Friday, October 27, 2006

Free Domain Name and Cheap Web Hosting Review

By Anthony Joseph

Free domain names and cheap web hosting packages are everywhere! In fact, there are thousands of companies that offer free domain names and cheap web hosting packages. Luckily for you, I have spent hours and hours carefully reviewing the "best of the best" free domain names and cheap web hosting packages.

Free domain names are the easy part for a person or business that wants to launch a website; you either get one or you don't. (We'll focus on the web hosting providers that do offer free domain names.) Cheap website hosting is the real challenge though. Yes, cheap web hosting is cost-effective and preferred, but you should select your web hosting company based on cost and the kind of hosting services you require.

For example, "shared hosting" is generally the cheapest web hosting package available because your website will share hosting space on a server with other websites. Because of the low monthly cost, shared web hosting is ideal for personal websites, and small businesses. "Dedicated hosting" is more expensive, but only your website will reside on one particular website hosting server, which is usually only necessary for hosting websites with extremely large numbers of visitors or unusual hosting support requirements, such as video or MP3 based websites. Hosting servers are also differentiated by the type of programming languages available. Does your website require PHP hosting or MySQL hosting? If so, you will have to pay close attention when selecting your website hosting package. If you’re shopping for website hosting for your business, make sure to ask your web developer which programming language your site requires.

You should also pay attention to the amount of web space and transfer allowed. Web space is just like the hard drive on a computer; there is a limit to the number of files you can save. Transfer, also known as bandwidth, is the amount of information downloaded when someone visits your website. This is critical if your website gains a significant number of visitors or includes large audio or video files. Web hosting providers will jack up the fees if your site goes over the allowed web space or monthly transfer limits, similar to the charges for using extra minutes on a cell phone.

A couple of assumptions before we get to the top three cheap web hosting companies: I'm going to assume that you're looking for the absolute cheapest web hosting available, based on cost, and that you're O.K. with a "shared hosting" plan. With that in mind, let's move on to the top three free domain name and cheap web hosting packages.

#1 Free Domain Name and Cheap Web Hosting Package

Host Monster. Host Monster has everything! They simply dominate cheap web hosting with tons of web space (50GB) and an extremely generous amount of monthly transfer (999 GB). The 24/7 tech support is an absolute must for any website hosting service and Host Monster has that too. All that aside, what really pushed Host Monster to the top of our Cheap Web Hosting list is the $4.95 monthly plan, one free domain name, and the ability to host unlimited domain names! That’s right, Host Monster allows you to host an unlimited number of websites for only $4.95 a month. Basically, Host Monster is the best value we've ever seen for cheap web hosting, hands down.

#2 Free Domain Name and Cheap Web Hosting Package

Start Logic. Decent amounts of space (50 GB) and transfer (750 GB), but are slightly less than Host Monster $4.95 a month. [How much is Start Logic? (Also $4.95?)] Start Logic also boasts 24/7 tech support and will throw in one free domain name, but only allows a total of 10 domain names per account. As you can see, Start Logic and Host Monster are very similar, but the smart move is to get the unlimited domains and higher transfer with Host Monster for the exact same price. Really, there’s no reason to choose Start Logic.

#3 Free Domain Name and Cheap Web Hosting Package

1and1. They are the cheapest web hosting service in terms of monthly cost at just $2.99/month, which is insanely cheap. In fact, it’s the cheapest cost per month I’ve ever seen on website hosting. 1and1 also gets high marks for reliability, customer service and being the largest website hosting provider in the world. Another benefit is one free domain name is included, but the storage (5 GB) and transfer (250 GB) are the lowest on this list and only allows a total of 10 domain names per account. 1and1 does offer some great features such as free blogging tools, a website builder and a photo gallery. If you’re new to website hosting, or are strictly looking to build a small website without video or audio files and little traffic, this is an excellent place to start, just be aware of the storage and transfer limits.

Did you know there are new free domain name and cheap web hosting packages popping up all the time? You can check out a frequently updated list of the top ten cheap web hosting providers at http://www.hosting.infodogs.info/.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Joseph

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Things to Keep in Mind While Selecting Web Hosting Service Provider by Nik

Web hosting service provider should be reliable, cheap and provide all the services a webmaster wants. Web hosting provider must qualify certain attributes to be chosen as a service provider and they are:

1. Must provide enough Disk-space.

Web hosting service provider must provide at-least 2GB of web space since your business is going to expand in future. After your business grows and you find that the space provided by hosting provider is less and you need to shift to another web hosting provider is quite frustrating and time consuming job.

2. Must provide unlimited services like email accounts, bandwidth, database space and others.

If you are starting with an online business than bandwidth factor is quite important since if your business grows and the amount of visitors also grows can affect the bandwidth factor and if the bandwidth provided exceeds the limit it will cost you more. So more the bandwidth the better it is. The email accounts service should be unlimited since you have to provide various email accounts for various purposes of your business.As your business will grow, the more customer information you have to store which in-turn will grow your database, so unlimited database space is important.

3. Payment of Web Hosting service should be yearly or lifetime.

Payment scheme should be chosen either for yearly or lifetime, since once you have paid for lifetime you won't have any problem if your service provider changes any payment scheme or bring any new clause. Otherwise if you pay as per monthly scheme than if any clause gets changed you have to follow that clause.

4. Must provide have 24/7 technical support.

Your web hosting service provider must provide the technical support all the time, since if any problem occurs you can contact them and get instantly solved. Otherwise it might affect your business.

5. Must offer 99.99% uptime.

Your website must be 99.99% time up otherwise it will adversely affect your business. If your customer wants some information about your product and your site is not up and working than customer will turn to another company and you will loose your customer.


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