BEST WEBSITE HOSTS 2010

Netfirms Website Hosting Review

Price Value/ Features:
1. Free Domain Name For Life: Netfirms offers anyone who signs up with the Advantage or Business plan, a Free Domain name ($25 value per year), for as long as they hold the plan. This offer works with all top-level domain names including .com, .net, .org, .info, and .biz.

2. Free Shopping Cart:  Netfirms recently added Commerce Pro to their Advantage and Business plan for free. This e-commerce solution is both shopping cart and store manager in one. Major features include instant - one click - activation, sell 1-10,000 items securely, easy web-based control panel to manage your store, Amazon-like shopping experience and special discount rates with Authorize.net. No programming skills are required to use this feature. To learn more visit: www.netfirms.com/commercepro

3. Free Web Design Software: All Netfirms customers have access to free web design software - NetObjects Fusion 7 ($149 value). This award-winning software was designed to make professional Website building easy and fast. To learn more visit: http://www.netfirms.com/startercd.

4. Control Panel:  Customers at Netfirms have access to their Website account tools and billing through a customized control panel. Password protected, the Netfirms control panel gives you access to Advanced Website Statistics, Billing History and upgrading, E-mail account manager, domain name manager as well as tools like bulletin board, Commerce Pro, MySQL databases and NetObjects Fusion 7.

Netfirms Technology:
Netfirms uses a cluster of servers to handle the needs of their Websites. This kind of advanced technology is the same used by Fortune 500 corporations because it eliminates dependency on any one server. The multi-server method improves response time, site availability and concurrency. If ever one server goes down, the others pick up the extra work load, thus providing 99.9% uptime.

Customer Review
The support staff at Netfirms works very hard to keep response time low and valuable feedback high. On average they only take 1-2 hours to respond to a customer request E-mail.

Money Back Guarantee
Netfirms is so confident in the quality of their products and services that plans include an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee. Whatever the reason, you can cancel your account within 30 days of activation and receive a refund.

Website Netfirms Website can be navigated easily and every feature is explained in layman’s terms. Everything is straight forward and there are no hidden fees. Hundreds of questions are answered in the Support FAQ pages, complete with demos and step-by-step instructions of the most complicated task. You can access your control panel from the homepage and manage every aspect of your site account.

Netfirm Strengths
Well established company and growing rapidly, Netfirms hosts over 1,000,000 small business Websites. They offer every customer Free Website design software (award-winning NetObjects), 24/7 LIVE customer service (phone, e-mail, chat) and services are always improving.

Netfirm Weaknesses
Free domain Name is only for Advantage ($9.95) plan or higher. Basic (free) plan is limited with only 1 E-mail account (domain name required), and it doesn’t include MySQL databases or Multimedia and PHP support.

Statement from the Host:
In less than five years, Netfirms has become the fastest growing Web Hosting company in the world. We currently host over 1,000,000 Websites.

Our success is built on trust. Each person hosting a site with Netfirms has 24/7 access via phone or e-mail to our friendly, highly trained staff. Every Website is put on our clustered server platform to ensure speed, security and dependability. And with hosting plans as low as $4.95/mo, customers know they are getting the best deal on the net.

Summary
Netfirms hosting service is a great deal at a great price. Not only does Netfirms provide good value for money, but they continue to improve all their services. For example, they have recently dramatically increased their monthly bandwidth and storage for the Advantage and Business plan, added Free Web design software, a Free Domain Name and an easy to use Shopping cart tool.

Web Hosting E-Commerce

Internet E-Commerce

E-Commerce is about selling products or services over the Internet.

E-Commerce Systems

It is not a very good idea to build your own e-commerce system. Building an e-commerce system is a complicated process, with the potential for a lot of errors.

You might buy a ready-to-use system and run it on your own server. Many systems are available on the market today, and most of them will cover your basic needs for order management and processing. But again, if you are not familiar with hosting your own web site, starting with an e-commerce site is not the right thing.

The best solution, in our opinion, is to find an ISP that offers an e-commerce solution.

E-Commerce and Hosting Providers

E-commerce covers a huge range of products. With different ISPs you will find anything from very simple to very complex solutions.

Most ISPs offer a simple and inexpensive solution, that allow you to run a “virtual store”.

Your Checklist

• How does it handle customers?
• How does it handle product catalogs?
• How does it handle orders?
• How does it handle inventory?
• How does it handle back orders?
• How does it handle shipment?
• How does it handle accounts?
• How does it handle billing?
• How does it handle payment?
• How does it handle foreign currency?
• How does it handle credit cards?
• How does it handle taxes?
• How does it handle security?
• How does it handle integrity (encryption)?

Also check if the most time-consuming tasks are automated. Look for automated billing, invoice handling, accounting, and report generation.

Before you sign up with an ISP, surf some other e-commerce sites on their servers. Find out how it works. Try some shopping, and see if you get a good feeling. Also compare the other sites against yours, to see if it looks like you have the same needs. Contacting some of the other customers is also a valuable option.

Tax Issues

Taxes is a complex issue for on-line stores. Especially VAT (Value Added Tax).

If you are selling on-line, you will most likely be in the export business.

Exporting goods may not be the subject of VAT in your country, but often your customers will have to pay their local VAT when they pick up the goods.

In addition, there will be the issue of income tax for your shop, depending on how you report your income from sales.

Before starting an on-line store, be sure to consult a tax adviser.

Offensive Picture of Michelle Obama Taken Down form Google-Hosted Blog

An edited picture of the First Lady with monkey features has been removed from a Google-hosted blog after topping its image searches for the string “Michelle Obama.”

According to a report from the Guardian, “Hot Girls,” a blog hosted by Google’s free Blogger service, has apologized for the photo of Obama and taken it offline.

“Google had refused to remove the offensive image from its picture search listings, despite complaints that it is racist, instead opting to run an ad next to it explaining its policy on how search engine results work,” the Guardian reported. A Google spokesperson told the newspaper that the image may still appear online temporarily as it is removed from the Google Images search indexing system.

Google frames its official search result policy as not just a corporate stance, but also a philosophical one.

“The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results,” reads the response posted by Google. “Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.”

Google’s hands-off approach is not without precedent. In 2004, Google took a similar approach with the search results for “jew,” which for a period of time returned hate site “Jewwatch” as the top-ranked site.

While Google argues that it is not responsible for the search results it delivers, the fact that it was hosting the hateful image of Obama complicates the matter. Ignoring the search issue altogether, some would argue that Google was indirectly responsible for the offensive material because of its hosting services.

Web Host Rackspace Launches Holiday Shopping Mall

Web hosting provider Rackspace Hosting (www.rackspace.com) announced on Wednesday it has launched a new promotional service to help its e-commerce customers this holiday season.

The Rackspace Holiday Shopping Mall (http://nomoreservers.com/mall) is a promotional area hosted on NoMoreServers.com that offers discounts and coupons to encourage holiday shopping and highlight the benefits of using e-commerce, says the company.

Launched in October, No More Servers is a Rackspace initiative that focuses on the emergence of computing as a service models to support corporate computing. Rackspace hosts more than 2,000 e-commerce stores among its customers.

As the first of its kind for the company, Rackspace Holiday Shopping Mall will feature special discounts from retailers who are also Rackspace customers, including Coca-Cola, Levi Strauss, and ULTA as well as firms like Bonobos, TeeFury and ChristmasLightsEtc.

A full list of offers can be viewed at the Rackspace Holiday Shopping Mall website.

“As our nation turns its attention to the holiday shopping season, we wanted to provide a special place where we could highlight discounts for holiday gift purchases, gift shipping and other offers that are available from our customers,” says Andy Schroepfer, vice president of strategy at Rackspace and principal author of NoMoreServers.com. “Our e-commerce customers depend on the holiday season for financial success. In some small way, this site will help spread the word about the importance of e-commerce to future business success.”

Rackspace will continue to add more discounts and offers to the NoMoreServers site throughout the holiday shopping season. Additonally, e-commerce retailers can add their offers to the database by visiting the website.

cPanel Expands Its Support Offerings

cPanel®, a leading provider of software that automates Windows® and Linux web servers around the world, has announced a significant expansion of its technical support offerings.

Spurred by its continued growth, the company has decided to expand its technical support services in three key areas:

By offering 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week phone support

By making a new Live Chat feature available on its website, http://www.cpanel.net.

By reorganizing its online discussion forums and providing a technical support analyst to monitor them full-time.

Technical Phone Support Now Available Around the Clock -

In the past, cPanel has provided technical support mainly via its online, ticket-based system, offering phone support only during daytime business hours. Now, that has changed. “Our customer base is growing,” explained Technical Support Manager Sean Richards. “It makes sense to expand our support team, so that we can provide our users with help around the clock.”

The increased size of cPanel’s support team has provided customers with other benefits, too. “Adding a number of seasoned veterans and top talent has also allowed expanded support for migrations, bug review, direct API support as well as the direct involvement in many key areas that will be important for 2010,” Richards elaborated.

Phone support costs a nominal per-incident fee, which includes as many calls as needed to resolve the problem.

Customer Service Now Offers Live Chat feature at: http://www.cpanel.net -

cPanel has also implemented a Live Chat feature on its website, available to customers during daytime business hours. This free new service allows anyone visiting the site to send instant messages directly to cPanel’s Customer Service staff. The staff then provide quick, easy answers to customers’ billing and sales questions.

cPanel Community Forums Reorganized and Improved

One of cPanel’s most popular support channels, its discussion forums at http://forums.cpanel.net, has just been overhauled. “Customers will find the new forum layout more useful,” Richards commented. “There’s now a dedicated place for feature requests, and we’ve improved access from mobile devices.” Users of PDAs and smart phones can enjoy this enhancement by accessing the cPanel forums at http://m.cpanel.net.

Additionally, a veteran cPanel Technical Support team member is now dedicated to locating and responding to customer questions and problems in the forums full-time. This will aid users seeking advice about configuring their servers, or help with technical problems, by cutting down on response times.

The Planet Joins Microsoft WebsiteSpark™ Program

The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced its membership in the Microsoft WebsiteSpark program. Through this partnership, The Planet provides small Web development and design firms with free Microsoft licenses for the latest versions of Windows Server and SQL Server, key tools for building and designing rich Web sites. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, The Planet offers the program to qualified companies through its status as an official Network Partner and Hosting Provider.
To participate in the program, companies must be privately held professional service firms with no more than 10 employees, whose primary business is providing Web development and design services.
“With more than 20,000 customers, Web designers and developers comprise a key customer segment for The Planet,” said Todd Mitchell, general manager for Dedicated Hosting and Global Services. “However, for small firms, the capital expense of running a business can often be insurmountable, especially in today’s economy. We’re leveraging our partnership with Microsoft to provide these firms with valuable software and solutions at a low cost. Together with The Planet’s world-class network, data centers and customer support, the program provides tremendous value for cost-sensitive businesses.”

WebsiteSpark Overview
WebsiteSpark provides professional Web development and design companies with access to vast resources that would otherwise be unavailable to small firms:
Software: Companies gain access to full-featured development tools at no upfront cost, including Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008. Firms pay only a $100 fee to Microsoft, due upon program completion.

Support: WebsiteSpark provides professional technical support from Microsoft, connecting participants to a global community of Hosting Partners and Web designers and developers, who can offer a wide range of technical and business resources to growing firms.

Visibility: Companies gain global visibility to audiences of potential investors, clients and partners via the WebsiteSpark Marketplace.

To learn more about WebsiteSpark, visit http://www.theplanet.com/WebsiteSpark/.

About The Planet
The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 18.5 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting™ and data center colocation, all backed by 24×7×365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit http://www.theplanet.com/.

HostRocket Website Hosting Review

HostRocket is a highly successful web-hosting firm headquartered in Clifton Park, NY. Since its foundation in 1999, HostRocket has always had the goal of underscoring support, availability, technology and value.

Owning their own datacenter allows HostRocket to provide you with unmatched reliability and uptime. Not being dependant on other companies to provide them with access to the servers makes hardware upgrades on the fly easy, and allows them to fix problems before they become problems for your customers.

Statement from the web hosting provider

“HostRocket is reshaping and influencing the web hosting industry on a daily basis by providing world-class services that cannot be found anywhere else. For that reason, we take pride in keeping our customers and the media informed about important events and changes surrounding our company..”

Price Value/Feature

One of the most impressive things with HostRocket is their undeniably outstanding data center. Here is a breakdown of their datacenter features:

Location: 21 Corporate Drive, Clifton Park, NY
An area not prone to any major natural disasters ensures you that your servers will not be down as a result of Mother Nature.

Building Size: 52,000+ Sq. Ft.
A new class a office building, 21 corporate drive offers the perfect location for housing a world class data center.

DataCenter Size: 10,000+ Sq. Ft.-Large enough to hold thousands of servers and the ability to more than double the capacity of the server room ensures you will have room to grow for years to come.

Connection: Redundant OC-12 Loops through TW Telecom-Huge pipes with bandwidth available on demand up to OC-12 capacity ensures that your site will be available fast even during peak usage hours.

Networking: High end gigabit Ethernet infrastructure -All wiring is done with tested factory terminated cat5e gigabit Ethernet wiring to ensure maximum bandwidth. Cisco Routers and Switches ensure that your site will not be down as a result of inferior hardware failure.

Network Security: DOS and DDOS attack prevention in place. High end DOS (Denial Of Service) and DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attacks are stopped using redundant firewalls.

Dedicated Hosting: Their Dedicated and semi dedicated plans are or large companies that run a high-traffic and high-resource site (you need to store a lot of files). If yours is a very heavy traffic sites with very large files then you should look into these plans. UPS: Full UPS Battery Backup for all equipment. All equipment is backed up using multiple separate APC battery backup units to add extra redundancy in case of power failure. All UPS equipment is automatically tested every 2 weeks to ensure working order.

Freedom Plan: The Rocket freedom plan should fit all personal, small, and some medium sized businesses. Unlimited transfer and 1079 GB storage is a ton for this price! This plan is reduced from $8.95/mo to $4.99/mo now.

Shared Hosting - $4.99/month High Bandwidth Connectivity and Redundant Connections allow us to guarantee 99.5% uptime on all sites. Their 30 day money back guarantee ensures you will be happy with your shared webhosting service. Instant Account Activation allow you to get online and start uploading your website within minutes.

HostRocket offers the most complete and highest valued shared hosting packages available anywhere on the internet today. They offer both plenty of space for you to store both your web site along with any side projects you are working on, and enough bandwidth to deliver your site to thousands and thousands of visitors a month. If you need more then the basic bandwidth and storage space there is an array of other offers with upgrades including the Executive, Corporate, and Semi-Dedicated plans.

 

Generator: Full diesel generator backup for all equipment-All equipment is on a powerful Kohler diesel power generator which is turned on automatically 4 seconds after a power failure, long before the battery backup begins to fade. 1,000 gallons of fuel are kept on site, with refueling contracts in place.

Staff: 24/7/365 On Site Staff-Full staff means that no matter what time of day or night a problem may arise, the proper technicians to handle the problem be it software, hardware, or networking, are available to fix it right away.

Beyond this amazing datacenter they also have a very effective support system set up. This will be outlined more in the next section.

Support

HostRocket has the best support system by far. They have the ticket-support system (submit a ticket, get a reply) but they also have a bustling support forum and an entire site dedicated to hosting support at http://topnotchwebsitehosting.com/hostrocket.html. As discussed earlier HostRocket has an outstanding datacenter and outstanding support. Along with this and their wide variety of plans to fit anyone’s need they are completely reliable. No complaints from this reviewer.

Money-Back Guarantee

HostRocket offers a 30 day money back guarantee.

Summary

HostRocket offers a very professional service and their plans are tailored to your needs (see below). I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend HostRocket. I’ve yet to find anyone who has had a bad experience with HostRocket. If you have, please let us know.

EasyCgi Web Hosting Review

EasyCGI was founded in 1998 after running a successful regional Internet Service Provider since 1994. Boasting over 10 years of experience providing internet services, EasyCGI has grown into a globally competitive web hosting provider offering three tiers of shared hosting services which are suitable for a wide range of individuals and companies looking to host websites ranging from simple to complex. Recently EasyCGI has switched data centers from Nyack NY to Pearl River NY to provide room for expansion and growth to customers.

Price Value/Features

All shared hosting packages available from EasyCGI are hosted on Windows machines providing access to ASP, ASP.NET, Coldfusion, MySQL, MSSQL and MS Access. EasyCGI also utilizes their own hosting control panel which is different than control panels offered by other hosting buisnesses. To take a tour of their unique control panel please visit EasyCGI.

EasyCGI provides hosting options which allow maximum flexibility with your website. Accounts starting at only $7.96 per month offer a very generous 100 GB of disk space, 1000 GB of data transfer and you can also add 50 POP3 email accounts to get your buisness started. Your website will be hosted on a very powerful machine with minimum specifications of Intel 3.0GHz / 1GB RAM, each server will utilize backup power should a problem arise and will be powered by Microsoft Windows 2000, in my opinion the most stable windows operating system. EasyCGI also offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee on all web hosting packages.

For advanced webmasters, EasyCGI also offers server co-location. They can accomodate any type of machine including desktop and tower style machines and offer some nice free perks such as free reboots and power cycles, server monitoring and free overnight shipping for your server to their data center so that you can get your buisness online fast. The cost to colocate a server with 250GB of data transfer and 16 IP addresses is $79.96/month on a yearly contract but the thing that I find unfortunate is that you are unable to prepay for more bandwidth or purchase additional bandwidth without upgrading to a different package, the website also doesn’t state what the cost for overage is, etc. It would definately be better if more details were posted on this site.

Support

EasyCGI provides many options for easy contact should a problem arise and you require technical assistance. Toll free telephone support is available from 9am - 5pm EST by calling 1-866-EASY-CGI, this is the fastest way to get answers to any pre sales or support questions you may have. You can also try email contact by using the address mail@easycgi.com.

EasyCGI’s Website

I was able to easily navigate the website and quickly found information on shared hosting packages and other services offered by EasyCGI. The design is nice and clean, and also provides a nice features and price plan comparison to help you decide which package is just right for you.

Summary 

EasyCGI has excellent packages for people seeking shared hosting solutions, providing more than enough data transfer and diskspace backed by a 99.9% network uptime guarantee and access to powerful website tools you should have a stable website within no time. I also like the look of their unique control panel which they have deployed.

I think that colocation plans are a bit pricey from this host. It would be nice for more bandwidth allocation as 10GB can be used very fast, or it would at least be reasonable to have the option of purchasing more bandwidth without having to upgrade packages.

IBM Developing Technology for Zero-Emission Data Centers

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