Web Hosting
Small to Medium Sized Business: Web Hosting
In order to make your website available to the public, you will need a web host or web server. There are numerous web hosting providers available that provide both value, security, decent up-time, and good customer care. Prices can range from 5 dollars to 40 dollars a month, depending on your needs, traffic allowance, and server type for small to medium business servers. The most common server in general usage is a Linux based server running Apache. Linux servers are very reliable and very inexpensive options for many businesses. As a client, you don't want price to be the only influencing factor when making a purchase. Not all servers areare the same--nor are all servers equal in terms of quality. Your web server is your primary defence against hacking attempts and other malicious activities. Therefore, it is vital to select a host with a good performance record, excellent functionality with tools and support systems and good customer service.
Other important features of a web host could be:
Does the web host support the languages that your website requires? ( Such as PHP, Javascription, Streaming Video, Flash, MySQL or SQL, Coldfusion, etc. ) Another important question will be, does the web host support POP and/or IMAP email? What is the average response time to support tickets? What is their average uptime for the server? Where are the datacenters located and is there redundancy within the datacenters? Does your web server support add-on services--or are you stuck within a limited plan structure? There are numerous questions that one could ask when looking for a web host. The important questions to ask are the questions most critical to your business--it is vital to assess those needs.
Experiences With Third Party Hosts
The following notes come from our personal experiences with the following web hosts and our client's feedback (which we post). This is intended for clients of Ironpaper only.
Better Biz Host
betterbizhost.com
Feedback:
Great prices and good uptime. The control panel is fairly easy to use and comes with a range of nice features and quick installs. They have one of the best web based email software platforms out there: Roundcube. We have had complaints for Joomla users and security for Joomla based websites on this server. This is worth mentioning because we have not had the same complaints for Joomla users on other servers with similar Mambo / Joomla packages.
Web The US / Dual Vision
webtheus.net
Feedback:
Hosting for both Linux and Windows. Decent uptime. Great customer support in terms of fixing issues and doing what it takes to keep a website up and running. This is one of the better Windows web hosting companies for the price.
Godaddy
godaddy.com
Feedback:
It's great to have your domain names and your site hosted in the same place. Since Godaddy is one of the largest domain registrars, hosting with Godaddy is very appealing. Their tech support team / customer service is based in the US and has been very friendly to deal with. One of the negative experiences has been that their web hosting control panel always has a "pending" time for many common actions such as creating an FTP user or changing a password. The wait time "pending time" can often take 30 minutes or more to make such simple updates. Also, web based support tickets have taken up to two days to get answered, but the plus side is that you can always call.
Dream Host
dreamhost.com
Feedback:
Good rates and decent to average plans. The web hosting control panel is one of the worst organized control panels that we have seen. This has lead to confusion with clients and admins trying to do simple things like create a new email address or view a list of databases. Customer Care is difficult (at best) to access. There is no phone support for the customer service team unless you pay extra. Even if you do pay extra, the phone support gives you only 3 calls per month.
RegisterFly
registerfly.com
Feedback:
Urgent Warning: Do not use registerfly.com. Their accredidation was terminated because of nearly non-existant customer support. We are looking into whether regfly.com is the same owner or if policy and management has changed.
Web Hosting Package Details ( Third Party )
Below is a list of decent hosting companies with whom, Ironpaper has had positive experiences.
Better Biz Host
24/7 customer support
Phone support
Extensive online documentation
Integrated ticketing system
1 Hour response guarantee
DOMAINS AND SUBDOMAINS
Domains Hosted 3
Subdomains 30
Custom MX and A records
FREE FEATURES
Online website builder - Site Studio
FrontPage Extensions support
Elefante Free Scripts »
E-MAIL FEATURES
POP3 e-mail accounts 100
E-mail aliases 100
Mailing lists 5
SPAM filter
E-mail filter
Anti-Virus protection
Web e-mail
POP3 server
IMAP server
SMTP server
Autoresponder e-mails
Catch-all e-mails
E-mail forwarding
SCRIPTING AND DATABASE
MySQL databases 20
Database storage 60 MB
phpMyAdmin
Python support
Perl support
PHP support
PHP support in HTML files
Over 3400 Perl modules
Crontab support 1
SITE MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Advanced Control Panel
FTP accounts 20
Web based file manager
Custom ERROR 404 page
Password protected directories
MISC FEATURES
Instant account activation
SSL with certificate generation
SSI support
SSH support Optional
Unrestricted bandwidth
SITE STATISTICS
Raw access and error logs
Traffic stats - WebAlizer
Detailed bandwidth stats
OS, CONNECTIVITY AND BACK-UP
Stable Linux with Apache
2.5 GBits network connectivity
Daily data back-up
UPS & diesel back-up generator
Also, here are some larger providers:
GoDaddy .COM
Network Solutions .COM