versions of server, network and security software that ensure a safe hosting environment.
  • Access to a web development environment with on-demand installation of custom software (WordPress, etc.), templates, themes and scripts.
  • A range of professional services, including but not limited to website design, migration and SEO.
  • Most importantly, a reliable external support network which can be tapped to tackle a problem beyond the scope of in-house experts.
  • 99% guaranteed up-time.
  • Freebies.
  • Latest cPanel features.
There are several sites online evaluating the offerings of HostGator compared to its competitors. Those seeking specific details and in-depth analysis will find such review articles beneficial. As for hobbyists, students, casual bloggers who are not interested in free hosting and want to build a serious reputation for their online site, HostGator’s shared services are likely to meet their needs. Be warned though that the company’s services can be pricier than other service providers, who also offer similar services packing most of the essential features. Free domain, however, is not available and additional domain names are limited too. HostGator does not own a data center. For data storage and network services, it teams up with a third-party firm which is yet to falter on delivering the guaranteed service quality. However, this dependency may influence response time to queries or customer complaints pertaining to network or hardware issues. Also, money-back plans are limited to 45 days, compared to unlimited money-back offered by a few other service providers. Web hosting is a vital service that needs quality infrastructure, software and support functions. The expertise and credibility of reputed service providers offer a competitive edge to businesses, which need not house necessary resources to host and manage their websites. As for individuals, hosting a website cannot get any easier. Since reliable, quality services come with a price tag, it is important to not choose a hosting network solely on the basis of price. Click here to learn more about HostGator >>>

HostGator Coupon Code

Web Hosting Reviews

Seeking a Reliable Web Hosting Solution? Try A2

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hosting-server-technology-closeup-photo-0182-300x300 Although A2 is not the cheapest hosting service available, it is certainly among the most affordable. This company also offers an impressive array of hosting plans, making it possible for all private consumers and companies to find options that fit their needs and their budgets. This A2 Hosting review will take an in-depth look at this company and the services and features it supplies.

Lots of Free Services and No Over-Selling

When just getting started with A-2 Hosting, many consumers discover that this business is unlike most other hosting providers in that it doesn’t upsell service additions that will enhance its basic packages. In fact, this is a sentiment that is frequently seen in the typical A2 Hosting review. With many other providers, these additional features can end up in the virtual shopping cart and may be overlooked when checking out. If shoppers aren’t prudent, they can wind up spending a lot of unnecessary cash on service additions that they neither want or need. Another advantage of working with A2 Hosting is the fact that they offer a number of free service features that usually cost money elsewhere. These include impressive security tools, SSH and backup tools. Thus, while their upfront costs may not be the lowest, they do provide great overall value while still charging very reasonable rates.

What Subscribers Can Expect

No A2 Hosting review would be complete without a comprehensive list of the different hosting plans that are available. This company offers WordPress, web, managed VPS, cloud and dedicated hosting. There are even many flexible levels of each of these service types. Each plan comes with a risk-free guarantee, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, extremely fast SSDs and a Guru/Help crew that is available 24 hours per day, every day of the week and all throughout the year. There are even affordable packages available for those interested in reseller hosting.

Data Centers

A2 Hosting has three data centers and subscribers can take their pick from any one of these. There is an A2 Hosting data center in Amsterdam, one in Iceland and another in Missouri. This company owns all of its web servers exclusively and thus, there is a high level of accountability and the ability to identify and resolve problems quickly. This is one large reason why this provider is known for delivering on its 99.9% uptime guarantee. There is a redundant network, a redundant power supply and optimal data center security. Each data center is SSAE 16 Certified and impeccably well-maintained.

Solid State Drive Hosting

There is the added benefit of being able to get SSD or solid state driving hosting for a very nominal, additional cost. This can improve performance by as much as 300%. When tested by PrestaShop, the initial page load time for this service was just 1.9 seconds.

Transparency

It is important to note that A2 Hosting is exceedingly comfortable about the services they supply. They make all of their data concerning uptime public so that anyone can check their ability to live up to their uptime promise. In-depth reports concerning A2 Hosting servers are readily available on their website.

cPanel Control Panel

A2 Hosting uses cPanel for its control panel, which is popular and very intuitive and user-friendly. Softaculous is available inside of the panel that allows users to install content management systems such as WordPress and other scripts with just several clicks. Thus, subscribers don’t have to be technical wizards in order to take maximum advantage of this hosting service. This also means that whether you have a massive online operation or a relatively small one, getting your site live and active won’t take a lot of time.

Do-It-Yourself Site Builder Doesn’t Require Coding

A2 Hosting also has a special tool that makes it possible to build a comprehensive site without extensive coding skills. It is an easy-to-use tool that will help you have an attractive and functional site up within mere minutes. This is true even for those who lack coding and design experience. With well-maintained data centers, a wealth of service options and competitively priced hosting plans, A2 Hosting is well-worth considering. This company is able to deliver on its uptime guarantee and provides an array of impressive features absolutely free. Best of all, A2 Hosting regularly offers a number of special discounts to new subscribers. Additional information ->

A2 Hosting Promo Code

Web Hosting Reviews

HostRocket: Independent Host Continues to Defy Odds

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HosstRocket web site screenshot new. HostRocket is a NY-based privately owned web hosting company. It’s been around since 1999 at the height of the technology boom. Unlike most of its peers, its funding has come from the owners themselves and not from investors. This gave it the freedom to make decisions that would be beneficial for the business itself whereas others were being pushed to squeeze out every ounce of profit for their funders. More than a decade on, it continues to grow steadily, enjoy a good financial position, and remain debt-free. Those who are interested in signing up for an account with the company can choose from the following offerings:

Basic Shared Hosting

Every webhost has something for the masses and this firm is no exception. Its basic shared hosting plan is the ideal solution for people who are thinking of creating their own personal site. Small businesses can also make use of it to gain more exposure for their brand without having to reach too deep into their pockets. Like most packages in this category, customers can look forward to unlimited storage, bandwidth, websites, and email accounts. It is far from being the cheapest in the industry but going for long-term contracts can substantially reduce spending. Monthly plans go for $11.98 per month while biennial plans go for half the price at only $5.99 per month.

SSD Shared Hosting

This can be considered as an upgrade from the HostRocket basic plan discussed above. Accounts are hosted using advanced servers with SSD technology for storage. These have better speed, reliability and efficiency compared to regular disk drives. Avail of the biennial contracts to save on costs. The SSD Premium package comes with 5 GB storage and 200 GB bandwidth for $9.98/month. SSD Professional bumps things up a notch to 20 GB storage and 300 GB bandwidth for $13.98/month. SSD Executive provides 40 GB storage and 400 GB bandwidth for $18.98/month. All of these come with one free domain name and RAID configuration.

Reseller VPS Hosting

HostRocket is also proud of its virtual private server hosting services provided by its sister company DotBlock. This VPS hosting package is being offered to resellers who would like to use the company’s popular platform to launch their own hosting business. Being hosted on the cloud provides customers with the ability to quickly scale up if they need more resources and always be confident that their data is protected. Packages start at just $9.95 which comes with one block. Customers get one processor core, 1GB RAM, 20 GB SSD storage, and 500 GB bandwidth. There is an optional cPanel license available at $14.95 for simplified account management.

Dedicated Hosting

The biggest companies require massive resources for its sites due to the anticipated traffic and the need to guarantee quality service to its followers. Businesses that need the best cannot settle for anything less than dedicated hosting. HostRocket currently offers four different types of server that are known for their performance and reliability. The cheapest is the 16GB Intel E5-2620 which goes for $119/month. This comes with 12 visible cores and 16GB of memory. The most advanced is the 32GB Dual Intel E5-2620 at $169/month. It comes with 24 visible cores and 32GB of memory. All of their dedicated hosting packages have 15TB bandwidth, 100Mbit uplink speed, and free RAID 1. Additional information ->

How to Install WordPress on HostRocket