The problem with free web hosting plans
In my opinion, free web hosting is one of the most misunderstood concepts on the web today. Free web hosting plans are becoming increasingly popular as new webmasters bite into the idea without actually analyzing the consequences. I myself spent many years, at the start of my webmaster career, using free web hosting plans. This experience has giving me an insight into the down-side of free web hosting plans that many people seem to miss.
Would Coke promote Pepsi on their website?
Although the rhetorical question above seems ludicrous, this concept is one of the fundamental problems with free web hosting plans. Forced advertising is the way that hosting companies can afford to provide “free” hosting. Whether it be through pop-ups, pop-unders, headline ads, or implanted adsense you will be hosting advertisements on your website that generate revenue for your hosting company. Not only is this annoying it can also ruin the look of your page; the majority of the time you cannot control what the ads look like or where they go, they are simply dropped down onto your site and there is nothing you can do.
Traffic Jams
The bottom line in web hosting is that bandwidth (data transfer) costs money and if your plan is free it is most likely your bandwidth will be limited. Too many times I have attempted to access a web site hosted on a free server and been given the message: “This user has acceded their bandwidth limits, please try again next month”. As a webmaster this can be infuriating. Imagine building a solid page, marketing it, gaining an audience, and then losing that audience because your page is not allowed anymore hits that month.
SEO woes
This is a problem that caused me a ton of frustration, but in the end taught mea lot about how search engines work and how search engines handle name resolution. In almost every case free web hosting plans do not allow you to point a domain name (www.yoursite.com) to an actual page. Instead you are forced to use a concept called URL redirection. URL redirection allows a webmaster to identify a site that the URL should point to. So if a user types in www.example.com and we have configured it to redirect to www.freehost/users/mysite.html it will end up on that page. This does not seem like much of an issue until you begin trying to get your website indexed in the search engines. So you submit your site (www.example.com) to some directories and you make some good link partners and then you start to wonder, why am I not being listed in the SE’s? I have 100 solid back links pointing to www.example.com, what is happening. The problem is that www.example.com has no data, it has no content, it simply redirects to your actual page at www.freehost/users/mysite.html. SE’s not only will not index a page with no data or content but they may even view this as an attempt to fool their algorithm, thus banning your domain name. The only work around is to forget the domain name and optimize for your free hosting address, which is not really an acceptable work around.
But wait!
Although I am a strong believer that free web hosting is not the way to go it is possible to find a free web host that works for you. There are some out there that do not force advertising, do not limit your bandwidth, and will allow pointed domains. The problem is finding one that does all three. If you are a serious, or even only slightly serious, webmaster take the hit and pay the money for web hosting. In the end you can get an awesome web hosting plan for as low as $5.95 a month, and trust me this will be WELL worth the money.
Feel free to check out some Cheap web hosting plans at my website.
By Chris Hunt
About the Author
Owner of 123 Cheap Web Hosting Plans
Avoiding Bad Web Hosts
© Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
The Internet represents the most powerful communication revolution since the dawn of mankind.
Its communication power can literally create business empires faster and with less startup capital than in all human history.
Yet, with all this power at their fingertips, it amazes me that most businesses and entrepreneurs will put their business in jeopardy just to save a couple of bucks.
Would you build a luxury home on a foundation made for a double-wide trailer?
Would you mount a race car body and engine on a chassis built for a go-cart?
If not, then why would you try to build a legitimate online business to support your family and contribute to your livelihood using $4 a month hosting?
It doesn’t make sense, but people do it every day and, unfortunately, the consequences can often cost you a hundred times or more of what you “saved.”
When you go to choose a web host, you need to think in terms of the purpose for your website(s).
If you want a little family site or a non-commercial blog, then $5 a month hosting may be just what you need.
If you want to host a basic, but dependable website to sell your own, or someone else’s products, then plan on $9-20 a month, depending on how much hand-holding you need from your web host’s technical support staff.
If you want to host multiple sites to generate search engine traffic, sell your own products online, and get a moderate amount of traffic, then plan to spend $15-$50 a month, depending on which options you choose.
If you plan to operate a serious e-commerce site and need the flexibility to grow, then a dedicated server for $100- $200 a month may fit the bill.
When evaluating a web host, keep the following in mind.
Will you run scripts on your website?
If yes, then make sure the web host offers a cgi-bin and mysql database. Those allow you to run almost any kind of script you’ll need on a basic to intermediate level site.
Will you have your own “dedicated IP address?”
All domain names correspond to an IP address, which is just a series of numbers.
Just like a phone number dials up the correct phone anywhere on earth, each domain has its own number.
However, depending on how your host sets up their server, your domain can actually share an IP address with dozens, even hundreds, of other websites.
If one of those websites misbehaves, it can adversely affect everyone on that same IP address.
My advice: pay a little extra to make sure you get your own dedicated IP.
How much space will you need?
Make sure you get at least 100 megabytes of space from your web host.
Also, make sure you get at least 10 email forwarding accounts and 10 gigabytes of data transfer per month.
Also, the hosting market is so competitive now that you should never pay a setup fee.
If in doubt, shop around, compare and always ask someone you trust or check up on what others have to say about a specific hosting service by visiting sites like http://www.webhostingtalk.com
The moral here?
Understand that your web hosting account is literally the “foundation” for your online business, so don’t skimp. You’re only hurting yourself in the long run if you do.
About the Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…
Simple “Traffic Machine” brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months… without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
The Perfect Web Hosting Support
Hosting Support – An Introduction
Imagine yourself as a person running a small-medium sized online store that concentrates on affordablly prized gift items, and say, it’s Christmas time. Everybody is on a shopping spree, and you have been waiting for this vacation to arrive, as it is the time of the year when your business really blooms, and with which’s revenues you have got to plan for the year to come.
Say, your site goes down due to some sort of problems associated with your server on say, the 23rd of December, or on Christmas eve. You will be contacting your hosting company in frenzy, and just imagine if there’s nobody there to provide you with prompt support and resolution for your issue.By the time boxing day arrives, nobody will need to send gifts anymore to anyone. You have lost your business, and now your site and business has got a notorious reputation of not being active when it counts.
The above is just a worse case scenario explained to put forward a point. Quality support is the backbone of a hosting company. It is the pillar on which a hosting firm rests it’s credibility. Speedy and accurate customer service is rare and indicates a superior overall hosting service. When choosing a web host, what customers generally look for are Server performance, Space, Traffic allowed, Features, Cost, and most importantly Customer support.
If a hosting company is one which takes it’s business seriosly, their technical support must be perfect by all means. Determining whether technical support is dependable is important, because if anything goes wrong with your site, you are going to be contacting your know-it-all customer care rep. However, in the real world, we know that knowledgeable customer care is hard to find.
Most of the hosting companies claim that they have techs working round the clock in their organizations, managing their state-of-the art systems. While this in fact may be true, sometimes, the people working with the support might be the most unprofessional and underqualified ones. Due to the huge demand for information technology professionals today, many web hosts are not able to find employees who are well trained in OS concepts, network technology and control panel specifications. Other firms pump in a lot of money to advertising and marketing and gives good quality customer support only the lowest priority. In both instances, it is the customers who eventually suffers due to the lack of competence in handling their issues related to hosting.
The following is a small article gives a brief insight into the hosting support considerations for the newbies in business, as well as any host who have got high regards for the quality standards of their company. Before proceeding, please keep in mind the fact that Web Hosting Support is not child’s play. It is something that is NOT to be taken for granted.
Finding the Right Support for you
Finding the perfect support for your company is not a very easy task. Every webhost who have got serious thoughts about their hosting support would be having certain expectation levels regarding the quality of support. Only if your support matches / outperforms your expectations would you feel relaxed, relieved and be happy with them.
The very first concern regarding support is how to keep things going 24 / 7. Every webhost provides their customers with a 24 / 7 support promise, and some even give their customers a money back guarantee on any failure to keep up the promise. You should be implementing methods to ensure that your support team covers the 24 hours of the day effectively, and co-ordinate between them regarding the technical and administrative aspects of your servers.
Then comes the cost part. There are options for maintaining an inhouse team of technical experts, or outsourcing to an outsourced hosting support company. You should choose your support wisely with efficient computations of your expenditure and profit margin. You should do it in such a way that the quality of support is not compromised, and at the same time you have the decent profit to enhance your business in the long run. Please note that in the very beginning itself, you should set the standards, and should never go below them. Remember – It’s a jungle out there, with huge competition. If you have to survive, you have to be the best; and to be the best, you have got to give your customers the best. Manage high standards…. returns would come automatically.
Web hosting support not only means providing technical solutions to your end customers; but the sales / billing support and timely administration of your servers are equally important. You can manage the sales / billing issues yourself, or you can avail the aid of a graduate with good customer skills, and excellent knowledge on the packages / features / options that you provides. Regarding the server administration, you require the service of a good system administrator to perform the timely software upgrades, and the other fine tuning aspects of the server for it’s smooth functioning. It is always an additional advantage to maintain a team of technical experts who can perform your technical support as well as server administration; rather than having separate teams for the same. It would reduce the overall costs involved, and will enhance quality of customer support due to the better knowledge of the servers.
In-House or Outsourced??
Now comes the big question. Do you need an in-house team of technicians, or do you want to outsource your support to a support company? There has been disputes over this on most of the web hosting forums. Both the options has got advantages and disadvantages. But on tallying with the positive and negative sides of both of them, my vote goes to outsourced support. A comparison of the advantages is provided in the chart below:
ADVANTAGES
—————
In-House
1) Direct interaction with the support staff in person
2) Direct recruitment of the support staff yourself, so as to meet your ideal requirements on first-hand
3) Local market knowledge and expertise when it comes to sales and marketing
4) Ready availability-upon-call of your in house team in case of any emergency
Outsourced
1) Far cheaper than what is required to maintain an inhouse support team
2) You can concentrate on your business marketing, while the outsource company takes care of the technical side.
3) Expertise in specific fields related to every server software.
4) No hassles with the planning of shifts or personnel to manage the 24 / 7 support, as it is taken care of by the outsource company.
5) No issues associated with training the support staff.
Outsource companies are able to provide you with high quality, but cheap support due to the low cost of living standards in those countries. Most of the hosting companies are located in the United States, Canada and Europe, and the major outsource companies are located in countries like India. Due to the comparatively lower cost of living in countries like India, the above is made possible. With inhouse support, you have to pay the wages that is par with the living standards in the United States and such; which makes it an expensive option.
There are several myths related to outsourcing jobs. According to the trade and foreign aid research conducted by The Heritage Foundation , the American economy has only benefitted from outsourcing jobs to the asian countries, and has not gone down, as the general concept is.
But with outsourced support, you have got to make the right choice. Due to the huge demand for professionals in the ITES ( Information Technology Enables Services ), many webhosts can’t find employees with expertise in the relevant fields. You should be doing a research on the work culture and standards of the different outsourced companies before making the right source. A search for the leading outsourced companies in forums like http://webhostingtalk.com can provide you with pro and con views that you’ll require to make the decision.
Still, most of the outsourced companies provide you with a testing period of upto a month to test them out. You can utilize this time period to analyze the quality of your support company, if you are not sure about it.
The disadvantages associated with the two types of support are provided in the chart below:
DISADVANTAGES
——————
In-House
1) Expensive when taking into consideration the living standards in North America and Europe
2) Headaches related to personnel management related with maintaining an inhouse team for support
3) Remedies are to be made by you in case of any immediate non availability of support staff due to reasons like their resignation without prior notice, termination, expiry etc.
Outsourced
1) No direct interaction in person with the support staff. ( overcomed if efficient chat support is provided with a contact person at the company )
2) Have to get accustomed with your support people, as they might keep on changing according to the outsource company’s internal policies.
3) Have got to make sure of the written ( spoken too, if required ) language proficiency of the company staff, as English is not the mother tongue in the outsourced companies.
The language barrier could be an issue with only a few cheap quality outsourced support companies. It would be a good measure to talk to their representatives / contact points over chat / telephone to get an idea of how it’s going to be overall. With the leading support companies, the language problems should not happen, as they would have required formal training both technically, as well as with customer orientation. Still, it is very important from your part to make sure of their support quality.
To summarize, it is always better to choose a good outsourced support firm, that maintains it’s promises and does not comprise on quality, rather than yourself employing separate staff to handle your technical support, sales / billing and server administration. ( Unless you have got the money to roll, and is keen on having all your employees available in person upon your call )
The Quality Factor
Speaking of quality, what do one exactly mean by or point to when talking about the Quality of Support ( QoS ) ? Quality is not an accident, but the collective output of well planned stages of service, with the very best systems to back them up. When we refer to the complete QoS, there are a lot of points that comes into consideration – Being knowledgeable, Polite, Communicative, Honest, Fast, Empathetic, Competent, Responsible and above all, overall Perfection. Let’s check out how these becomes important.
Being knowledgeable is the most important part. Always keep in mind that our customers needs competent people at the receiving end of their mails and calls. By being knowledgeable, we mean that the support person should be possessing the proper knowledge level related to the support and service that we are offering. In this case, say, if you are a host who offers Cpanel hosting on Red hat Enterprise Linux servers, the technical support staff that works for you should be having extensive knowledge in the following areas:
Linux Operating System structure
Linux commands – common and advanced
Linux Internet server implementations
Linux server security
Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.
Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools ( administrative / user control panel interfaces ) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers
Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.
Responsibility of your support team is another important aspect. There is a lot of difference between a person who has undergone years of dedicated computer study in school and college doing this job, and a teenager with some computer background doing it part-time. The support team should be responsible in addressing various heterogeneous issues, and should also be good with the decision making related to the smooth functioning of the servers.
Say, one of your servers is having an issue with the apache server software running in the server being not compatible with PHP, as a result of a latest control panel upgrade. Your support team must not only be able to fix the immediate requests from customers hosted in this server, but should also be taking the necessary steps to identify the root cause of the issue, implement it in the server under question, and also check the rest of the servers ( if any ) for similar compatibility issues, and get them fixed, so that no unnecessary botherations are avoided for both the party – the customer and the support rep.
To sum up things, the support techs should not be just people to see off the day to day issues of the end customer, but they should be responsible so as to ensure that the server is fine tuned to see off any vulnerability associated with it, so that no issues arise from within the server as a result of an exploitation of that.
Then comes the communication part. This is as important as being knowledgeable. A support technician needs to address an issue raised by you or an end customer in grammatically correct language, and also including all the important points related to the issue, that the customer should be made aware of. A polite, consice and communicative reply addressing the various aspects of a support ticket always gives the end customer a feeling of care. A good support tech is one who empathises the client, i.e, think by standing in the client’s shoes. When a support person can feel the client’s problems, and read in between the lines, it puts the end client at ease, no matter what the issue is. Just take the case of the following scenario. A customer has published the following support ticket:
==============================================================
Hi,
I am not able to send mails out of my account user@foo.com. The mails are not going out of Outlook Express, and I am getting the following error:
Mail refused error “sorry that domain isn’t in my list of allowed rcpthosts error 553″
Please get it fixed ASAP. I am unable to contact my customers !!!
Paul Smith
==============================================================
And consider the following replies, which implies the same message, and tell me which one feels better:
Response # 1 :
==============================================================
This is since you are not doing POP before SMTP. Check your incoming mails, before trying to send them using OE.
Support team
==============================================================
Response # 2 :
==============================================================
Hi Paul,
This error is caused when email client software configured with multiple email accounts from different domains is used to send email to an account that it has not checked for messages first. To get over this, always make sure to check the incoming mails using your Outlook Express, before trying to send mails out of it. This is called POP before SMTP.
An easy remedy is to check your email from user@foo.com before sending or set your email client to check email every 15 minutes or close and reopen your Outlook Express. It shall work for you, and you shall be able to mail your customers in no time.
Best Regards,
Tech name
Support team
==============================================================
Upon examining the above two replies, what do you feel? No matter how frustrated the end customer who sent in the ticket might be, response # 2 will provide him with the “care factor” that response # 1 could not do. In response # 2, the support tech has done the following:
Analyzed that the customer is not very techny-savvy
Understood that he is trying to send in some important mail(s), and is frustrated with things not going working correctly for him
Replied the customer very politely and with atmost care keeping both the above two considerations in mind.
Support techs should always be polite to the customers. Some of the customers may even use harsh terms while mailing the support team, due to their frustration. A support tech should just ignore those comments, keeping in mind the fact that it is nothing personal and the customer is just angry with some utility not working for him properly. There are certain rare cases, when the support team receives really hard-to-interact-with customers. Some people might just do not understand what the support person is trying to say, or not listen what he is asking the customer to do. In these rare cases of non co operation, it is always better for the hosting owner ( you ) to respond to the customer asking him politely to co operate with the support team, or any solution to his problem might get unnecessarily delayed.
The overall perfection of a support team is the right combination of the following qualities:
1) Technical Superiority
2) Command over written and communicative skills
3) Politeness , Friendliness and Empathy
4) Responsibility
5) Endurance
The webhosts, on the other hand should also understand that the support team is an integral part of his business, and treat them with respect and consideration. The webhosting owner should be a good manager here, who knows how to make his support team work with their maximum potential for him. At the same time, he should not pressurize them by unnecessarily interfering in their job. Always keep them at ease, and make them feel free to approach you with any of their requirements / suggestions.
Conclusion
To conclude, when you appoint the support team, to assist with your business, make sure of the following things:
You get what you are promised of ( 24 / 7 support , and the exact time limits required to reply to, and resolve a problem )
Your support team co ordinates perfectly with you, and has got a good knowledge on the plans, services, and offers that you provide your clients with, so that they can be serviced better, and on time.
Your support team is friendly and courteous, and is always willing to go that ‘extra step’ when it comes to customer satisfaction.
Your support team is extremely knowledgeable and should be able to do anything that their job demands out of them.
You should be in excellent rapport with your support team, and should let them be at ease with you; and at the same time you should know where to draw the fine line as well.
In the webhosting business, where stiff competition awaits you, it is always the customer evangelism ( customers preaching the good points of your webhosting service ) that brings in clients. There is no publicity as mouth publicity. Your support team would be responsible for more than 80% of it. If they are good, your business shall flourish, and if it’s the other way around, you are going to have a tough time in the future.
So choose wisely. There is a bright future awaiting you.
Compiled by Yusuff Rejo, Team Leader, Bobcares
The author, Yusuff Rejo has been working as a Team leader for the last 3 years at BobCares.com, a premier web hosting support provider for various hosting companies, datacenters and ISP’s all over the world.
His main areas of interests are Personnel management, Transactional analysis, and Web hosting articles. He spends his leisure time enjoying Classic 60′s-70′s Rock, latest hollywood movies, and playing table tennis.
You can contact him at yusuf@poornam.com
Does Your Web Hosting Fight Spam?
Virtually anyone with an email address knows what Spam is, and has, perhaps, considered giving up the speed, convenience, and simplicity of email because of it. Those who have their own websites are more vulnerable than the average person with a single work or home email address from their company or Internet Service Provider. Email addresses visible on a website can quickly become Spam magnets, as automated programs, similar in form to search engine spiders, roam the web, looking for addresses to which new broadsides of Spam may be fired. Website hosting companies generally provide their clients email accounts for use with their domain, but are you with a host that provides those email accounts with Spam and virus protection?
Local Blacklist Filters
Webmasters shouldn’t need to seek out local filters for their site’s contact email addresses. There are a variety of server level solutions a hosting company can offer to protect their users from unwanted emails. A most basic step is provision of a very rudimentary “blacklist” functionality to their users, allowing them to prevent future Spam emails from arriving from the same address. This type of filter is virtually worthless in today’s Spam environment, though, as it is quite rare to see unsophisticated email arriving from the same address multiple times. Spammers have grown far more sophisticated than that. Blacklisting functionality is only really useful in avoiding email from other real people you don’t particularly wish to hear from anymore.
Keywords and Regular Expressions
More advanced server level Spam filters are available. A small advance is accomplished using keyword filters. Keyword filters merely check for instances of a certain string of characters and deny the message if that string if found. The core problem with keyword-only filters is they can “over filter”. Someone who puts “sex” on their keyword filter will find receiving local news and event announcements difficult if they live in a town named “Essex”. Some filters attempt to address this deficiency by using “regular expressions” in order to build a sophisticated rule set to prevent Spam from reaching your inbox. Briefly, regular expressions are syntax rules used to identify certain strings of text or numbers. These rules can be set up to identify text patterns that are commonly used in Spam. They can become quite complex, but, as with most any filtering method, are not 100% bullet proof. Some filters that use regular expressions come with a basic set that can be appended by the user. Obviously this kind of feature is of little use to someone not familiar with regular expressions.
Bayesian Filters
Currently the most sophisticated filtering methods use Bayesian inferences. Bayesian filters take a large data set and determine the probability a message is Spam based on its similarity to previous Spam messages. The more emails that are processed and flagged theoretically make the filter more accurate. Services that provide filtering on an ISP or host level, like Postini’s “SpamAway”, filter billions of emails and provide the highest level of success and fewest “false positives”. SpamAway is already highly intelligent about identifying Spam and doesn’t require any “learning” commands or examples be provided. The online, browser based interface keeps flagged messages in an easily accessible “quarantine” and allows the user to check for any false positives. White list functionality is provided to aide in the prevention of future false positives. A hosting company offering such an advanced service takes Spam and virus filtering for their customers seriously.
About the Author
Mr. Lester served for 4 years as webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers. Click for more hosting articles.
Choosing Between Free or Paid Web Hosting
There are a number of things to consider when choosing between a free or paid web hosting service. Setting aside cost for a moment, lets look at some factors that will help you make an informative decision.
The very first thing you must consider is the intent or purpose of your website. Are you looking for a convenient way to share photos of family and friends? Or, are you considering something a little more complex such as adding multiple pages with different content on each? How about a website to promote a product or business?
The purpose of your website will act as a key component in determining which type of web hosting service is best suited for you. For example, if your website will be used primarily for personal postings, your file sizes aren’t very large and you don’t expect a lot of traffic, you won’t require a lot of disk space or bandwidth for your hosting.
If this is the case, a free web hosting service may meet your needs. Free web hosting services are also useful if you’re inexperienced in creating web pages. This type of service can provide an excellent opportunity for you to learn and practice your html skills. You could even use a free service as a test site before uploading your web pages to your live website.
Keep in mind that most free web hosting services provide limited features compared to paid web hosting services, but normally offer enough disk space and bandwidth to host a small website. To help offset costs, though, most free providers will place advertisements on your web pages.
With paid hosting, you’ll find a variety of available plans to choose from. These plans allow more disk space and bandwidth, and usually include a number of other features such as free domain names, free sub-domains and unlimited email accounts. Some of the more advanced common features are a CGI-Bin, MySQL databases and Microsoft FrontPage extensions.
Compared to free web hosting, you’ll also find that the services provided by paid web hosting companies are much more reliable, not to mention offering a higher level of customer support.
Cost wise, there is no charge to register for a free web hosting service, although you may be required to purchase your own domain name. For a basic paid service, you can expect to pay anywhere from $5 to $10 per month – a very small price for the improved service, support and features you receive.
About the Author
John Purdy is the owner of 1st Web Hosting Plans. We maintain a current directory of affordable web hosting providers and other website resources for personal internet users, online marketers and business owners. We also have directories dedicated to business and free web hosting. Visit us today at http://www.1st-web-hosting-plans.com.