Summary Review of Free Web Hosting With 50Webs
Description:R. Drake, www.budgetaryballin.com So in previous articles, I wrote about low cost hosting. I specifically talked about GoDaddy. This is a great service and I can attest to it because I actually use GoDaddy for some of the web sites Ive created. But there are some people that want TOTALLY FREE HOSTING SERVICES. Well for those people your wish has been granted. After researching on my own, the easiest to use FREE WEB HOST is 50Webs.com. Rather than explain to you how to get free web hosting, I created an in depth video showing you step by step what options you need to choose to get free web hosting account with 50Webs.com.
Underestimating the Value of Free or Low Cost Web Hosting Services and Tools
A variety of free or low cost web hosting services and tools is provided by most web hosting companies. However, in their search for the best web hosting package, many webmasters do a good job of comparing the basic offerings but fail to examine the wide range of additional free or very cheap services and tools offered by their prospective web host.
Overlooked and undervalued
Most web hosts don’t tout these freebies as prominently in their sales copy as they do the basics such as storage space, bandwidth, and tech support. This is simply because they know that most potential customers are only comparison-shopping on the basics.
However, low cost web hosting services and/or free web tools can mean the difference between a robust, customer-friendly web site that supports your expanding business and one that is stuck in low gear just as the traffic begins to increase.
What will you need later?
There is a wide array of these free or nearly-free web hosting services to choose from but first you must know, or at least be reasonably able to predict, the ones you are likely to need when your business grows.
Depending on the nature of your online business you may need some or all of the following:
- Custom web site design
- Search engine optimization services
- Inward and outbound link tracking
- Visitor counts
- Free e-mail
- e-mail forwarding
- Spam filters
- Free web templates
- Free HTML software
- Free website builders
- Auto-responders
- RSS feeds
- Live chat
- Shopping carts
These are just some of the many free or low cost web hosting services and tools you should evaluate before committing to any hosting package.
The bottom line
Stretch your dollars by choosing the low cost web hosting plan that provides as many of these value-packed extras as possible so you don’t wind up having to pay full price for them later when your business finally needs them.
Anthony Hamill is the founder of Web-Host-Watch which is devoted to helping new webmasters learn the basics of web hosting. It provides tutorials, tips on avoiding common mistakes, a glossary of web hosting terms, and a list of Top Web Hosts.
Finding Good Web Hosting Services
Many people in this internet-era are having great difficulty finding hosting services for there internet business that are both cheap and reliable. They have questions like: How to choose one? How do I know one is good?
It is not as easy task finding the right hosting, but there are some general guides on what a good service is like. For example:
* General professionalism on their website
* Help is available within 30 minutes 24/7
* Their Team Size? Remember, bigger might not be better.
* Also, you must remember that cheaper is not necessarily better either, as there is a lot of scamming going on hosting business and competition is very fierce.
Someone offering unlimited bandwidth, a huge hard drive quota or something similar which has a clear cost for the provider, is more likely offering you an unstable, or even a scam service. Look for those who tell you that they allocate resources, so that they never oversell even if their all customers would be using everything offered to them. These kind of providers are more likely to be very high quality, thus usually the price is a little bit higher, but you can expect more from them in terms of support, stability & performance. And not to mention REAL value-for-money.
The 3 most important factors you must look for in a hosting service, if your website is to succeed, are: Stability, Support response time & how they respond, and the performance of the service.
Performance is tertiary. Why, you ask? Because stability is the most important factor. You don’t want to be loosing business because your site is not available most of the time, do you? Support comes second because crashes do happen, problems DO occur, and response time of support team is VERY important here.
And, you may value such things as one-man companies, because you know that they are very likely to be able to provide 24/7 help and support, and will also offer a higher quality service, because they can put more time into their customers. They value all their customers because they know who is paying, and who deserves what they are paying for, instead of some half-baked scam service that is wasting both the customers time and money.
Think about how good it would be if he or she support technician even gave you their personal phone number for you to contact them if problems occur, and never charge a dime for using it! Talk about service! This will both reduce your down-time, and any business losses incurred because of this. In fact, artichost.net provides 24/7 LIVE support for all its customers, and will surely be in the running this year to win awards for Best-Service or the like!!
© Aleksi Ursin – ArticHost.net
(Article spell checked & formatted by: Joshua D’Alton)
Aleksi Ursin is CEO of ArticHost and author of Life of a webhost
Why take time to read the Web Hosting Terms of Service?
Why take time to read the Terms of Service?
As most services that we subscribe for, hosting services come with a contract. To sign-up for the service, you have to agree to the terms of that contract and sign electronically. An electronic signature is something as simple as pushing an “I agree” button and it’s just as legally bounding as if you’d put your signature on paper (although the hosting company could have a few problems in proving that it really was you pushing that button).
However, I don’t think anyone really wants to go that far as having to actually prove anything in court. It’s a lot safer to do everything in your power to avoid any legal issues.
One of the thing I should point out is the fact that many (if not most) web hosting companies have both a Terms of Service (TOS) agreement and an Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) agreement and you agree to both when you sign-up for their services.
In those agreements, although most of them might sound like mumbo-jumbo legal stuff, there are things to look out for. Well, maybe not necessarily”look out”, but you have to make sure that you agree (or that you can live) with them.
As I was telling you in the “unlimited bandwidth” article, you can find that unlimited can be actually limited. If you can agree to that thing, then agree to it. It’s your choice.
Another thing to note is that most web hosting companies reserve the right to modify the terms as they please, sometimes stating that they can do that without sending you a notice. That’s not fair in my opinion. At least they could say they will do their best to notify you. If not, it’s just like if you were playing a game and one of the players had the power to change the rules. The simple fact that he’s changing them can be seen as a tough challenge, but if he doesn’t tell you: Hey! I changed the rules!, you’re playing the wrong game there…
I wouldn’t blame the web hosting companies though. Most of the times the terms are in strict accordance with the terms of the contracts they sign with their own service providers (connectivity, servers, etc.). It seems right for them not to promise you things that they’re not promised in the first place. That doesn’t make it right though. It is just something we have to live with.
Another thing that you should know, especially if you’re signing-up for a “shared or “virtual” hosting account, is that you are sharing the resources with the other hundreds of websites placed on the same server as your website. To protect themselves from “usage abuse”, most hosts clearly state that they reserve the right to temporarily suspend or even terminate accounts using too many resources.
So, if you have a website that for one reason of another could have usage spikes, it’s a thing that you have to take seriously into consideration. Such usage spikes can be caused by a high number of visitors over a short period of time or a script that uses a lot of CPU, memory etc. The alternative? A dedicated server! Not a cheap solution, I know!
Many web hosts do not accept anything sexual in nature on their servers. Often this is not clearly stated in any other place except the Terms of Service (TOS) agreement and/or Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP). So you have to read the Terms of Service to know this.
Another largely unclear part is the spam issue. Although it’s already clear that spam is a bad thing and most web hosting companies terminate accounts sending spam, there’s no unique definition of SPAM. Every host can and uses it’s own definition, which more often than not, is not clearly explained anywhere on their website, not even in the Terms of Service (TOS) agreement or the Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP).
Generally, if the email is 1. not sent to multiple recipients, 2. they’re not strangers and 3. you don’t advertise any services and/or products in the email, you can consider yourself safe. There are however lots of gray areas. What if you’re sending an email to a company proposing a business deal. Is that spam? It’s up to the hosting company to decide. And it’s hard for them to stand by you and support you in such a situation, because the person complaining about being spammed could go to one of the host’s providers and tell the whole story.
If that provider sees your email as spam, the web hosting company could lose it’s business because that provider might terminate the contract. And so on with the providers of the provider. This is why hosts tend to delete accounts accused of spamming (even in the gray areas). Why should they risk everything for a single client?
It’s really an unpleasant situation for everyone involved in it. Unfortunately, you have little chances of winning. The first time you might get away with a fine or a temporary deactivation of the site (so that you’ll learn better), but the second is usually final. You’ll have to look for another host if not worse.
Many web hosting companies guarantee a certain uptime (usually 99.9% or more). That might seem OK first, but when you read the Terms of Service, the things can change quite significantly. You can find out that the time when they make upgrades (hardware or software) or anything like that “to assure the best possible service” , does not constitute downtime. Or you might find out that you’ll simply not be billed for the time when the server was down. So if you pay $30 per month for hosting, and your website was down for 10 days, you’ll only pay $20. That sure sounds like a joke to me! But it isn’t!
Another thing that I’ve seen is a “strange” definition of downtime: downtime shall constitute any period of time longer than X minutes (usually more than 5 minutes). So, if your website is down 4 minutes, then it works for 1 minute and so on, you don’t experience downtime. Funny! Really funny!
A nice example that made history, are the Terms of Service of web hosting companies offering free hosting. The Terms of Service stated that everything that the user uploaded on their servers became their property (they claimed the copyright). Although I never heard of a web hosting company actually enforcing this term, it sure shows what can be found in the Terms of Service of serious (meaning big) companies. The public was outraged and the Terms of Service were silently changed, removing the contentious parts.
I gave you these examples to show you why it’s a very good thing to actually read the Terms of Service (TOS) agreement and the Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) when signing-up for a web hosting service. I will not tell you in this article how a certain term should sound like. Just make sure it’s something you agree with. Oh! And read the TOS and AUP before you sign-up, NOT after.
http://www.whreviews.com
Managed Hosting Services Who Benefits from It?
Managed Hosting Services are used primarily by companies that either don’t have staff with the expertise to manage a dedicated server or don’t have staff with the time to attend to the needs of managed hosting. In either case the option of having the host manage the server can be of great value to firms that have such needs.
Some companies web sites are too traffic intense to share a server with any other sites. This is the point at which a dedicated server becomes a necessity. Many firms reach this point and are put in the position of being hosted on a dedicated server yet do not have the IT personnel with the background to manage a dedicated server. The knowledge requirements to upkeep the server operating system, updating security patches and handle the special circumstances that arise, require a great deal of in depth expertise. The question then becomes can the firm afford to hire someone with the capabilities needed to take care of a managed dedicated server or would outsourcing the task be more practical?
This question has to be answered by each individual company and all the factors are weighed according to the specific situations. The case could be for example that the firm is already needing additional IT help beyond the above needs and adding a qualified person would be a timely efficient solution. In most instances however it isn’t practical to add full time specialized personnel, when getting managed hosting services is an option for much less expense.
A company may have personnel on staff that are capable of operating a managed dedicated server. The question then becomes is time available to devote to such a server and is the person able to keep abreast of all the continual updates and changes that the server industry is constantly incurring? Again the issue is does the additional expense of managed hosting services off set the added work load and responsibility that will be assigned to the existing staff. Since a dedicated server is definitely needed the managed dedicated server option can add as little as $250-$300/mo. to the total monthly outlay.
A final very important factor to consider in either of the above circumstances is how critical is the uptime of the company web site? Some firms can get along fine with a 99.9% uptime yet with others circumstances require 100% uptime. There are managed dedicated server hosts who offer 100% uptime. Be ready to pay top dollar if you want these characteristics in a host. Such uptime levels often demand redundant sites, elaborate multi-homed environment or possibly a backbone connection. Hosting companies such as E-Insites have seperate divisions dedicated to managed hosting. You can see their offerings at http://www.onlymanaged.com
Recapping a company’s staff’s ability and availability are main factors in choosing a dedicated server or a managed hosting services. If there is staff available that has the capabilities to manage a dedicated server then by all means save some money each month and get a good dedicated server hosting company to work with. On the other hand if the specialized staff isn’t available or otherwise needed then a reputable managed dedicated server host will provide service that will leave the existing staff free to do what they do best to make your company thrive.