Cheap Web Hosting Blog

There are countless web hosting companies on the Internet today. A web host is the way that you can have your own website so you want to make sure that you choose a reputable company.

Your web host is the place that stores your pages and distributes them to the web then they are visited. It’s a complex principle, but basically when someone goes to visit your site, it’s your web host that has the responsibility to make sure your pages are there. It use to be that hosting a site was tremendously expensive, but many hosting companies, like HostMonster, have been able to bring prices down considerably.

A good web host will provide you with the tools you need to be able to have a good web presence with little worry of the software and hardware working. There is some downtime expected with some hosting companies, but it should never be more than 1% of the time. Many people, though, begin using a hosting company to soon find it is no longer there. When that happens they are really useless in getting anything back unless they have backed up all their pages to their own hard drive. With that said, what do you look for in a reputable hosting company?

Look For Length Of Time Online
You are going to want to do business with a company that has been online for a number of years. This means that they are not going to shut down anytime soon, and they have a good track record. The biggest complaint that a lot of website owners have had is that they have had their websites go down without any warning only to find out the hosting company is not in business any longer. This is a huge inconvenience, and could really cripple your business. Look for indications that the company has been online for some time.

Look For Automation In Billing
If the hosting company does not offer automatic rebilling of your hosting company, the it probably isn’t going to be around long. It is a hassle to have to remember when you need to pay your hosting bill, whether it be on a month to month basis, or one year at a time. If you miss your payment, your site could be shut down until you do make payment. This doesn’t look good for your visitors while the site is down. HostMonster, HostGator, and several other hosting companies that have been around for a long time know the importance of automatic rebilling.

Look For Uptime Numbers
The worse thing that can happen to your site is that it goes down for several hours at a time. That should never happen. However, many hosting companies will post uptime numbers of 99.6%, but the reality is that they are down a lot more than that. Look at the recommendations and see if there are any issues of downtime.

Choosing a web host is not as simple as looking at the price and starting an account. Make sure you do your homework to get the best hosting for your website.

Recently I saw that a lot of people seem to get to my site via the search term “Hostmonster sucks“. Well everyone who reads this calm down – it doesn’t. When you google said search term you won’t come across any of the usual horror stories. You won’t find negative blog entries either. Ok one guy complained about downtime in a thread back in 2006. In that same thread someone complained that they had to pay setup fees. Obviously that guy didn’t understand that he has to pay setup fees if he signs up for less than a month. That is clearly stated on the website. I am well embedded in the hosting industry and when I hear negative stories I will tell you about them. Hostmonster does not suck period! For more information regarding Hostmonster please read my Hostmonster review.

I had a blogger.com blog previously and one of the first things I did was to remove the navbar. Since then blogger has updated to a new system and I wasn’t sure whether the old css trick would still work. The good news is that it still does work even though your blog may take a while to update. Mine usually takes about 20 minutes to show the changes. To remove your navbar just use the css code below:

#navbar-iframe {
   display: none !important;
}

Just enter that somewhere between the other css # ids. If your navbar is not removed after doing this (and giving it another half an hour to update) please post and I’ll provide a few more methods which are more complicated but work just as well.

For paid blog hosting I would recommend HostICan, Lunarpages or Hostmonster.

I like blogging about web hosting coupons since I think they offer a good and affordable way for beginners to find a plan with a good host. Since I list Hostmonster in my reviews I thought I try to find a coupon to list here. So I googled and a lot of results came up on the front page that looked to be topical. Now here is the catch: All of these results scream Hostmonster Coupon but none of them is actually a valid coupon. They merely advertise the cheapest per month rate you can get at Hostmonster, namely $6.95/month.

The other options are:
3 months, $8.95 + $30 setup
6 months, $8.95 + $30 setup
12 months, $7.95 no setup
24 months, $6.95 no setup

To cut a long story short there is not Hostmonster coupon available online and if you find one it will be bogus. The best you can do is the $6.95 if you pre-pay for two years. If you don’t like their service you can get a refund.

Go to Hostmonster now

One of the ways in which I choose the web hosts hosted on this cheap web hosting review site are the hosting provider’s very own customer support forums. Many of these hosting forums are busy member to member places where you can ask pre-sales questions and general hosting queries. There are some that are virtually dead and not worth going to. A hosting forum should be reasonably busy, have knowledgeable members willing to help and it doesn’t hurt when there’s a friendly atmosphere. You don’t to be told to RTFM (read the fucking manual) every time you ask a question.

I will review particular forums in detail in the coming weeks but for the meantime here is a list of hosts that have good web hosting forums considering all the above points: Bluehost, Hostgator, Hostmonster, Lunarpages, and Powweb.

Hostmonster uses the new CPanel evolution XP skin which is very well structured and easy to use. As the name suggests the layout of this skin follows the design of the MS XP user interface. The icons and grouping of certain categories in the CPanel make this a very user friendly CPanel design. Hostmonster users have many queries in the forums but I have rarely seen somebody complain about the layout of the CPanel.

Above you can see what the CPanel Evolution skin looks like. It supports 21 languages, tooltips, startup tips and more.

Go to Hostmonster or read my Hostmonster review first.

Bluehost and Hostmonster are one and the same company as you can tell by their shared mailing address:

1215 N. Research Way, #Q3500
Orem, UT 84097

Both are run by the founder Matt Heaton but Bluehost is a lot bigger than Hostmonster. There has been some discussion on the Bluehost forum regarding the differences between the two. Hostmonster´s plan is about $1 cheaper a month but has pretty much the same features. Hostmonster has unlimited FTP accounts and twice the number of PostgreSQL databases and MySQL databases. In line with Bluehost´s upgrade Hostmonster now also has 300 GB storage and 3000 GB bandwidth. So what´s the difference between the two? Rumour on the Bluehost forum has it that Bluehost runs on better servers and equipment than Hostmonster. That is why some say that Bluehost hosts more sites per server than Hostmonster.

Subsequently here´s a quick overview of the features:

Bluehost:

Linux plan, 300GB storage, 3000 GB transfer, unlimited domains, 1000 FTP accounts, 50 MySQL databases, 50 Postgre SQL databases and more. For all the features and a more in depth description please take a look at my Bluehost review.

Hostmonster:

Linux plan, 300GB storage, 3000 GB transfer, unlimited domains, unlimited FTP accounts, 100 MySQL databases, 100 Postgre SQL databases and more. For all the features and a more in depth description please take a look at my Hostmonster review.

At the end of the day these two are both great hosts so it really is your call whether you go for the cheaper price at Hostmonster or believe the rumour about the better equipment at Bluehost. In any case you´ll end up with an excellent cheap hosting provider.