Reliable Web Hosting Reviews

This article is possibly the most useful to you, the smart potential shopper, and it is about researching and gathering information on a particular company before you decide to purchase a plan with them. There are many ways that one can research and dig up information but I recommend these three main options.

The research tool pertains to companies in the US and Canada, and it is an organization called Better Business Bureau, or BBB. BBB acts as a mediator and accepts complaints from customers of current web hosting companies, and the companies have a chance to defend themselves against such complaints. Therefore, potential clients can look up the particular web hosting company that they have in mind and can see what complaints current users have about them. Furthermore, BBB conclusions usually coincide with other forums that are objectively and subjectively run, therefore, the BBB conclusions are usually reliable.

The second research tool that will help you choose the correct web hosting company for your needs is the whois tool. The whois tool checks the domain name of a company and gives you information on the company/individual who owns that domain name. One of the main reasons why people use a whois check is to find out how long they have been in business for. As trends go, usually the longer a company has been around, the more experience it has to please its customers with. However, in the 21st century, this is not necessarily true, many companies that are reputable now haven’t been around for a long time, especially in the web hosting business. Therefore, are two main reasons I would recommend using whois. The first is to check the time period that was purchased for that particular domain. If the domain name was purchased for three or more years, you know that the company in question is serious about business and that they plan to be in business for a while. The second reason is to gain telephone numbers or any other contact information, then using the contact information you can ask questions about their services. You can use the whois tool by typing either whois.sc/thedomain.com or whois.webhosting.info/thedomain.com into your web browser.

The final research tool is the Internet Wayback Machine. This tool can be both fun and informative, for it shows how a company has changed over a period of time. This machine will show you company growth over a period about ten years, changes in packages offered by the company, changes in pricing of those packages, and if any unreasonable offers were made previously, such as unlimited disk space or bandwidth.

Thus, by using these tools and other sources of information, you, the consumer, can become as educated in web hosting shopping as I am. And we all know that a smart shopper is a winning shopper! Knowledge is power in the 21st century, so get more powerful and happy huntings!

When shopping for a reliable web hosting company, there are many ways of looking for web hosting companies. By far the most commonly used method is to search a hosting directory. Hosting directories have a list of web hosting companies, and also details about each company, such as price, any awards, and customer ratings. Furthermore, the more sophisticated ones allows users to refine their search by using such things as geography and hardware as search filters.

However, it has come to light that many hosting directories cannot be trusted due to two reasons. The first reason is that some companies spend money to buy the directories and portray themselves as a more qualified company that they really are. The second reason why many hosting directories cannot be trusted is that they advertise the most “popular” web hosting company, meaning that they advertise the most for the company willing to spend the most buck.

Therefore, one may ask, “If I can’t trust many hosting directories, how can I find a reliable web hosting company?” The answer is to be a smart shopper. By combining hosting directories, researching on the web about the companies in question, checking web hosting blogs or forums, and by checking for the sophistication of the company’s website allow for a shopper to get a general feel for the overall quality of a company. Furthermore, here is a list you can use as a guideline and also send to the companies that you have in mind,

• Is there a discount if I pay for a certain number of months in advance?
• How many months am I required to pay?
• Is there a set up fee?
• Is there a trial period with a money-back guarantee?
• What are your hardware configurations?
• What is your bandwidth limit?
• Will my IP be shared with other people?
• Do you offer 24/7 technical support?
• How much disk space will there be in my package?
• What is the OS and OS version that will be used on my server?
• How many other websites are being run on the server my website will be on?
• Do you provide a full and free CGI directory?
• Is there a limit to how many scripts I can install?
• Do you offer a web statistics package?
• Will I have access to the raw statistical log files?
• How long has this company been around for?

Ask yourself these questions and get the answers as you take the steps to getting a new reliable web hosting provider, and you are sure to make a strong choice and be satisfied with your final decision!

The most important part of having a good website is to have a good web hosting company to host your website. There are an impressive number of factors that help determine whether a web hosting company is “good,” but of those the most common ones are, server quality, admin quality, customer service, guarantees, and references.

One of the most important part of a good web hosting company is that they have technologically up to date servers, with appropriate RAM, CPU, hard drive space, and bandwidth. Furthermore, if possible, one should check how much that particular web hosting company is and maybe even do some ping tests with current users. Furthermore, one should look around and check the types of offers that the company offers. If company XYZ offers 1 GB of hard drive space and 5GB of bandwidth, while company ABC offers 10 GB of space and 20 GB bandwidth for the same space, you know that either company XYZ is bad, or there is some other reason why they are the same price.

The second aspect of a good web hosting company is admin quality and customer service. These two usually go hand in hand, for the admins are responsible to keep the servers running well, and in the case of a malfunction you want to be able to talk to an admin who knows what they are talking about and how to remedy the situation. A simple way to test both is to contact an admin after doing some research in our Web Hosting Terminology section, and then make sure that the admin knows their stuff. Furthermore, while talking to the admin you can ask if they put place a test file on one of their servers so you can check the speed of their bandwidth and see the overall download speeds that potential customers would experience.

Another aspect of a good web hosting company are the guarantees or other promises they make to their customers. If the web hosting company does not offer ANY guarantees, ditch that company immediately. Any company that does not offer 99% uptime a month (1 hour of downtime) is not worth it! Furthermore, the company that you decide to use should offer some sort of assurance of repayment in case there is a downtime that exceeds their guarantee, for it’s your customers your losing not theirs.

The last but not least aspect one should observer upon before deciding which web hosting company is right for them are the references. One should check for company references regarding the company in question and should do further background research such as past server quality, past references to serious issues about service, and other events. In addition, always back up your own data, in case the web hosting company you choose accidently loses your data or goes out of business.

In conclusion, check our terminology page for additional information, and although we can offer tips and hints, the final decision is up to you! Keeping all these guides in mind, you should be able to find a reliable web hosting server that offers great service, great support, and a great price! Happy huntings.

After choosing a hosting plan to purchase, one of the most important decisions you will make is when choosing the OS for your server. Although there are many operating systems to choose from the two main operating systems are the Windows platform, and the UNIX platform, of which LINUX is a variation of. Both operating systems have their strengths and flaws, and depending on the type of website and server you want you will have to choose carefully.

The Windows platform is given a bad rep because of the infamous “blue screen of death,” during the era of Windows 95 and 98. Furthermore, Windows operating systems offer MS SQL, FrontPage, and Access, meanwhile granting access to powerful tools such as ASP, Visual Basic Scripts, and Cold Fusion. In addition, Windows offers unparalleled levels of support, security, and integration with other Microsoft products. However, using Windows is a server OS is often laborious and requires extensive knowledge of maintenance and support. But if one has a webmaster that is sufficiently knowledgeable in the Windows server OS field, the Windows platform is an excellent choice.

If Windows isn’t a pleasing option then get ready to download UNIX. UNIX is an open-source operating system, meaning it was built by us and meant for us; free. UNIX is widely preferred as a server OS due to its amazing stability and performance under strain. Furthermore, webmasters can customize and alter their services from any computer in the world. Therefore, controlling and changing the server is quite easy to do on the UNIX platform. The downside, of course, is that unlike Microsoft who continually updates security, support, and compatibility, UNIX is open-source and therefore, has less variety and compatibility.
Therefore, for the average user, UNIX will do more than a good job of taking care of your website. The Windows platform is recommended to the specific users who need advanced web features and know how to maintain the operating system. And luckily for you many simple and necessary programs and tools are compatible on both platforms! So remember, be an educated consumer and research, ask, and test before you buy!

A data center is a commonly used term in the web hosting business, and it is exactly what it sounds like, a center that handles data. A data center is essentially the command center of businesses, all data needed to keep the running is processed. Furthermore, in the case of web hosting, a data center is where the servers, technicians, and customer support people are. Due to the fact that data is what makes businesses run, one would expect strict rules and guidelines to govern the data center, and there are two main rules that help a data center run smoothly, temperature, and neatness.

The first aspect of a good web hosting company is the maintenance of the temperature in which their servers operate on. Just like your own personal computer at home, servers generate heat when used and heat tends to lead to the instability of servers. Furthermore, a data center does not contain just one server but maybe hundreds of serves in a confined space. Therefore, it is essential to maintain a constant temperature of around 17 degrees Celsius in order for the servers to run smoothly.

The second aspect of a good web hosting company is neatness. Neatness complements temperature maintenance by allowing a smooth non-turbulent airflow. Furthermore, with untidy wiring, when unplugging or upgrading a server, a technician may unplug the wrong server and may make you lose important data that wasn’t saved. In addition, a uniform layout makes it extremely easy for technicians to maintain your server and also to remove or add servers and keep the area heat-free.

Therefore, a data center is in essence the core of any business. And fittingly, the core of the business must be well maintained and run smoothly. Using these two, and many more, methods, web hosting companies are able to keep our servers reliably running.

If for some reason you decide you need to switch web hosting companies due to lack of scalability or unsatisfactory performance, the first step is to back up all your databases, scripts, and other files. Even if you do not plan to switch web hosting companies anytime soon, one should always periodically back up their data in case of an unexpected accident.

If you are interested in switching web hosting companies, and your website has been correctly archived, start searching for an appropriate replacement company. Fully research the company, the quality of the plans they offer, and any claims that they make. After all, it doesn’t make sense to transfer your website to a similar web hosting company.

After choosing the appropriate plan for your website, upload your website and debug it to make sure that your website is running smoothly and without flaw. After testing your website, you can go ahead and transfer the Domain Name Service (DNS) server from your old web hosting company to your new one. However, keep your website running on your original server, for DNS updates can take 1-2 weeks. Furthermore, some ISPs do not update their DNS as often as others so I would recommend that you keep your website running on the old server for at least three weeks.

A small tip is to choose a new server plan that incorporates the same OS and control panel. This will decrease the number of bugs, and you will be familiar with the performance and maintenance of your new server. Happy huntings!

Disk space also called virtual space, is the actual physical amount of hard drive that you, the consumer, are purchasing from the web hosting company. Disk space is the space where you upload all your HTML, flash, scripts and any other materials that are needed for your website. In addition, email accounts and their contents are also stored on disk space, but usually, the amount of disk space used up by emails is insignificant.

Information on how much disk space you receive should be included in the details of whichever plan/package you decide to buy. Furthermore, just like renting an actual physical thing, if you cannot make the payment to your web hosting company, the space and your bandwidth will be sold to the next waiting customer. In addition, the amount of disk space you receive will be directly proportional to the amount per month you pay. However, within the past decade, prices for renting a server have dramatically dropped due to the dropping prices of hardware, the expansion of data centers, and faster and cheaper internet connections.

A small, but important, factor to pay attention to is the scalability of the package/plan you are planning to buy. Although at first you decide you wish to use your website to target a very specific group of customers, what if fashion suddenly changes and the product your website sells becomes the new “fad?” Expanding is your answer. Therefore, before purchasing any package/plan from a web hosting company, determine whether it is scalable, and to what degree you can upgrade to.

In conclusion, an educated customer always wins, thus, researching more into the actual company and information on web hosting should help a lot. In addition our Terminology section should provide details into any phrases or words that may seem unfamiliar to you. And finally, think about it, although disk space may not be the most pressing issue to you right now, could you have a website without disk space? Would that T3 connection and 2 GB of RAM matter with an outdated hard drive being used for disk space? Think carefully and shop smart!

How to check the speed of the server

Speed is a generalized term, which in our case, means the time it takes to go from the host server to the visitor’s computer. Checking the speed of the server can be done two ways. The first method is by pinging the server by typing the command “ping serverID,” in which “serverID” is either the domain name, such as yahoo.com, or the ip address of the server. A series of information will return but the main information needed is the time. A ping of around 200ms or below is average, while pings above 400ms are absurdly slow. However, one must take into account that servers are busier at certain times of the day.

The second way to test the speed of the server is to use a download test, where the potential customer asks a current customer or an admin to place a predetermined file on the server and then download the file from the server. However, it is preferred that one asks a current customer, for sometimes companies set aside empty servers for tests such as this. Empty server = no overselling of hidden or non-hidden resources, therefore, the most

The most commonly overlooked part of a website is the domain name. While everyone is scrambling to get the fastest and most reliable web hosting company, and looking for ways to enliven the website, most people don’t think about a domain name. However, there are two main reasons to have a domain name, one of which is to show that you have some credibility. For example, www.ReliableWebHostingReviews.com is simple and easy to remember. Furthermore, if your domain name is in the .com format it is much easier to remember than www.abcdefg.com/yoursitehere/

In addition, to just thinking of the domain name, one must register and pay for the domain names. One common practice is to register the same name in the .net and .org formats, to ensure the competition cannot get a hold of their domain name. Furthermore, if one registers their website under a simple and effective domain name, they add more credibility to themselves for their website when it has it’s own domain name. If the website does not have its own domain name and it is just a sub-extension, the webpage automatically loses some credibility.

Thus, one should spend time choosing a domain name carefully, and remember that the domain name exists not for you but for potential customers! Therefore, keep the domain name easy to remember and catchy!

When searching for the correct web hosting company for your needs, many will state the packages that they offer along with an uptime guarantee. An uptime guarantee is a promise that the web hosting company makes with you promising that the server will be up and running x% of the time. And if the server is not performing up to the uptime guarantee of the company, the company will compensate you.

An example of an uptime guarantee is when web hosting company XYZ offers a package of 10 GB of hard drive space, 100 GB of bandwidth, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This means that in one month you can have up to 10 GB of files on their hard drives, upload 100 GB of your webpage to potential customers, and that the downtime of the server will not exceed 43.2 minutes a month (99% usually has people feeling absolutely NO DOWNTIME can be expected from a promising reliable web hosting provider when in reality it approaches 1 hour )

One may ask, “Why do we even need a uptime guarantee?” Do not be fooled! It’s not that the company wants to be your favorite buddy and do you a favor! The uptime guarantee is there to lure in more customers, and to “spice up the deal.” Furthermore, sometimes companies claim they have a 100% uptime guarantee, but this usually refers to the network uptime, not the server uptime. Therefore, server guarantees aren’t really worth the time being sucked into, unless the percentages reach 99.999%, where the downtimes are extremely small.

What is a web hosting company?

A web hosting company is a company which stores the customer’s website onto their computer, a server, and then uploads it to whoever tries to access it over the internet. The web hosting company’s job is to deal with all the nitty gritty technology details while the customer worries about the actual webpage.

What is bandwidth?

After choosing a web hosting company, the company offers the customer a package stating the total amount of hard drive space they can use and the total bandwidth they can use per month. Bandwidth is basically the total amount of information that the server sends, or uploads, to the person trying to access the webpage.

What is web space?

After choosing a web hosting company, the company offers the customer a package stating the total amount of hard drive space they can use and the total bandwidth they can use per month. Web space refers to the total amount of hard drive space you have to store your webpage on. Generally speaking a single webpage with just text should take up around 40 Kb while pages including music, pictures, or animations take up much more space.

What is an uptime guarantee?

An uptime guarantee is when a company promises that their servers/network will be up X% of the time. However, one must look and ask carefully if the web hosting company means server or network uptime as the two vary in actuality and server uptime plays a more dominant role in a web hosting provider’s reliable service and delivery of your pages and website.

Hidden overselling picks up where I left off on the Overselling web Host article, where overselling of bandwidth of hard drive space and bandwidth occurred. However, more important that is the overselling of “hidden resources.” These hidden resources can be oversold without the overselling of hard drive space or bandwidth. These hidden resources are mainly the CPU and RAM. No matter how much hard drive space and bandwidth a company has and even if they don’t oversell, if the CPU can’t keep up with the amount of processing power needed to serve all customers, the overall quality of service is going to be horrid.

Furthermore, since CPU usage cannot really be measured in numbers, the best thing a web hosting company can do is monitor the overall strain on a CPU and say there are 100 websites that share a CPU. With 100 website technically each website can use up to 1% of the total CPU processing power. However, CPUs become highly unstable at high percentage usage, therefore, about .5% is a more accurate gauge per website. However, the problem arises when website don’t use .5% but use 5%. Although according to what the customer paid, they should only be using .5%, the web hosting company will not shut down the website, but continue to let the user use 5% of the CPU. And if the average customer uses more than .5% of the CPU this shows the overselling of the “hidden resources;” delivering unsatisfactory results i.e. slow/laggy servers.

Thus, the overselling of hidden recourses often occurs first when overselling and can be the most lethal. However, many companies have shown that overselling of resources can be done correctly utilizing multiple core CPUs as an alternative of lack of processing power. The main point is that there is no real standard to giving customers their own slice of processing power or RAM, but efforts are being made to make overselling of hidden resources not as deadly as can be.

Overselling is a term that describes the sales of something that cannot be delivered. In hosting terms that means that a web hosting company has oversold the total number of space and bandwidth that they can provide. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing, for if it wasn’t for overselling the prices we would have to pay for web hosting and telecommunications would be through the roof. However, the important thing to gauge is how much the company oversells and maintains a balance of good service with a reasonable price.

To explain overselling more clearly, a set of numbers would help wouldn’t it? For example, say web hosting company XYZ has 75 GB of hard drive space and 1000 GB of bandwidth and they decided to sell packages that offered 1 GB of hard drive space and 10 GB of bandwidth per customer. Then company XYZ sells to 75 customers but sees that within the past year only 30 out of the 75 GB were being used, although all 75 GB have been bought. Then company XYZ decides to “oversell” the hard drive space that was bought but isn’t being used. However some companies are the other way around, overselling bandwidth before hard drive space.

Therefore, technically, the company could oversell and still deliver good quality service, but the problem arises when the company oversells too much and too many customers are trying to get service at the same time. For other factors such as CPU processing power, RAM speed and quality all come into play. Thus, while overselling isn’t a problem when done correctly, more and more companies are starting to oversell, hence the complaints of a server being slow or “laggy.”

When searching for the right company to buy for, when looking into web hosting, one must always think and calculate your hosting needs. For example, web hosting comprises of 2 parts, the actual disk space that the web pages will be stored on, and the total bandwidth one is allowed to use per month.

The first part, the “web space,” is the space that the web pages take up on the web hosting companies’ hard drives. A common offer is in the 1000 MB+ range. Furthermore, another factor to consider is the fact that you need bandwidth to upload the pages that are on the web hosting companies’ hard drives to the customer who is trying to access your webpage. Therefore, a person must consider how many customers might frequent the website a day, how many days there are in a month, and the total size of the pages that they are trying to access. For example, if your webpage is a total of 3 pages, at 100 Kb per page, and 100 people access it per day, that means that you would have to purchase 900 MB of bandwidth.

However, in an attempt to benefit both sides of the deal, if the website host decides to lower that 100 Kb page to say around 30-40 Kb per page, it dramatically cuts the size of the page on the web host companies hard drives and it also shortens the time it takes for the customer to load the web page. Therefore, the impulse to swarm ones website with fancy glittery photos is actually the wrong way to go. In order to help the customer, the website should be short to load, informative, concise, just like this one XD. Therefore, choosing ones hosting needs depends on the type of website you need and the amount of prospective customers.

When looking for a web hosting company to host a website, many users have the question, “What operating system does my server have to be running on?” And most people with Windows computers tend to reply with, “Since my computer is running on Windows that means that the server must also be running on Windows!” This type of logic is INCORRECT. Windows and Linux, the two main operating systems, have different compatibilities with many programming languages, in addition to having differences in stability, performance, and cost. Furthermore, simple programming language such as HTML can be hosted on any server, regardless of which operating system it uses.

The two main concerns about servers are the stability and performance quality of the servers. As expected having one without the other is pointless, thus, a buyer must make a smart choice that balances these two.

Stability

Performance

So as you can see, each have their perks. Hopefully you will be able to choose an appropriate linux web host or windows web hoting based on your needs, and hope our reviews section of the available providers found here will be able to help you make the most informed and educated decision!