Web Hosting

There are two main types of web hosting.

a- Free
b- Paid

Free

Advantages:

No bills:

Free host allows you to host without paying bill per month or yearly basis.

Best for experiments:
Free hosts provide a good environment to experiment different webmaster techniques. You can learn and experiment many things before switching to paid hosting.

Disadvantages:

Placing Ads and Banners on your website:
Free doesn\’t means free at all. You have to pay something in return. Mostly free hosts put ads and banners on your websites to generate revenue. You have no control on quality of ads and placement.

Limited Features:
Free hosts cannot offer rich features. Usually they have limited features because of poor revenue model.

Unreliability:
There is no guarantee or quality of services in free services. Servers can go down for week or days, no one is answerable to you. There is no support department to help you in technical problems. Free hosts can close the services at any times leaving you clueless.

Paid
In this type of service you have to pay the bills at the end of month. Because of high competition in hosting industry it is very affordable to host any website. Now you can host a business website or personal blog in $3 to $7 per month.

Advantages:

Reliability and Stability:
Paid hosts offers reliable services. They are responsible for server failure or any technical issues. Good web host offers 99.9% uptime guarantee to your website. In case of technical issues, you get sufficient help from technical support. Paid hosting service offers rich features combined with quality of services.

Disadvantage:
You have to pay bills to paid service providers.

There are many websites online that offer free hosting services. Some of these sites include BlinkWeb, Yola and Weebly. The goal of these websites is to help you to make money, and then once you do make money, that you upgrade to a paid account with them. Whether or not you use them is up to you, but here are some pros and cons of free hosting to help you make the decision.

The Pros.

Free. The thing that is appealing to so many is the fact that they are free. Many people who come online do not know whether or not they will succeed, and therefore they are reluctant to pay into anything. Therefore the free websites are a great place to test the waters.

Learning Experience. The goal is to get you started with making money online so that you will become a paying customer. Thus most free hosting providers will provide you with step by step training to help you set up your site so that you can begin to make money online. BlinkWeb and Yola are two of those site who provide you with excellent training.

The Cons

Downtime. One of the greatest downs is the fact that a lot of these free hosting providers are not reliable. If your website is down, you not only will not be making any money, but 爄t can also ruin your credibility as an online entrepreneur.

High Hosting Fees. You can always upgrade to a paid hosting account, but the truth is that the price which you end up paying, is much higher than if you were to purchase your hosting from a hosting company. One of the cheapest and most reliable web hosting companies is HostGator.

No Control. Another one of the cons is that you have no control of the layout of your website. You are provided with several layouts which you can somewhat customize, but when it really comes down to it, you are very limited with what you can do. On top of that you do not own the design, and thus if you ever want to switch to a new provider you have to start all over again.

So hopefully this information will help you to make an informed decision as to whether or not a free hosting account is something that you want to get started with. To be honest with you, they are a great way for you to learn the ropes of internet marketing, but in the long run you are better off going with a more reliable hosting company such as HostGator.

Are you thinking of getting anew hosting plan for your website needs? If you are, you would probably have his question in mind. Should you pay for your hosting or just go for a free one instead? The ultimate choice depends on many factors. So, let us take a look at those factors.

The most important factor is the reason for the website. What is the website for? In other words, what sort o presence you would like to male with you website. Is it a blog, is it a e-commerce website or something else? If you are tight on budget, you might want to go for a free hosting but before you do so, you should know what the limitations. You should also know that you will bear the name of the free provider in you domain address as well. For an example, if you are using freeweb.com for your free hosting, you will have a website with the domain \”http://www.freeweb/yourwebsitename.com\”. Now, that is not very good looking at all.

Other drawbacks about free hosting are the limit on the resources and features. One of the major issues is the disk space. You will get very limited storage space for your website. This means that you won\’t be able have many graphical contents in your website like video or images. If you put many of those, you disk space will run out very quick. The same story goes for the bandwidth. You will also be getting very little of that. Therefore, your free website will be likely to have more downtime than uptime if you are expecting big traffic. If you are running an online business, these features won\’t be sufficient for your business to grow. Eventually, you might not even get the customers to come back to you as your website is just more shabby then others.

As you are looking through various providers, you might notice that some providers mention some feature like PHP, Perl and MySQL. These are some programming features that you won\’t be able to enjoy with a free hosting. What you have is just their preset functions and most of the time, it won\’t be sufficient for any kind of business. So, if you are intending to start an e-commerce website, there is no point going for a free provider because the website will be useless.

So, the bottom line is to know what you want for your website and not get a website because it is free. If you looking to just build a blog to share some photos like an online diary, a free hosting will be just fine. But if you are looking to have a serious online business, then you should really consider paid hosting because it can provide you with the necessary elements for you to build a proper website. Having a performing website is having the battle won. All business needs a little investment and it is the same with web hosting and there are plenty of affordable hosting services out there for you to choose from.

Website owners are often faced with a difficult decision right from the beginning of their online venture. This decision is to choose a web hosting service for their website. Not only are there hundreds of web hosting companies offer their services at affordable prices, but there are also some that offer free hosting to their customers. Here we look in detail at the major differences between having a free hosting service versus a paid hosting service and the impact it can have on your website.

Price

The first difference is the price. Free webhosting allows website owners to host the website completely free of charge. There are no fees involved in uploading files to their server. There are no fees involved for keeping the website hosted on the server over time. Paid webhosting services on the other hand charge a small fee for website owners to have their website hosted. Payment to web hosting services is usually prescription based on a monthly interval. You may choose to sign up for 12 or 24 months and receive huge discounts or you can stick to a month by month plan to make sure you are happy with the service.

Speed

One important aspect of webhosting you need to look is bandwidth. This determines the speed that data is transferred from the hosting server to the Internet user visiting your site The greater the bandwidth, the faster your site will load and the faster users can see videos, pictures and download files from. Free web hosting services usually restrict the amount of bandwidth to your website and as a result this will affect your website\’s loading time as well as speed when visitors are trying to browse your site. If you have a relatively new site without many visitors yet or your site does not consist of many pictures and videos then the restriction on bandwidth have little or no effect on you. Conversely, if you are planning to grow your website or have a large website with lots of graphics then a paid web hosting option with unlimited bandwidth is your best solution

Space:

The amount of web space you need for your website is also important if you are planning to grow your website, or at least have the flexibility to be able to expand it at a later date. Free web hosting services usually limit the amount of web space allowed by you web site, the number of pages your website can have or both. It is therefore important that if you have a website that can grow to being quite large and significant you are going to need server space from a web hosting company that provides you with plenty. Many paid web hosting services also provide unlimited space for your website, which helps put your mind at ease.

Functionality:

Functionality and control of your website is probably one of the most important aspects when considering a web hosting solution. You want to be in control of your own website and have be able to do whatever you want with it. Most free web hosting accounts do not allow you to use your own domain name. As an alternative, you must use a subdomain or internal domain of their own website. This can be seen as a drawback since you will then have poor branding of your products and services. In addition, many free hosting options place their own ads on your website. You cannot remove these ads and they may be annoying and distracting to your potential online visitors.

In conclusion, pricing would be the only advantage a free webhosting service would have compared to a paid webhosting service. It is also a known fact that it may also be costing you more and causing you to sacrifice more if you do not have an adequate and reliable web hosting service for your website. If you have taken the initiative to start your own website then your next step is to find an affordable webhosting solution with no restrictions.

If you\’re a professional web designer or developer, you no doubt have clients with websites. These clients may be hosting with another company and paying anywhere from $49.00 per month to $4.95 per month. Regardless of where they host, that\’s money that you\’re not participating in. Why? Could you use another $400 to $1500 per month coming in with no effort on your part? Of course you could! It will keep the wife happy and/or keep the girlfriend drinking good wine.

Here\’s how you can get free hosting and then resell it to your clients and keep 100% of the margin. You will spend whatever a Reseller Account costs from the hosting company you choose and approximately $14.95/mo to achieve this but it will pay for itself within 3 months if you implement it.

1. Go to one of the major hosting companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, DreamHost, HostGator etc.

2. Sign up as a Reseller. If you can afford it, sign up for the best reseller plan they have.

3. All of these hosting companies offer some sort of \”Premium\” hosting account. Using this Premium Account you can host as many websites as you like. You also get unlimited storage and bandwidth.

4. After you purchase the Premium hosting account, attach it to a domain name and simply put a coming soon page in the root directory.

5. Log in to your Premium account CP and go to Domain Management. Add the clients domain. It will ask you to create a new directory. Create one for the client and log out. (Be sure to read the online Help file if you need additional instructions.)

6. Wait 30 minutes and then log in again. You should see, inside your domain management area, your client\’s domain or some sort of verification that the setup process has completed

7. Now FTP into your new Premium account and confirm that the new directory was created.

8. If you see the new directory, post a simple index.htm page with COMING SOON in it. Nothing fancy for now, we\’ll come back and create a better one later.

9. Now that everything is set up on your end, log in to your client\’s domain registrar and change the ANAME record for their domain to the IP of your Premium hosting account. If they have emails already setup, be mindful of this and write down their MX records for your records and in case these records get changed when the ANAME propagates (You may or may not have to re-enter the MX records but write them down nonetheless.). Save the ANAME record and log out.

10. Within a few hours, their domain name should resolve at your Premium Hosting IP. When it does, your Premium hosting account will know what directory to point it to and you will see your Coming Soon page when you go to their URL..

At this point, what you have effectively done is secured free hosting for the client. Next, simply charge them whatever amount you charge for hosting and bill it annually. Under $200 for the year is a tolerable amount for most people. Doing this allows you to capture 100% of the hosting fees and provide clients with world-class hosting services.

What if my client wants FTP access to their account?

Simple. Just create an additional FTP user in your Premium account and assign access to their specific directory. They won\’t be able to access anyone else\’s stuff. This is a simple, effective and profitable way to capture revenue you may be missing. Some may argue that it\’s not free since you\’re paying the $14.95 per month. If you get just ONE client, the account is free for you. Additionally, you can now sell all kinds of website related products via your reseller account and even hosting accounts if your client prefers automated monthly billing.

I often feel like an old curmudgeon when I complain about hosting accounts. There are so many of them and so many of them are wrought with problems that can cost the client time and money. I have my own hosting preference, not just as a reseller who makes a profit, but because they work. They save me time and therefore save my clients time and money.

So how can hosting cost you more than your your yearly fee?

1. Free Hosting. Remember when Mom and Dad warned you don\’t get something for nothing? Remember how often this proves to be true? Beware of \”free\” hosting as it often starts with a very small amount of storage space and will cost big-time to add more. Some free hosting accounts require you to refer friends for \”paid\” hosting to continue to qualify for no-cost hosting. Bandwidth is seldom discussed but can cost you money: low-budget hosting probably allows for less bandwidth (the amount of traffic that they allow to occur between your website and the rest of the internet). I have a client whose story was picked up by CNN who also broadcasted their website address. In one day they had over 250,000 visits to their site and quickly exceeded the allowed bandwidth on their hosting account… with no additional charges while lesser hosts charge for exceeding allotted bandwidth. Ouch!

2. Down Time. You want a website so people can find you online, right? Cut-rate hosting accounts often are plagued with downtime… time when the server isn\’t working and your website can not be seen online. I have one client whose sub-standard hosting was going down for days at a time. Either you or your web master will be spending time and money calling the hosting to get to the root of the problem.

3. Security. My favorite breach of web security was a client hosting with a very small, low cost, company somewhere in the Mid-West. The client wanted their site statistics and when I called the hosting company they didn\’t ask for any ID and put the site statistics online where they are accessible by anyone including the client\’s competitors. How much business will your competitors grab when they can view the inner workings of your web traffic?

4. Cheap Hosting Without Support. Here\’s another fun hitch when using a low budget hosting account… no phone support. These companies charge an additional fee if you want to contact them by phone, otherwise the only way to contact their support staff or anyone at the hosting company is by email.

5. Account Skinny on Features. Often a client will purchase a low-end hosting account before engaging a web designer. They can end up with an account that is not robust enough to handle an interactive website… even something as simple as a contact form. Or they purchase Windows hosting when they want to work with programing that runs on a Unix server, or vice versa. Most hosting accounts offer an array of features, however it pays to engage your web consultant before choosing a hosting account to be sure you are getting what you need.

You can save time and money on your website. Consult with a professional design and development company before you enter into a hosting agreement.

\”Free and Exposed\” sounds like a tabloid headline or a great deal at a nude beach. Unfortunately its a trap website owners can fall prey to when they opt for web hosting that sounds too good to be true.

Free with Strings Attached. Read the fine print carefully when opting for anything that claims to be \”free\” web hosting. My favorite \”deal\” (Did you notice deal is in quotes like free?) is a hosting company that offers free hosting but only after you\’ve signed up do you find out that it\’s only free if you host another website at full cost with them or refer new business to them. So, unless you\’re ready to host a second website your website is now hosted at double the cost of other hosting providers and with a small fraction of the storage of other hosting providers.

Hello, Is Anyone There? What\’s hosting service without the service? You can find out a lot about a hosting service by simply visiting their website and clicking on the contact link. There should be a telephone number and business address readily available. Do they provide 24/7 service? Do they have a toll-free number? I highly recommend calling the customer service number before buying a plan just to experience the service you will receive when you are a customer.

Low Security. I have unique opportunities to see some pretty odd hosting hosting accounts that clients have purchased. One allowed me to call in and request changes without any ID, password, or security provisions. Wouldn\’t that be fun if a hacker did the same and altered your website? Another poor configuration allowed one customer to view other people\’s website files on a shared hosting account. Wouldn\’t it be fun to have an inexperienced user sign in and make changes on your website files rather than working on their own files? NOT!

Letting It All Hang Out. One client was thrilled to discover they had website statistics on their hosting account, but less than thrilled when they discovered their statistics weren\’t password protected. They were on the web for competitors and any one nosey enough to find.

So, when shopping for shared hosting don\’t be lured by deep discounts, read the fine print, and call their sales department.