Web Hosting Reviews and Articles

Reviews and analysis of the top web hosting companies.

Archive for February, 2007

LunarPages Web Hosting Review


250GB and 2500GB for $6.95 a month!

LunarPages Hosting Review

About

Our primary focus is supporting our customers’ needs: each plan provides 24-hour toll-free customer support, membership to our web forums, and tools to simplify website ownership.

Lunarpages solutions are at the forefront of industry standards, and are powered by Dell PowerEdge servers, the most innovative and secure servers in the industry.

There are thousands of web hosting services so why choose Lunarpages? When comparing web hosts it is important not only to consider a price difference of a dollar or two. Although we offer more data transfer and storage resources then you will likely ever utilize, we prefer to focus on something much more important, reliable web hosting and great customer service. Above all we take care of you personally and attentively with 24-7 award winning customer support. It’s all about making sure your website and email remain online and you are happy. It’s not just technical support to us; it’s about caring for people since 1998. Phone us any time and become part of the rapidly growing Lunarpages web hosting family. We are rated #1 in the world. Call us now and find out why.

Featured Package

Our most popular Basic Web Hosting package is an incredible value at only $6.95/mo, and includes:

  • Up to 5000MB storage
  • 400GB of bandwidth
  • $700 in Coffee Cup Software FREE
  • Free Domain Name for Life
  • Special Offer on Webhosting Transfers
  • $2.99 Domain Registrations
  • Frontpage extensions
  • MySQL, PHP, PERL, ASP, Python and JSP
  • and much more..

Editors Review

My first impression of their website was that is was a bit unprofessional looking but I like that. Makes them appear more “normal” to most web sites. The testimonials were the first thing that I noticed with the $700 in free software being next. I began scratching my head wondering what the software included. I clicked the “read more” link and it turns out to be pretty nice. The best freebies are the HTML Editor, Web Video Player, Flash Firestarter, and RSS News and Chat. They are probably just doubed down replicas of Dreamweaver and Flash but pretty useful. The support looks very nice including a FAQ, knowlege base, and of course phone and e-mail help. They also have forums where users and staff can help you. I would assume it would be a bit slower depending on the activity. The package is a great value for the amount of space and loads of extras it includes. If you have never built a website or a new webmaster this host is perfect for you. I am not sure how helpful the extras would be to a seasoned webmaster but they are still there if you ever need them. Lunar packes offers basic, business VSP, windows and dedicated hosting. There should be a plan for every budget. Check out the customer reviews below for what others think of them.

Customer Reviews:

These have to be the most detailed I have seen yet. They are featured right on the front page not hidden in the subpages like most hosting companies do. They did a nice job.

“Lunarpages Rocks! FANTASTIC customer service…A great choice for novice (that’s me!) and expert webmasters alike! There is only one name in webhosting - Lunarpages!” - Dwayne De Lung

“I have been with Lunarpages for around 3 years now and have moved my customers here too due to the fact it is the best bang for the buck. Can’t beat the services, support and what all is offered for the price.” - Scott Wilson

Evaluation

Price Value 9 / 10
Performance 8.5 / 10
Reliability 8.5 / 10
Customer Support 9 / 10
Control Panel 9.5 / 10
User Feedback 9.5 / 10
Website Design 8.5 / 10

Overall Grade:

90%

A-


Learn more about LunarPages

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DreamHost Review

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About Dreamhost

Dreamhost is a small company established in April 1997 who started life with just one single Pentium 100 web server. Today they have grown to over 700 servers, each with over 50 times the processing power of the single server they started out with and now host over 200,000 websites in a state of the art data centre. One thing has never changed during there rise and that is the fact that they have always made it number one priority to deal with every client as a human being and friend, which they claim is the real reason behind there success.

DreamHost is owned by its employees. We’re a tight-knit family and we’re not looking to sell out to investors or media conglomerates or other gigantic companies who care more about the bottom line than providing solid web hosting.

Believe us, there’s plenty of those in the hosting industry already and you probably don’t want to get mixed up with them.

Editors Review

DreamHost is the web hosting company that I have been using for the past two years and I finally get the chance to review them. This review will not be biased based on the fact that I host with them I promise. As mentioned in the company overview they host over 200,000 clients which is pretty impressive. The major problem I have had with them is the CPU usage, bandwith, and no cPanel. I was supposidly using “over this amount” so they cut me off of the reliable 99.99% uptime server and put me on a bad one. After talking with support we got it all squared away and I have not had a problem since. They do not use the typical cPanel that most hosting companies do. It does take time to get used too and can be annoying if having someone help you with installation that is not familiar with it. The hosting plans are feature packed and offer everything that you should need. The customer support always got back to me within 24 to 48 hours even on holidays and had very helpful responses. I got a free domain when I first joined two years ago and got hosting at a great price because of the coupon code that I entered. See the end of this post to use it yourself. I recommend the Crazy Insane Package for people with a moderate amount of websites. It is a flat $9.95/month on a one year prepayment and offers more space then you will needed. Your account at DreamHost grows daily mine goes up 1024 mb/week with the disk and 16 GB per week bandwith. Just a little added bonus if you are not using much for a few months but then end up needing alot down the road. They also offer a 97 day money back guarantee. Nobody I have reviewed yet has offered close to that. Overall I love DreamHost and recommend them.

Featured Package

Crazy Domain Insane!

Price: $9.95/month (1 year), $7.95/month (2 years)

Features:

  • 200 GB Disk Storage
  • 2TB Monthly Bandwidth
  • Unlimited MySQL Databases
  • 75 Shell/FTP Users
  • Web-Based Account Control Panel
  • Holds up to 3000 E-Mail Accounts (POP/IMAP)
  • 1 Free Domain Registration w/ FREE whois privacy!
  • and much more..

Evaluation

Price Value 8.5 / 10
Performance 9 / 10
Reliability 9.5 / 10
Customer Support 9 / 10
Control Panel 8 / 10
User Feedback 9.5 / 10
Website Design 8 / 10

Overall Grade:

88%

B+

Follow these easy steps to join Dreamhost:

  1. Click here to go to the signup page and fill out all of your details.
  2. Once you find the hosting package you like click the “Sign Up Now Button.
  3. When filling out the form enter in the Promo Code or email of person who referred you: enter “HOT27″ in that box so you will get a $27 savings on that hosting plan.
  4. Click the “continue to secure payment” button and select your method of payment.
  5. Once you have paid in a few hours time your account should be activated and you will be ready to add your websites and start using your hosting.

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HostGator Web Hosting Review



HostGator Hosting Review

About

HostGator is one of the fastest growing shared and reseller web hosting companies in the United States. We don’t require customers to sign up for anything longer then a month to month contract and we don’t have any setup fees on our reseller and shared plans. We offer 24/7/365 phone support, 99.9% uptime, and have a 30 day money back guarantee. Your site will be on a top-of-the-line Dual Xeon server that can provide instant backups of your site. Our control panel is one of the best in the industry, and has over 52 scripts that can be installed with a click of the mouse.

Awards: Too many to list (which is a good thing)

Editors Review

HostGator has every feature around plus has ALOT of power packed into the plans. They run on top of the line servers and have a ton of one click installation scripts, and an easy to use top of the line control panel. HostGator offers both shared, reseller, and dedicated hosting. They have sample control panel for users to check out before buying a package. I like this style of control panels the most very easy to use with everything labeled and in a nice neat order. The cPanel 10 gives you full control over everything. Reminds of of the Wordpress admin area which is so easy to pickup on and start using right away. Here is what one of their customers thought about HostGator, the customer reviews are important to us. Overall this company looks like a real winner and should be on the top of your list of choises when considering which hosting provider to go with.

Sample Testimonial

I found hostgator on Google while searching for reseller hosting and reseller hosting programs. They are both affordable and reliable. The uptime I have had on my reseller web hosting is simply amazing!

Shawn Appleton

Featured Package

Baby Plan

Disk Space: 100,000mb (100gb)
Bandwith: 1,000,000mb (1,000gb)
Price: $9.99/month
Included:

  • Sitebuilder
  • 24/7 Support
  • Instant Backups
  • Unlimited domains, subdomains, and FTP accounts, MySQL databases, and email accounts
  • Tons of scripts and supported gateways
  • cPanel 10
  • Web FTP Stats and E-Commerce Features

Evaluation

Price Value 9.5 / 10
Performance 9 / 10
Reliability 9.5 / 10
Customer Support 9.5 / 10
Control Panel 9.5 / 10
User Feedback 9 / 10
Website Design 8.5 / 10

Overall Grade:


92%

A-


Order a Package Now!

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Dotster Web Hosting Review


The New Doster Hosting


Dotster Web Hosting and Domain Registration

Company Overview

With nearly three million domains, Dotster, Inc. is one of the world’s largest ICANN-accredited domain name registrars. Launched in 2000, Dotster was among the first to offer discounted pricing. Dotster gives customers something worth clicking for: Our domain registrations include free URL forwarding, free domain parking, free SpamShield, free TransferLock, and free ownership transfers. Customers can also add features like WHOIS privacy, e-mail services, web hosting, DNS certificates, and more. We are well known for our ability to deliver hard-to-find domain names and unique domain extensions such as .MD. We treat customers like family, and offer superior online account management tools and dedicated support from our customer care team in Washington state.

Editors Review

Dotster is well known in the domain name industry and has heavy advertising for that. Let’s see if it paid off for them. The domain prices even seem a little high, I would never pay $9.99 to register my domain when other registers have it for much less. The first thing I decided to look at was the packages themselves. Since they seem to not revolve around webhosting I was a bit skeptical. At the bottom I noticed Dotster offers a full 10-day money-back guarantee for Hosting Services. Most offer a 30 day guarantee not sure why they decided on 10 days. They do have the option to pay quarterly which is different but not very useful. The packages are very expensive for the amount of features they offer. Take a look at the Starter Plan. If you register alot of domain names (you get up to 5 free) and like to have them both at the same site then Dotster would be a good choice for you otherwise I would take a look at the other reviews. Also it should be noted that the Standard Package seems considerably better then the Starter for only a few dollars more.

Starter Plan

Prices: Windows: $5.91/month (1 year plan) $5.31 (2 year plan)

* Offers both Windows and Linux.
* 10GB Storage
* MySQL or MSSQL (10 databases)
* Host up to 50 domains
* 500GB Transfer
* Subdomains

* 150 email accounts
* Anti-SPAM Filter
* POP/Webmail
* Web Analytics
* Email Anti-virus

* Front Page Plug-Ins
* SMTP
* ASP (Windows Only)
* PHP

Evaluation

Price Value 5 / 10
Performance 4 / 10
Reliability 7 / 10
Customer Support 7.5 / 10
Control Panel 5 / 10
User Feedback 5 / 10
Website Design 7.5 / 10

Overall Grade:


60%

D-

Learn more about Dotster by visiting them at the link below.

Award Winning Hosting: $5.25/month!

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Dot5 Web Hosting Review


New Banner

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About

Dot5Hosting.com is one of the industry leaders in Web Site Hosting. Our affordable packages, low cost domains, and value added services are one of the reasons that Dot5Hosting has become one of the most popular web hosting packages on the internet today. Another reason our customers are so happy with our services is that we have terrific 24 / 7 customer support, we have a 99.9% uptime and a Money Back Guarantee.

Featured Plan

$4.99 Month Starter

This package includes:

# 200 GB of Hosting Space
# Host 6 Domains on 1 Account!
# 2000 GB of Transfer
# 5000 POP Email Accounts
# SSL, FTP, Stats
# CGI, Ruby, Perl, PHP, MySQL
# Front Page Extensions
# Free Domain Forever
# Free Site Builder
# 24/7 Phone Support
# Best Support in the Industry
# and more…

Editors Review

Dot5 looks like a great place for beginning webmasters and people looking for affordable webhosting that is always there for you. The first thing that lured me in was the awesome support and great beginner packages. They have a 30 minute e-mail response time guarantee to go along with the standard (only because all the big boys do it) 30 day money back guarantee. Dot5 has over 25,000 customers and claims to have the “Best support in the industry”. Which judging by their guarantee they could just be. They seem to do everything in overdrive. The customer reviews mainly focused on speed and the fast technical support. Here is an example of one.

My site has been hosted on Dot5hosting for over 2 years now, and I’ve never seen a second of downtime. Whenever there is a problem all you have to do is swing by the site, head into a live chat, and within 5 to 10 minutes your problem is solved. The value is unbeatable, I’ve been with 4 web hosting companies in the past year and I’ve never been happier with anyone more than Dot5hosting. Thanks again!

Why is this web host great for people just starting out? They have hundreds of Professional Web Templates 100’s of Professional Web Templates, a Logo and Slogan Editor, publishing programs, online web editors, and all the basics that anyone with little knowlege can use to get their website off the ground. Overall Dot5 seems like a real winner. They may lack some of the hosting features that businesses or bigger websites would need but will work just great for smaller ones.

Evaluation

Price Value 8 / 10
Performance 7.5 / 10
Reliability 9 / 10
Customer Support 10 / 10
Control Panel 7.5 / 10
User Feedback 8.5 / 10
Website Design 7 / 10

Overall Grade:


82%

B-

$5 Hosting From Dot5Hosting!

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PowWeb Hosting Review

PowWeb Hosting - Only $7.77 per month


PowWeb Web Hosting

10 Reason to Join PowWeb

1. Best Value For Your Money
Our One Plan hosting package offers EVERYTHING you need for only $7.77 per month! Other Web hosting companies charge up to five times more. We offer loads of disk space, bandwidth and features at an incredible discount.

2. A Company You Can Trust
PowWeb has been providing award-winning hosting since 1999. We operate out of a real office with real staff monitoring our servers and network 24/7. PowWeb is a member of the Better Business Bureau and has agreed to the Bureau’s membership standards, which include a commitment to ethical business practices.

3. Fast Network/Server Backbone Connection
Our servers connect to the Internet at lightning speed! Our backbone includes high speed OC12/48 connection for efficient and reliable high-speed performance. We have teamed up with a major connection tier 1 provider to bring you one of the most reliable services on the Internet today.

4. Load-Balanced Servers
Take advantage of the latest technology. Thanks to our “load balanced” servers, your Web site will experience virtually no downtime during server reboots, server maintenance and server hardware failure.

5. We Use Our Own Hardware & Proprietary Software
PowWeb uses its own state-of-the-art hardware. All of our servers are company-owned and operated. Most Web hosting companies are just resellers relying on other people’s equipment. We pride ourselves in using proprietary software. Our whole infrastructure was built from the ground up by our team of experienced developers. This includes server configurations, billing software, helpdesk, WebMail, Site Manager, and OPS.

6. Large Online Community
We operate one of the largest communities on the Internet, allowing clients to communicate freely and openly with each other. Join the family — it’s a great place for web designers and novices alike to exchange ideas, code, advice or just hang out!

7. Build, Grow & Profit!
In addition to providing you with quality hosting at an affordable price, we also provide you with the necessary tools to grow and profit from your Web site, this includes our Resource Center, FreeLance Marketplace and our Community Forum.

8. Friendly Technical Support
Your Web site(s) will be in good hands with PowWeb. We provide 24/7 phone, e-mail and support.

9. Upgrades
Our development team is continuously upgrading our systems with the latest technology, creating new tools and features to make your Web presence as easily maintainable and reliable as possible.

10. Satisfaction Guarantee
Keeping our customers happy is our main priority. If for ANY reason, we do not measure up to your expectations, take advantage of our 30-day money back guarantee.

Featured Web Hosting Plan

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All Included!

Web Site Access / Control
Member Operations Control Panel
DNS Management (A records, Cnames, MX records)
Sub-Domains (something.yourdomain.com)
24/7 FTP Access, Unlimited FTP Users (separate directories)
Web-Based File Manager
Password Protect Directories
Custom Error Pages (403,404, and 500)
SnapShot Instant Click and Restore Daily Backups
Rock Solid Unix Platform

Script Instant Installer - Better Than Fantastico!
Wordpress
phpBB
osCommerce
Gallery & Gallery 2
PHP-Nuke
and more..

Unlimited Mailboxes (POP3 IMAP and SMTP)

Customer Service
Toll-Free Technical Support (1-877-4-POWWEB)
24/7 Friendly E-mail Technical Support
Active Community Forum (20,000+ members!)
24/7 Live Chat Help
Live Servers/System Announcements
Tutorials and Support Documentations
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

See the Full Package by visiting their website here

Editors Review

The first thing that caught my eye when I went to the website was the “Top 10 Reasons to Join PowWeb” which listed many of the strong points of this company. They have very high performance servers, great prices, and the best support of the companies I have reviewed yet. They have a support forum which is also an active community that could be used to better your website. Scanning over it I see a website review, affiliate program area, and with 284 users online it looks like they will answer your question in a timely manner. They also have a 30 day money back guarantee so if for any reason you do not like this hosting you can pull out. I also like the fact that they accept Paypal to make the transaction even faster. They also scored among the highest level in my evaluation.

Evaluation

Price Value 9.5 / 10
Performance 8.5 / 10
Reliability 9 / 10
Customer Support 9.5 / 10
Control Panel 8 / 10
User Feedback 9.5 / 10
Website Design 9 / 10

Overall Grade:

90%

A-

PowWeb Hosting- 300,000 MB + 3000 GB xfer - *On Sale* $5.77/month!

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StartLogic Web Hosting Review


StartLogic - Affordable Webhosting

StartLogic Web Hosting Review

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About the Company

StartLogic is one of the leading providers of web hosting solutions and services for global business. Thousands of businesses, from all over the World, rely on our advanced, easy-to-use, reliable hosting solutions and award winning customer service to power their online presence.

StartLogic offers a full line of solutions for personal, business, government, and educational customers, including:

  • Hosting services for your Web site and other important data.
  • E-commerce solutions that enable your business to sell over the Internet.
  • Security measures to protect your information assets.
  • Applications that allow the Internet to make your business more productive.

At StartLogic we believe the key to the best business relationships is a thorough understanding of our customers’ needs, priorities and expectations. We also believe that satisfied customers are the result of providing prompt, dependable, worthwhile service. We shall always strive to deliver innovative products and state-of-the-art technologies that meet the ever-changing requirements of our customers.

We are devoted to providing our customers World-Class hosting and ebusiness solutions at an affordable price.

Editors Review

First impressions count and StartLogic made a good one. The site has a nice clean design with alot of the necessary information right on the front page. The next thing that I noticed was right below the StartLogic logo the phrase “Trusted by Over 80,000 Customers”. That automatically means that they are a well respected web hosting provider and reassures the customer that they are not going to go under anytime soon. The next thing to look at is the testiomonials which are always very important. After reading some of these I did not feel any more confortable with this hosting company. Most of them were only a line long and not very detailed about what exactly was helpful. Here is an example.

After signing up with StartLogic as our host provider, our website was able to join the world wide web instantly. The customer support staffs went out of their way to help not only representing our website as it should be, but also giving us hints on how to achieve our “hits counter” effectively on the web. It is a great service for start up businesses.

Not very many webhosting have a “Live Support Feature” which makes them above the standard in that catagory. What really counts is if they are able to help YOU in any given situation and of course the response time is one of the most important factors. With a 30 day money back guarantee posted in huge letters there is nothing wrong with given this host a try. The price seems to be very reasonable with discounts if you buy more then 1 year. Here is my final evaluation from just checking out the server specifications, pricing plans, and reading other customers reviews.

Evaluation

Price Value 8 / 10
Performance 9 / 10
Reliability 9 / 10
Customer Support 8 / 10
Control Panel 8.5 / 10
User Feedback 7.5 / 10
Website Design 9 / 10

Overall Grade:

84%

B

StartLogic. Free setup/domain, Web builder, unlimited emails, PHP, mySQL, CGI, FrontPage. From $6.50/month. Click Here for more info.

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What is the best web host?

There are thousands of web hosting companies to choose from and at times it can be a very hard to make the final decision. The best web host is the one that has all of the features that the customer needs at the most affordable price. We will figure out the best web hosting company by comparing a number of factors such as features, support, reliability, and customer reviews. If you are the regular web user a bunch of questions come to mind with very few resources online with all the answers.

  • Will 1000 GB of Web Hosting Space be enough?
  • Should they have 24/7 live support?
  • Should I buy cheap web hosting or go for the best?
  • Should I be using Linux or Windows?
  • Why does unlimited e-mail accounts matter?
  • Should it include a free domain name?
  • Are the “Free Site Builders” worth paying extra for?

These will all be answered and along with many more common questions in the Web Hosting FAQ.

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