Unlimited bandwidth hosting has developed out of fierce competition between web hosting companies and it is great news for consumers. If you have unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth, then you never need to worry about your website growing too big or too popular for a cheap monthly hosting package – at least in theory.

But is unlimited bandwidth hosting really unlimited? The answer, of course, is no. Hosting companies have huge banks of servers and massive quantities of fiber optic cables to provided internet access for the sites that are stored on their servers, but all of these things have physical limits.

How Internet Hosting Works

The internet is not restricted to one location but websites must have a physical location. They are not floating around in space. That is what web hosting means: providing storage space for websites and the cables etc that are needed to connect them with the rest of the internet. [Read more...]

Google web hosting through sites.google.com is advertised as being free, but what do you actually get? We look at what you can expect from free Google web hosting and whether it is the right solution for your needs.

Free Google web hosting is great if you want to put up a small website such as a personal site or a starter website for a church, club, community group or small business. They have plenty of templates that you can choose from, making it easy to start your own website if you are new to all of this.

Google Web Hosting Templates

The Google Web Hosting templates are imaginative and well designed. They include different features: for example the Project Wiki template allows members of a team to access and update the site easily, so that all members of your team or group can contribute. You can also include a calendar for your big events which has many uses for a project or sports team website.

Another Google web hosting template is the Classroom site template which allows a teacher to post information for students and parents. For example you can post information about upcoming field trips, all the details of assignments that are due, and a lot of other information which you would otherwise have to hand out to kids or parents. There is also a contact form so that parents and students can easily email you.

Google Web Hosting for Business

Other Google Web Hosting templates include the company intranet (internal website for a business) which has a more business-like design, as you would expect. Again there is a calendar for upcoming events and a section for news. There is also a family site template with a more informal design and plenty of space for posting photos.

Google Web Hosting Storage is secure and you can choose to make your site public (so that it is viewable by anybody in the world with an internet connection) or private, so that you can choose who to give access to.

Like most free web hosting services, there are limits on what you can do with a free Google web hosting account. This is not something that you would use for ecommerce sites with a shopping cart, or where you could store huge video downloads, etc. It is mainly designed for small personal or group sites.

Google Web Hosting – Premier Edition

If you need to upgrade, there is a Premier Edition of Google web hosting that gives you access to 10GB of storage, which will be enough for most sites. You can also have email storage and free voice calls through your Google Apps Premier Edition account.

If you are likely to want to develop many sites or offer a commercial service there are advantages to owning your own domain. You can do that through Google Apps which allows you to point your Google site design at your own domain.

If you choose to use the free service, to some extent you are at the mercy of Google. If they have objections to your site, they could close it down. Of course, this is not likely to be a problem if you have a site that is legal and ethical. However it is something to consider before you commit to using any free hosting service such as Google web hosting.

Dedicated Windows hosting is not always easy to find. When you do find a dedicated Windows host, you often discover that there are negative points or fewer options that you would have if you selected Linux.

For example, you will usually find that dedicated Windows hosting deals are more expensive than their Linux counterparts. Even where a web host offers both options, there will usually be a higher price for the Windows server.

Why Is Windows Hosting More Expensive?

The main reason for this is that Linux is free, open source software while Windows is strictly licensed by Microsoft. In the same way, many of the services that run on Linux servers such as PHP based applications are either free or cheaper than their asp.net alternatives for Windows.

However, most PHP applications will run on Windows servers. On the other hand, if you want to build sites and applications based around Windows software such as ASP, .net programs, or an Access database, you will probably be better off with dedicated Windows hosting. [Read more...]

A web hosting reseller package allows you to cover the cost of your web hosting or even make an income by offering hosting services to others.

If you have a web hosting reseller package on a Linux server you will usually have WHM or Web Host Manager, a central control panel from which you can set up accounts and allocate disk space and bandwidth to each account. You can also set new passwords for the accounts and control the account overall.

Why have a Web Hosting Reseller Package?

Many people have web hosting reseller accounts for their own use and do not resell the hosting as such. They may do this because they find sites easier to manage when each has its own account, or because they have a lot of data to store so that they need a real allocation of disk space.

For example if you are frequently buying and selling sites, it is often easier to transfer them if they are in a web hosting reseller account. You could offer free hosting to the purchaser and still have them control the site through cPanel without having access to any of your other sites.

Companies and individuals who offer web design and build services also often provide hosting through a web hosting reseller account. Here they may not charge separately for hosting, but include it in an overall retainer rate for their services.

Selling Web Hosting as a Reseller

Offering web hosting as a free extra to your other internet-related services can be very lucrative. Being a web hosting reseller serves to lock customers in to a standing charge or membership fee, or at least make it harder for them to leave. Many clients will be reluctant to cancel your services when they know that it will mean they have to find (and pay for) new web hosting and transfer the site – something that the average small business owner would find extremely scary.

On the other hand there are some pitfalls associated with operating a web hosting reseller package. Most of these apply to resellers who are using the account in the way that it was designed, i.e. reselling web hosting services. But even if you offer hosting as a free add-on to other services, there are some points to watch out for, especially in a situation where customers have access to their own control panel.

Downside of Being a Web Hosting Reseller

First and foremost is the question of support. Will the hosting company that supplies you with the web hosting reseller package provide support to your customers, or will your customers have to request support through you? Clearly the first option is better, but not all hosting companies offer this. If you have to act as a go-between then you will need to either be prepared to field their support questions and watch for downtime 24/7, or outsource this.

You will also need some way of accepting payments and keeping track of whose payments are due. The usual method is to have a monthly recurring charge on a credit card, but this has to be updated whenever a credit card comes up for renewal. Plus of course people sometimes lose or cancel their cards.

As a web hosting reseller you may decide to offer plans where people can buy 6 months or a year’s hosting at a discount. This can be great for ensuring that customers stick around, but it leaves you more vulnerable to fraud. People buying with a stolen credit card number can leave you with expensive chargebacks some time down the line.

Always ask for a phone number and consider calling any customer who orders more than the regular monthly package. You should also, of course, check that the name and address on the account match the name and address on the credit card, and have your system take the IP of the computer that places the order. It is easy to check the city, state or country of any IP so you can then check that this IP matches with the customer’s credit card billing address. These measures should help to protect you against fraud when operating a web hosting reseller package.

Finding a good web host is never easy, but a web hosting review can make the task a whole lot simpler. If you are new to the idea of setting up a website on your own domain, hosting can be a scary subject. You have to commit to monthly or even annual payments to a company you never heard of before. The costs can be high and if you make a mistake, transferring your site to another host is a time consuming business.

Even if you have several years’ experience of web hosting, when it is time to upgrade to a different level of service you may be a little lost. Perhaps you are not entirely happy with your current hosts and feel it is time for a move. Or perhaps they do not offer the service that you are now looking for. This is where web hosting review will come in

Whats in it for the Web Hosting Review?

Of course you can find a web hosting review online and you may manage to track down the best website host for your needs that way. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that many web hosting companies offer a commission to anybody who refers a new customer to them. This means that the owner of the site where you are reading that favorable review of a certain hosting company could be paid for recommending them. [Read more...]

Here we have reviews of 3 top web hosting sites. All of these are large and reliable web hosting providers offering shared hosting services for under $10 per month. The packages vary a little, but we have tried to compare like with like as far as possible in these hosting sites reviews.

HostGator Web Hosting

Baby plan: $7.95 per month, unlimited domains, unlimited space and bandwidth (subject to fair use policy).
Reseller plans from $24.95 per month. VPS from $19.95, dedicated servers from $174.

HostGator is one of the most popular CPanel top web hosting sites for internet marketing and other internet-based businesses who own or manage a large number of websites. There is a very wide range of plans which can be confusing for beginners but makes it easy to upgrade as your business grows. [Read more...]