Best Web Hosting Reviews

With so many web hosting companies cropping up in the already crowded field, it has become quite a mind boggling task to choose one which not only reaches one’s level of expectation but is also affordable. Hostgator is one of the leading reliable, efficient and cost effective hosting companies that one can choose with no regrets. The company, which was founded by Brent Oxley in 2002 in a dorm room, has grown tremendously to become one of the most preferred web hosting providers. The over 20 business awards it has received over the years can attest to its popularity and efficiency. Hostgator accommodates all types of clients, mostly web designers and developers, without considering whether they are novice or veteran freelancers.

What packages do they offer?

Hostgator provides its clients with three distinct shared hosting packages which they can choose from. Finding a plan which can be suitable for your needs is no longer a hustle as the packages they offer covers any hosting needs that you might have. The hatchling plan, which comes with a 4 US dollar charge per month, is the cheapest. This plan allows you to establish one domain name with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space. This is perfect for those want to put up one blog or website and is considered an individual package. The baby plan, which comes with a 7 US dollar charge per month, provides unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space and the freedom to host unlimited number of domain names. The swamp web package, which is the final one, comes with a 12 dollar charge per month. This package provides a wide range of advantages which include; a free toll number for your business, a private SSL certificate, a dedicated IP address and the freedom to use shopping cart software. This plan is suitable for businesses and internet marketing as it provides excellent hosting for all your blogs and websites.

Control Panel

The control panel you use greatly determines your hosting experience. Hostgator provides the latest, most liked control panel known as the cpanel. The cpanel is very easy to use, has a very high speed and has a wide range of features. This control panel enables one to easily create blogs, portals, shopping carts, mails and even forums.

Uptime

Hostgator guarantees a 99.9% uptime. This is mainly because it runs its own data center and is fully independent. This ensures that you do not experience any downtime for your website.

Great Customer Service

Hostgator is amazingly efficient when it comes to serving its customers. One can call them or use the live chat on the website to look for any information. The support service is fast, responsive and will provide you with all the answers to your questions.

People who have used Hostgator are always ready to vouch for it due to its great services, its nice plan and payment options and its affordability. Hostgator has been able to offer its users with excellent trouble free webhosting that is sure to get better in the near future. Out of 5, I would rate Hostgator at 4.5 because they are worth all the accolades they receive.

Startlogic Web Hosting Review: Summary

Startlogic is one of the fastest growing hosting companies today – and for good reason! They focus on high quality solutions for business’ that need the assurance of the best support, services, and hardware to run their online presence. If variety and flexibility of solutions is what you are looking for, these are the guys to go to. Their offerings are easily ten times more then most standard hosts, and they have the know how to advise you which package is right for your particular needs. With everything that makes hosting great along with superior support, hosting with Startlogic is just plain old, well, logical.

Startlogic Web Hosting Review: Advantages
Offering a wide array of packages to choose from, Startlogic really does have a package for everyone. Want to start a blog? They support that. Want to run your shopping cart or e-commerce website? It’s a breeze with Startlogic. Have a larger website? Not a problem at all, they have got a virtual private server and dedicated server package that is sure to meet the demands of even the most popular website.

Time and time again Startlogic has proven themselves to be a leader in the hosting market by giving customers exactly what they want – and not charging a penny more then they have to. Getting support for your business is only a phone call away – they can take you through the complexities of getting everything setup or they can just point you in the right direction when you need to do something different with your website.

Startlogic Web Hosting Review: Disadvantages
Being as large as they are, Startlogic really has ironed out all of the bugs. The only thing that could possibly even remotely be considered a disadvantage is the sheer volume of options to choose from. For a new webmaster it can be quite overwhelming, especially if you are not quite sure what you want or need right now. Luckily they overcome this with a very knowledgeable sales staff that is more then willing to take you by the hand and guide you to the right setup for what you need.

Startlogic Web Hosting Review: Conclusion
Startlogic is a great company that is around for the long haul. Not only do they have very competitive pricing, but they offer what so many hosts lack – true flexibility. If being able to change your business is important to you (and if you are online, it better be a priority!) then you really need to be hosting with Startlogic. There really are not any other hosting companies that can give you the same number of options that these guys can. I know it can seem overwhelming, but honestly just speak with their support staff. They will listen carefully to what you are trying to accomplish, and offer up suggestions that are both helpful and accurate. Options are what makes this company great – and giving you those options is what makes Startlogic the clear cut choice for your hosting needs.

PowWeb Web Hosting Review: Summary

If you are looking for a solid web host that has been around for quite some time, offers every support option you can imagine, and has a great community of customers that are willing to lend a hand when you run into trouble, than search no more. PowWeb offers all of these features and so much, much more. They really are head and shoulders above the competition, and that’s no exaggeration.

PowWeb Web Hosting Review: Advantages
The largest advantage of PowWeb, short of their awesome support, is their load balanced servers. For those of you who aren’t as technical load balancing means that your website will be hosted on multiple servers. If one server crashes, gets too many visitors to handle, or just is plain old dysfunctional, you do not need to worry at all – another server will pick up the slack and ensure that your site gets served up.

As if this rock solid foundation wasn’t enough, PowWeb also has some great support options. They don’t just stop at trouble tickets – they have a toll free number so you can call them on their dime, live chat, and an enormous community of customers who have experienced just about every issue that you could possibly imagine and gotten through it.

As if all this wasn’t enough, PowWeb doesn’t limit you to just one site. You can host an unlimited amount of domains on your hosting account, meaning the sky is the limit.

PowWeb Web Hosting Review: Disadvantages
In the past PowWeb has had some billing issues which they have since worked through. Regardless, they have a history of having trouble getting the billing sorted out. Not that they over charge you or anything like that, but you may want to make sure that they do actually charge you to ensure your account remains active. While this hasn’t been an issue in quite some time, I always make sure to double check I got the bill because I have heard of other people having issues with this exact same problem.

It’s been at least 3 years since I’ve heard of a similar case, so there really isn’t a whole lot to worry about here.

PowWeb Web Hosting Review: Conclusion
Overall PowWeb is a great hosting provider for just about everyone. If you’re new to the whole hosting scene they have an excellent support network and some of the friendliest support staff I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with in the entire hosting industry. There members are very helpful, even with ‘non-hosting’ related issues like getting sites off the ground and other business issues. I don’t think of them as a hosting community, but rather as a large community of like minded business men and women who have all started exactly where I did and grown their businesses over the years. The information they can provide is invaluable. If you are on a budget, plan on building a few sites, and would like a community behind you, PowWeb is the way to go.

Lunarpages Hosting Review : Summary

LunarPages has a wide selection of different hosting plans for you to choose from, ranging from the basic ‘starter package’ all the way up to dedicated servers. Just getting started can be as low as five bucks a month, and the sky is the limit (literally). Their full range of hosting products includes everything from VPS servers (both Linux and Windows options), to dedicated servers, to shared reseller plans, and everything in between. There really isn’t a better choice if scaling your website is what you would like to do while staying with the same hosting provider.

LunarPages Hosting Review: Advantages
Currently LunarPages boosts servers spread out through 3 different data centers on the West coast of the USA, from Los Angeles California to Las Vegas Nevada. This gives you the ability to spread your data out over multiple locations, insulating you from power failures and natural disasters that might otherwise leave your website down and valuable data lost.

LunarPages also offers 24/7 support to their customers, a very easy to navigate frequently asked questions area, as well as an interactive forum that over 50,000 of their customers participate in to help you get setup and ensure your hosting continues to run smoothly. There support network is truly world class offering just about every and any median you prefer to use to get your questions answered and problems solved.

Using cPanel as their main control panel ensures that you’ll be familiar with their interface or at the very least be able to easily find help on the internet. cPanel is by far the most popular shared hosting control panel and offers a vast array of easy to use features that works much like your windows computer. Point and click icons as well as spelled out instructions will guide you through completing just about any task you can imagine in this powerful control panel.

LunarPages Hosting Review: Disadvantages
Most shared hosting companies are limited to the amount of PHP customization that can be done, and LunarPages is no different. While they do have VPS and Dedicated plans that will give you more flexibility, if you have custom (non standard) requirements when getting started, using any shared hosting company is going to give you issues. Make sure you consult with your software manual to ensure that all of the scripts you would like to run on your hosting plan will be supported by what LunarPages offers in their shared hosting environment.

LunarPages Hosting Review: Conclusion
Overall LunarPages is a rock solid company with numerous awards under their belt. They have one of the best support networks in the hosting industry and guarantee you 99.9% uptime. They have state of the art facilities that house their servers to ensure your data stays protected and available on the internet. Overall they are an excellent choice for every user, from those just starting out with their first website to those who own and operate hundreds of different web properties.

IXWebHosting web Hosting Review: Summary

Started in 1999, right when the internet really took off, IX web hosting provides a range of great Linux and Windows hosting plans for you to choose from. With thousands of satisfied customers and a long track record of providing a sound and stable service to each and every one of them, IX web hosting offers some of the best hosting services in the business.

IXWebHosting Hosting Review: Advantages
With great support for SSL certificates and shopping carts, combined with all of the scripting languages your site could every need (PHP, Perl, MySQL, and most importantly ASP) IX web hosting offers exactly what your personal or business website needs from a hosting company. Many companies today don’t support ASP, despite its popularity in business applications, shopping carts, and website scripts and that is just one of the many ways that IX web hosting stands out from the crowd.

They also have a price freeze guarantee, which means the price you sign up for is the price you pay for the life of the account. As if that wasn’t a big enough promise, they also guarantee 1 hour support. That is right – you ask a question and they guarantee to get back to you with one hour. Try getting that from anyone else you do business with, let alone someone you only do business with online and see how many companies are willing to agree to it.

They also have great website design software to help you get your site up and ready. It’s very beginner friendly, and offers you all the options you’ll need to launch a basic website or online shopping cart to sell your products.

IXWebHosting web Hosting Review: Disadvantages
IX web hosting isn’t quite as large as most of the other companies, and I’m really not sure why. I am also sure that this might not even be a disadvantage. They provide more of a ‘family business’ atmosphere for their customers, and do no come off as corporate. They seem to value each and every customer they have, no matter how big or small.

IXWebHosting web Hosting Review: Conclusion
If value is what you are after, and you run business applications or plan to run them on the web, then IX web hosting has exactly what you need to get going on the internet. All of their support personal are English speaking, true employees of the company. Expect to always get a human response that is readable and understandable. Combine all of this with their search engine submission and 100% money back guarantee, and you have a recipe for a great hosting experience. If you have tried the others and been disappointed, maybe it is time to give the staff at IX web hosting a call and turn your experience around. They really are so much more then just another online company looking to collect your hard earned money. They want to earn it, and they are willing to work to gain your business. A customer is so much more than a customer to them.

InMotion Web Hosting Review: Summary

It’s almost unbelievable the amount that you get for your money with InMotion. Lots of hosting companies want to promise you the world, InMotion actually delivers on that promise giving you exactly what you want and all of the things you did not think you wanted until they were handed to you on a silver platter.

InMotionWeb Hosting Review: Advantages
InMotion starts you off with everything included. Need something to build your first website? Not a problem, InMotion provides a free state of the art site builder to get you started. No – it’s not one of those ‘for tech geeks only’ type of programs either. It very easily takes you through the entire processes of setting up your website. It has all the features that veterans would expect with all the simplicity that a new user needs to get started online.

Toss in free setup and a domain name to boot and you have got an all encompassing web hosting package that does way more delivering than promising. The basic package at InMotion is anything but basic. It even includes software to help you start up a blog with just a click of a mouse button, a plugin to start up your first e-commerce site with only a few mouse clicks, and the resources you need if you want to run steaming media (audio or video) right from your website. Few others can offer all of these features, and no one can offer it at the incredible price that InMotion offers it for.

InMotionWeb Hosting Review: Disadvantages
While they are not the cheapest (and do not get me wrong – they are by no means expensive!) web host out there, I honestly feel that the extra few dollars a month is more then made up for by the ease of use of InMotions services as well as the wide range of products that they include with your account. Just getting the free domain name and site builder alone make up for the cost in savings.

InMotionWeb Hosting Review: Conclusion
InMotion is an excellent choice for anyone just getting started online today. Everyone knows that streaming media is the future of the internet and wants to be a part of it – and with InMotions hosting packages you can take full advantage of the new median without worrying if your hosting provider can handle it. They have 24/7 customer support with very well trained operators who actually take the time to work with you and resolve your issues. The internet can be a complicated place without some help, and InMotion really delivers on this end. They give me a real sense of confidence in their product just because they are so knowledgeable. Toss in the free advertising credits which were great for getting my site off the ground when I first started and it’s a win-win situation all around. Sure it might be a few extra dollars a month, but sometimes the old adage is true – you get what you pay for.

A colocation hosting solution is a hosting plan wherein you send your own server to a colocation center (data center) where it is put into a server rack and connected to the internet, thus enabling it to be used for the purpose of hosting websites. An advantage of this type of a set up is that you have complete control over the server configuration and need to pay money to rent a server and only need to pay for the space used.

Since colocation hosting involves sending in your server to a data center, you need to ensure that the data center is a leading data center that is located in a major industrial city. This way you can take advantage of the convergence pattern of high speed networks. Also you need to ensure that the data center is equipped with world class facilities such as redundant power supply, filtered clean air, remote connectivity, physical security, air conditioning, etc. Not only this you need to ensure that the data center has at least two connections to Tier One providers.

The next thing you need to take care of is the hardware that you are going to send in to the colocation provider and the software that is going to be installed on that hardware. You need to ensure that your server is rack optimized i.e. it can be put in a server rack. Rack optimized serves are usually flat and long and have a height of 1 U (1 U = 1.75 inches). Also you need to ensure that your server can be run “headless” which means without a keyboard or screen. You need to ensure that your server can be booted without any type of intervention. Not only this you need to make sure that your server auto powers, because most colocation providers offer an auto power cycler that can be used from a web based system.

After you have done all this, you need to make sure that you have correctly configured the network address, the DNS server and the gateway information on your server after requesting such information from your colocation hosting provider. You also need to be sure that you can get remote access to the server once it has been installed in the colocation facility. Remote access in Linux machines can be enabled by running the SSHD daemon.

Also since most of the rack optimized servers come with multiple Ethernet ports, you would need to mark the correct Ethernet port and mask the rest with some type or masking tape, etc. You would also need to take care of cooling considerations. Since servers in a colocation facility are installed in a rack there is very less space for cooling. Hence before sending in a server to a colocation facility you would need to take a look at the amount of heat being generated by your server and its processor and set up sensors so that you can monitor the temperatures remotely.

After you have done all this, all you would have to do is find a box that is capable of carrying your server and mail your server to your colocation hosting provider. The hosting provider would plug the server into his data center after which it would be up to you to manage and run the server in any manner you deem fit, just like a dedicated server.

Finally the time has arrived when your website can no longer run on a simple virtual private server hosting account and you need to move on to a dedicated hosting plan for your website. But there is a small problem. You do not know anything about a dedicated hosting plan and are wary of buying a dedicated server hosting plan from your current hosting provider. So what do you do? You start looking out for dedicated server hosting providers. But there are hundreds of them out there and selecting a host is a difficult job; but it is something that needs to be done. So here are a few tips that can help you buy a dedicated hosting plan for your website.

#1: Managed or non-managed:

The first choice that has to be made is between a managed dedicated server hosting plan and a non-managed dedicated server hosting plan. If you are one of those guys who knows nothing about server administration and would not want to spend time learning about it, then a managed dedicated hosting plan is the best choice for you. But in case you want to manage your server on your own and take decisions regarding resource allocation, load balancing, software installation, plug-in installation, etc. then you should definitely go in for a non-managed dedicated hosting plan.

#2: Server type and bandwidth:

The next thing you need to take care of is the server hardware as well as software configuration. Most dedicated server hosting providers let you choose the type or server you want, the storage space required, the memory and the bandwidth that is needed by you. You need to configure all these things taking into account the current and the future needs of your website. Doing this would save you the trouble of running into incompatibility problems later on.

#3: Technical support:

Most dedicated server hosting providers offer toll free support that is 24/7 365 days a year. Also they help you set up your website and your account and help you get things up and running free of cost. You need to ensure that the technical support being offered is of the highest quality and is capable of answering all of your queries. You never know when you might need the help of these technical support executives, so make sure that support is provided 24/7.

#4: Additional features:

You need to look out for additional features and add-ons being provided by the hosting provider. These include the option to have static IP addresses, SSL certificates for security, firewall protection, protection from DDoS attacks, multiple control panels, load balancing and server administration systems, etc. All these things come in handy once your website is up and running and it is up to you to find out whether your hosting provider offers these features or not.

These are some of the tips that can help you buy a dedicated server hosting plan for your website. The thing with dedicated plans is that they are difficult to manage but provide the kind of performance, security, reliability and power that is not provided by any other hosting solution.

One of the biggest issues with hosting a website or starting an online business is getting the right type of hosting solution from the right web host. Unfortunately, finding the right host is not something that you can do at quite easily. A good hosting provider is difficult to find, probably because there are thousands of hosting providers present in the market these days and also because there is no trusted source where you can go and find out which host is good and which is bad. So one needs to rely on instincts and some pointers which can help one determine whether a host a reliable and whether that host would be able to provide the kind of service that your website or your online business requires.

Here are some of those pointers or important parameters which you need to consider while looking for a web host.

Requirements:

Before you start your search for the perfect web host you need to understand what your requirements are. Why? Simply because if you do not know what you want, how would you be able to look for a host that provides a plan that is suited to your needs. So the first priority is to find out what are the hosting requirements of your website and what special needs have to be fulfilled to get your website up and running. Only after you have finalized your requirements can you move on to actually finding some hosts which have plans that match those requirements.

Plan details:

You need to look at the plan details offered by hosting providers quite carefully. This is due to the fact that if you select a plan without going into its details and later find out that you missed out on something that was critical for the operation of your website, you would be at a loss and might even have to shell out a lot of money to get what you have missed from your hosting provider. Hence you need to review each and every plan carefully and match it with your requirements before finalizing what you need.

Security & Reliability:

Before selecting a web host, you need to ensure whether the service provided by that host is reliable and whether the host is secure or not. The best way to check for reliability is to go on the internet and look for impartial reviews of the host. Not only this you can talk to people who have used the services of that host to get an idea with regards to how the host is. When it comes to security you need to ensure that the host is offering the most advanced security features for your hosting plan. This is necessary since customer trust can only be built if you are running a secure website and if your website is not secure you are bound to lose out on customers and hence see a decline in revenues.

Customer support:

This is another crucial aspect of choosing a web host. A web host which offers 24/7 customer support and technical support should be preferred over a host that does not offer this service. This is due to the fact that problems can occur at any time and if you are not able to get support at the time of need you would end up losing a lot of money.

These are a few of things that need to be taken into consideration while looking for a web hosting provider.

These days a wide variety of hosting solutions are available in the market. These range from shared hosting plans to full scale dedicated hosting solutions. But there is one plan that is different from the rest. That plan is of Virtual Private Server Hosting or VPS hosting. A VPS hosting solution is a hosting plan wherein virtualization software is used to run several virtual servers on the same physical server. Each of these virtual servers have their own dedicated storage space, bandwidth allocation and memory. Thus each of these virtual servers act independently of one another.

A VPS hosting solution is great for a website that can no longer run on a shared hosting plan but is still not big enough to be hosted on a dedicated server hosting plan. Also for startup companies, where cash is a big problem a VPS solution can be much more better than spending a ton of money on a dedicated server hosting plan when the benefits of going on to a dedicated plan are not huge in comparison to going in for a VPS plan.

Like every hosting solution out there, several pros and cons are associate with using a virtual private server hosting solution for your website. Let us take a look at some of these.

Pros of using a VPS plan:

• A VPS solution provides the benefits of dedicated server hosting at a price that is only slightly higher than that of shared web hosting.
• In case of a VPS plan server resources are allocated to each server, which means that there is no sharing of resources and each VPS server has its own set of dedicated server resources to use.
• Unlike a shared hosting solution, in case of a VPS solution you are free to install any applications or software on your server. Also since server administration is in your hands you can do many more things which are not possible with a shared server hosting plan.
• In case of a VPS solution, a spike in network traffic to a site hosted on the same physical server cannot bog down your website, something that is quite common in case of shared hosting plans.
• A VPS plan is the ideal choice for companies looking to expand their online presence without wishing to spend a large amount of money on getting a dedicated plan.

Cons of using a VPS plan:

• Although quite similar to a dedicated hosting plan, a VPS plan cannot provide the same kind of performance guarantee that comes with a dedicated server hosting.
• Security is another big issue, since many different websites are being hosted on a single server and there might be a case wherein one malicious user might be able to access the data stored by another user.

Although, there are a few cons associated with using a virtual private server hosting plan for your online business, the pros outnumber the cons. Also, for an organization that is low on cash there is no plan that offers the same kind of service and features than a virtual private server hosting plan. Hence, a VPS hosting plan is one of the best hosting solutions available in the market these days.