or get 20% off your order with the coupon code: GREEN
Save on Host Gator Web Hosting

or try HostGator out for 1 month for only 1 cent with the coupon code: CASTIRON10

Please submit a free web hosting review if you have used any free web hosts.

Anymore, Web hosting service is extremely affordable. However, never choose a service based on price alone. In this particular market you don’t necessarily get what you pay for. A number one consideration should be technical support and customer service that the hosting service will provide. Just remember that a Web host that is significantly higher in price is not necessarily better. It is possible to find a very affordable Web host with outstanding services available to you.

Is the web hosting provider clear about the services that they offer? As mentioned, you will need to consider several factors before choosing your website host. Before making a final decision, keep these factors in mind:

How many e-mail accounts are available to you? E-mail accounts that relate to your domain are very important and you may discover the need to have more than one e-mail address. Because of this, you will want to choose a Web host that will offer you the ability to create more than one e-mail. So before making a decision, make sure you know exactly how many e-mail accounts you will be provided.

How many sub-domains or add-on domains will you be allowed to have with your account? You may be interested in hosting multiple websites within one account. If that is the case, you will need to choose a web host that will allow you multiple add-on domains. It is not difficult to find a host that will allow you the ability to add more domains; in fact many offer unlimited domains.

How much space would you be provided with your account? Although it is true to say that a beginning website will not take up too much space, it is also true that you must have all the space you need to be allowed to grow your website. A Web hosting provider that allows you 50 MB or less is simply not going to work.

Other questions to ask are:

1. How many databases are allowed on my account?
2. How much bandwidth is allowed on my account?
3. How long before a tech support agent will contact me should I run into trouble?
4. Does this Web host offer backup options?
5. What is the uptime percentage of this Web host?

Unlimited Webspace/Transfer:

Let’s get one thing straight here. Both hard disk space and bandwidth cost money. There is no profitable way for a hosting company charging twenty dollars monthly to make this possible. So do you think they’re going to follow through with their promise? Probably not.

Usually what this feature means is that there is no automated cap on bandwidth or webspace allowance. Instead, they have moderators watching the accounts for any spike in either of these things. When they see that an account is using more than it’s fair share of resources, they’ll notify the webmaster and possibly suspend the account for a temporary period.

AutoInstaller:

Not all autoinstallers are created equal. Let’s take 000Webhost for example. They are a hosting company advertising an autoinstaller with their free hosting plan. What they don’t tell you is that half of the options are disabled or have been “temporarily out of service” for the past few years. It can really be a royal pain in the rear when the webmaster doesn’t have experience installing more advanced scripts.

In order not to fall for these fake autoinstaller programs, look for a web host that uses the “Fantastico” autoinstaller. Fantastico is integrated with CPanel, and is constantly being developed. They have their own website and all of their installations work great. It’s not something the web host has much control over as to whether it works or not, so chances are a Fantastico autoinstaller will be functional.

99% Uptime:

That isn’t exactly as good as it seems if you have returning visitors. This basically means that chances are, 1 in 100 page request aren’t going to load. It’s going to be something that visitors will probably notice and could prevent some sales. You’ll also probably notice the downtime while you’re developing the site as well, which can make troubleshooting more advanced websites very difficult. At first it seems a little ridiculous to complain about ONLY having 99% uptime, but after working with it for awhile any webmaster would be annoyed.

Most decent web hosts will actually have a decimal point added to this value. They’ll post something like 99.99% uptime. If a site has a 99.99% uptime, that means that on average 1 in 10,000 pages aren’t going to load. Chances are, even returning visitors aren’t going to load that many pages.

As an experiment, we decided to host a WordPress blog with them.  Our plan was to load it with multiple add-ons, third party scripts, and throw as much traffic as we could at them.  In theory, it would be nothing short of a miracle if the site lasted a day, since it was free after all.  Free hosting services don’t like you to use all their resources like that; they want to save it for their paying customers.

The first issue we ran into was with the automatic installation program.  When you sign up for 000Webhost, you are given what they call a CPanel.  We believed it to be a clone of the actual program, but just as well we wanted to try out the features anyway.  Just like CPanel, there is a “Fantastico AutoInstaller” program to use, and it has WordPress available.  However when we tried to install WordPress, we got this message:

“We are upgrading autoinstaller at the moment. We do not have exact date when it wil be finished.  However, you can upgrade account and immediately start using another autoinstalled that has 50 scripts ready to install in one click!”

There’s something wrong with this picture.  This is obviously a ploy to get people to buy hosting plans from hosting24 (that’s what happens when you click their link).  We know this because we’ve been tracking this error message for the past 4 months, from January 2010 to April 2010.  If they were planning on resolving this issue, it would have been done by now.

So we had to install WordPress the old fashioned way, through FTP.  No big deal really.  We uploaded the program and it took just shy of a half hour, which isn’t great but it could have been worse.  Then we set-up the MySQL database & ran the 5-minute-install without any trouble.

Next we had to install our add-ons, and that’s when we started having a little trouble.  While using WordPress itself to download & install multiple add-ons at once, we saw intermitted times where both the web server and MySQL server would not respond for a few minutes.  Sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t.  This issue lasted for about two hours, and then the servers were working fine again.

Now that we had all of our data uploaded (including some forum posts), it was time to send traffic to them.  The easiest way we though of to do this was to simply purchase traffic from one of the SEO boards, as they sell cheap traffic all the time.  Now this traffic isn’t going to probably pay much attention to the site or click on anything, but what it would do is suck up all the bandwidth pretty quick as the pages would still be loaded.

We bought 10,000 visitors, spread them out over 5 days (2000 visitors/daily), and divided them among a few different posts.  The visitors started coming about 3 days after we purchased them, and for about 36 hours or so things were running quite smoothly.  We tracked both our web server and SQL server with a PING program from our computer and it resulted with an up-time of about 97%, which was acceptable.  But then we started noticing that our visitors had stopped.  We also got an e-mail stating:  “Your account has been temporarily suspended due to SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY, please contact an administrator”.

Using the forum board, we were able to contact one of their administrators via PM.  We didn’t explain to them the experiment that we were doing as we felt it would compromise the results.  What we wanted was to be treated like the common user.  The administrator took a look into the log file and told us that in order to use that much bandwidth, we would have to purchase hosting from hosting24.  Apparently, the amount of data transfer posted on the “features” page is only where the system automatically caps it.  If an administrator sees a large spike in bandwidth though, they will manually suspend your account.

We did get our account back after telling the administrator just who we were and what we were doing, and we didn’t have any issues after that.  But the lesson learned here is that if you have a site that has a lot of traffic, you can’t really milk 000Webhost for all their worth.  But for a personal website or small blog it should be alright.

If you have a used 000Webhost and want to share your experience please submit a 000webhost review/comment below.

“Custom” or “Limited” CPanels:

These often aren’t real CPanel systems at all. They’re just PHP scripts the hosting company paid someone to write for it to look like the real thing. A lot of times the advanced features in these panels are designed not to work properly, and suggest to you to upgrade to a premium package. Also, CPanel tutorials will not work properly since there are usually a lot of differences in design and menu layout.

Downtime:

Sometimes these hosting companies actually increase the downtime for their free servers. After all, they don’t make any money making sure they’re in tip-top order now do they? You’ll notice that in peak times in the day (usually noon), it will be hard to get pages to load properly. The truth is that they are purposely down during these busy times of day to make high-traffic web sites switch to premium hosting in order to make a better experience for their visitors. Web hosts know that high-traffic sites mean webmasters that will probably have no problem paying their hosting company and may even upgrade to a more expensive premium hosting package.

Free Host Advertising:

No professional web site should mention “Free hosting provided by…”, as this makes a site look very un-professional and un-trustworthy. If your site has any kind of e-commerce system, people won’t want to buy from it with little annoying “free hosting” ads everywhere. After all, where is all their money going anyway? Obviously the owner doesn’t think to much of his business. It’s like taking your child to the pediatrician working out of his car. People are always cautious spending money online, and most will look at every little clue they can find in order to tell if a business is “real” or not.

Customer Support:

The last real advantage to having a premium hosting package is that you are now a paying customer. You can play the “I pay you guys every month…” card while contacting their customer support service. People will be a lot more willing to help you when they know that your contributing to their paycheck rather than someone that’s trying to mooch off the company for a free service. Usually, the company will even inform you of the great customer support features you’ll get when signing up for a premium package.

110mb.com Review of Features

- 110MB of free space
- 100GB of bandwidth
- Over 300 website templates
- 30 one-click installs for blogging, forums, more (wordpress, phpBB, etc…)
- PHP 4 & 5
- XML Support
- Backup System
- No forced ads on your website pages

Check Out 110mb.com Now!

If you have any experience using 110mb please post your reviews or comments below.

The good thing myself and thousands of other webmasters have found with Hostgator is that their service and support is top notch – it’s also one of the cheapest providers out there so that’s definitely half if not the full battle. Many visitors to the Hostgator website are hesitant to try out their service at first because most webmasters know Hostgator oversell their disk space and monthly transfer – meaning they sell space and monthly transfer they can’t completely promise you’ll have although it’s very likely. Now there are some good and bad points about overselling but I’ll not discuss it in much detail other than saying by overselling their services they are providing you with a still reliable and very cheap service you’ll not find in many other places, and this is why i feel Hostgator is definitely one of the best hosting providers out there.

The Hostgator support is one of the most helpful and has a very prompt response time whichever support method you use so you can guarantee that if you need help with anything related to hosting an experienced support or sales assistant will be there at your doorstep. Most support requests are answered within minutes no matter what time or day you require it as they guarantee that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year their in house staff will be available to answer your requests – this to me is already worth paying that small monthly fee for and not only do you get prompt support you also get a very reliable service from a committed hosting provider.

Get $25 Off HostGator With The Coupon Code: HOUSTON
or get 20% Off your order with the coupon code: GREEN

If you’d like to try HostGator out for 1 month for only 1 Cent (takes $9.94 off) use the coupon code: CASTIRON10

Check out HostGator

Please share your experiences with HostGator by submitting a comment below.

Web hosting service is actually the provision of your storage space in a remote server and the bandwidth necessary for your visitors to access your website through your domain, say something like www.yourdomainname.com. A modern web hosting provider can offer many services which are very useful as well as important for advanced websites, online software applications, or when you’re planning to launch a complex website.  They will not be required by an average user who wants to erect a simple website.

If what you require is a simple website, with a gallery, some internal webpages and some information about you, your company, your brand or whatever that interests you and like to share with others, you can surely use a free web hosting service.

Many free web hosting providers are there on the Web, and most of them provide a good service, but they insert advertisements on your homepage, which many visitors find annoying.  Others though their hosting service is free of advertisements, yet their webspace is limited or they will not allow the use of PHP or MySQL which is important when you’re using databases on the website.

Many free web hosting providers occupy low ranks on listings, and this means that your website will be out of reach of your potential customers.  Anyhow there are some benefits in using free web hosting to establish your presence on the Web, particularly if you’re a beginner and want to learn before you invest on your website.  Remember to do your research on the free web hosting providers before choosing one for you.

TODAY ONLY – 75% OFF

USE THE 75% OFF COUPON CODE: 75OFF

All types of plans and durations can use the 75% off HostGator coupon code: 75OFF

TODAY ONLY 11/27/09 – HAS EXPIRED!

This is the best HostGator deal available only once a year and it’s now over. Check back here next Black Friday 2010.

In some cases when some hosting providers say they offer a reliable and free shared web hosting service it usually means they are after something from their service users – which is you and many others. It could be anything from posting on their forums, renewing and paying for the service you are using at the end of the month, and some providers even want your email to put in a list so they can sell that list to advertisers and make a lot of money from it – which is completely legal because when you sign up to their service you are signing an internet signature which means you agree to their terms and conditions which usually includes the ability to sell your email to third party advertisers.

You may even find yourself running into a scammer if you are one of those people who uses 1 or 2 passwords to login to every form on websites you use – they can easily steal your passwords and you may not even find out about it. If you are using a free service make sure you think about the little things such as using different passwords and maybe registering a new email to use for the free service just so your regular email doesn’t get spammed to death by advertisers. Using a free hosting provider isn’t always worth the hassle as a lot of them aren’t reliable and promise a service you won’t get.

1. Space

The first very important concept of any web hosting company would be the allocation of space among its various users. The space needed largely depends on the company’s nature of business and the amount of visitor traffic on any given day. There should be no compromise when it comes to basic space size for any business no matter what their needs; they all need room to grow. Generous allocation to a business site is the only way to add real value to their site. This allocation is only possible with paid web hosting. With free web hosting you will not have as many space options if they offer the option at all. Space is one of the most vital differences between paid and free web host sites.

2. Transfer of Data

The speed of data transfer is another critical as well as challenging part of web hosting. It is a matter of serious thought by companies that are searching for a web host site. None of their visitors want to sit there and wait for a page to take forever to load. Instead the company’s visitors want instant connectivity and the web host should be able to provide it. The bandwidth greatly determines the speed of this transmission so if the web host does not offer a large amount of bandwidth then there will be lagging in the customer’s website. Free web hosting is usually the ones that do not offer a lot of bandwidth space options. A good quality web host should provide their customers with the right amount of bandwidth for their needs.

3. Support

A key component to any successful webhosting company is their technical support team. The paid web hosting sites have technical support generally will have technical support available 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. The free web host sites do not offer full time support if they happen to offer any at all.

These are just the main differences that occur between free web hosts and paid ones. If you are looking for all of the above options then your best bet would be to use a paid site.

Today, colocation hosting is a technological buzzword in breakthroughs. By definition, colocation is the process of finding equipment in other locations. On the other hand, clients at these alternative locations see colocation hosting as locations of their personal servers of top-end data centers. These data centers are basically packaged compositions and colocation hosting comes with things like fast Internet connection, high levels of security, speed, professional server solutions and controlled air temperature

It is possible for colocation service providers to appear in various colors that can go through service providers that rent data center space are technically their own personal companies with personal data center owners or colocation resellers who don’t necessarily have to be on-site.

Colocation service hosting definitely isn’t a very easy task; however, they do come with various benefits. Service providers of colocation hosting gives clients the opportunity to benefit from the security of data centers, networks, as well as environment all the time. The services of colocation hosting mostly takes place at top-end data centers and need to concentrate on various factors before they can reach ultimate success. The very first operations highly count on how many servers there are that require colocation, the service providers of the bandwidth, the adopted business strategy and the chosen data center’s location. These are just several factors of what can determine how much the project will amount to in money.

Going to various data centers can prove to be highly informative. One common visible factor in every data center is the rack, which is important for hosting providers of colocation services who charge monthly rents for the space of rack used. Data center servers are kept in cabinets that are kept on these racks. Colocation hosting goes through several essential protocols to their overall services and have to be fully understood by all service users as most they can; this includes server maintenance and upkeep, as they are the user’s main responsibility and not the service provider of the colocation hosting. The expenses for the high speed Internet should also be the user’s responsibility instead of the service provider’s.

The perfect data centers should never be chosen by its cost but by its overall quality. The chosen data center should follow set protocols that include things, such as a rapid connection to the Internet, security that is top-end, powerful measures for fire protection and back-up, as well as environment. Service providers of colocation hosting should therefore select something that is more than just a data center that is top-end; the decision should lie on a mixture of various factors, the most essential factors (data center selection aside) being control and flexibility, which are best exhibited through freedom of software selection and hardware configuration selection.