ATTENTION: FREE WEB HOSTING FOR 3 MONTHS DEALS ---SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS
You should be made aware that the decision to choose a web hosting provider is absolutely crucial to your financial well being. We have seen over 36 companies go bankrupt as a result of the poor decisions they made when picking web hosting providers. A web hosting provider, can cost you money and lots of grief, if you don’t make the correct decision in the beginning. And most importantly , one must make the decision based on the web hosting company’s overall attention to quality, customer service, and financial health and not on cost or free services. What good is it going to do you, if you choose a cheap web hosting plan, and that web host endures bandwidth issues or problems with system wide storage problems. Problems that can irritate your customers, shut-down your site and consequently, cost you business. The cost of one year’s web hosting services is so insignificant as compared to the thousands of dollars in lost business, a website owner can endure if they choose the wrong company!
For unbiased customer testimonials on these top rated quality web hosting plans, please visit our customer testimonials page here.
We Give Our Top Three Web Host - Power Rankings
In this web hosting review, we compiled the three best web hosting companies rated on 6 different criteria. Each criteria was weighted differently, based on the importance of that criteria, as we have experienced over the years. We then created an algorithmic formula that provides, what we believe is the most accurate “power” score that takes all these criteria into consideration.
Rest assured that these 3 web hosting companies are the best of over 39 that we have experienced and tested, so you cannot go wrong with any. All have affordable web hosting plans, however each company has different strengths, which may complement, your own intended goals and purposes for your site. So please make sure you read all the reviews we compiled on each company before making a final decision on a web hosting company and plan.
Why Is Choosing A Web Hosting Plan So Important?
Avoid Web Hosting Scams that can rip you off!
Avoid Web Hosting Scams that can rip you off!
Avoid getting ripped off! Follow these steps before picking a web host.IF YOUR ARE WONDERING: Our recommended web hosting provider :Hostgator
Passes all of these tests, that's why we recommend them. See detailed information on the Number 1 ranking below :)
- Always test a host's support before joining them!
- The truth to why many hosting plans are scams.
- Be careful of hosts that force yearly payments!
- Never purchase your domain name from your host.
- A few tests you can run to check how good a host is.
- Why hosting directories lie, and the truth to customer testimonials.
- The truth to a hosts uptime and guarantees.
1. Support
Do not join a host without testing out their support first. The best way to test out a host's support is calling in. You'll be surprised how many hosts with an 800 number never answer their phones, or have long hold times. E-mailing a hosting company or submitting a ticket to their sales department is not the way to test a host! Many of the companies have incredible response times when contacting their sales department, very few have good times when contacting support. After all they don't make money by supporting you. They only make money by selling to you.
2. Scam Plans
If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All hosts have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of RAM and CPU. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or resources - DO NOT JOIN THEM! Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use all the space advertised. So what do they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren't lying about the resource usage. It'S the truth! Most people don't realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of CPU and RAM a site uses. If a site uses a lot of bandwidth they aren't kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back. So the lesson here is don't shop for a host based on their plans! You should shop based on recommendations and experience!
3. About Paying Yearly
Another thing you'll notice is that most of these incredible scam plans force you to pay for a year up front to get the good pricing. Why would a hosting company care if you pay monthly or yearly? After all if you're happy with them you're going to end up staying much longer than a year. Merchant fees aren't that much so why? It's because most have horrible support, slow servers, or even tons of downtime. If you were paying month to month you're not going to stick around, but if you paid for a year up front what are you going to do? You won't get your money back so you have no choice but to stay with them. ONLY PAY MONTHLY! Hostgator, has one plan that requires a year payment up front (hatchling) Why? because most hosts advertise a low monthly fee if paid yearly and a much higher price if monthly. Hostgator still need to be competitive so they made one plan showing this option. We would however prefer you sign up for a monthly plan. Remember paying yearly to anyone is always a bad idea, but the choice is yours. A web hosting company can, do everything in their power to honor the year but anything can happen to anyone. The state where a web host's servers are located could be wiped off the face of the earth. If this happened they would most likely be out of business instantly and have no way to honor your payment. All we're saying is no matter how good a company is anything can come up, and you could lose your upfront payment.
4. Domain Name Tips
Do not join a host that includes a free domain name with their hosting package, and never purchase your domain name from a hosting provider, unless you are positive they will be putting your information in the WHOIS. If your information isn't in the whois they could blackmail you into staying with them. For all technical purposes whoever has their information in the whois is the owner. A domain owner doesn't go by who paid for it; it goes by whose information is on the whois. To check a whois on the domain go there and type "domainname.com" and click submit. Whoever's address, email, and phone number shows up is the domain owner. As mentioned in a previous blog post above, we continue to recommend purchasing a domain from NetFirms ,after you purchase the name all you would do is put your host's dns in and your domain name will then point to your hosting company. If you aren't sure how to change the dns just watch videos on it.
5. A few more tests to check out how legit a company is
Do a whois on their domain name. Then look for the creation date of the domain name. If the domain name was created less then a year ago it's more of a risk to join that hosting company. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on. It's too easy to become a hosting company. All someone has to do is join our reseller plan and they are now a host. Sure the hosting may be good, but that doesn't mean they are going to provide good support nor does it mean they are going to pay their hosting bill. We end up kicking resellers of ours all the time for not paying their bills (after many warnings) and in many cases their unsuspecting customers lose their site.
You could also test the speed of a host's network to your location by...
Clicking start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping hostdomainname.com" wait for it to finish and look for the average ping. The lower the number the better, and chances are the faster your site will load if you should host with them. Any number around an 80 average would be good. Anything over 100 is very bad (unless you're living in another country from where the host is based.)
6. Customer Reviews
Don't believe anything you read on the hosting directories. They don't care who they recommend as they are all paid listings. The highest bidder gets the spot. What you should do to find reviews is search google using the company's name. If they have been around a year you should find many real reviews of people who use their hosting. Another good place to check would be the company's forum, but don't always believe what you see. If someone writes something bad in the forum most hosts will delete their post and ban the user... The Hostgator testimonials forum is located here or alternatively you can visit our web hosting partner which has compiled a sizable list of web hosting testimonials, of many companies. However, it so happens, that the company that gets the largest share of testimonials is Hostgator. Visit our other testimonials page here: Web Hosting reviews.
7. Uptime
If a hosting company claims 100% uptime they are lying. All servers need to be rebooted every now and then for security and software updates. If they never reboot that means their server is insecure and they will eventually be hacked.
When a company guarantees an uptime, that doesn't make it true. A host has as many uptimes as they have servers. It all depends on what server they put you on, and how well they manage it from the time you're put on it. Hostgator guarantees a 99.9% uptime but that does not mean they will hit it every month for eternity! Their guarantee means they give you a 100% refund for the month if they could not hit it. Many hosting companies will give you a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime. So say, you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 / hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime which ends up being about 33 cents. A guarantee is worthless! What is worth something is how they define the guarantee, and if they do in fact honor it.
In Conclusion
We hope you liked and enjoyed our web hosting scams advisory above and we hope you will find our reviews and recommendation below, useful. Rest assured that we went through a painstaking process over the course of years, in order to compile such a scam-free, but affordable web hosting provider list. We hope that if you do decide to purchase web hosting services, that you will gives us a "thank-you" for our FREE service to you by purchasing any of the plans below through clicking our links. Again, welcome to our Web Hosting Scam Buster BLOG!
Our Number 1 Ranked Web Host is: Hostgator----- Score --> 9.967/10.00
HOSTGATOR : Score --> 9.967/10.00 ( Also a "Green power" web host)
FREE WEB HOSTING FOR 3 MONTHS - SEE BELOW
- HostGator has been in business since 2002, and has quickly become the world’s largest cPanel hosting provider. They now boast over 800,000 hosted domain names, from 90,000 customers, relying on their top-of-the-line infrastructure to host single web hosting plans, reseller hosting plans, and fully managed dedicated servers. HostGator has a great reputation for server uptime (99.9%), support, and attention to their clients. There are not many companies where the direct owner will take time out to contact their clients, but that’s exactly what Brent Oxley, the president, does with his clients. It’s this personal service and care that resonates well with over 90,000+ satisfied clients.
What is included? Score: 9.982Every hosting plan comes with full access to over 4,500 professional pre-made and customizable site design templates making this deal even sweeter. Throw in access to tons of scripts from forums, e-commerce sites, and blogs like Wordpress to be automatically installed with just a click and you’ve got a great combination. CGI-scripts, PHP 4 scripting, Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia DreamWeaver, Flash, and ShockWave, Real Media, MP3s, Quicktime, streaming audio, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Webalizer and ModLogan statistics, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol).
Price Value? Score: 9.992HostGator has a no contract, and a month-to-month billing cycle on all of their plans. If by any chance you decide to cancel within 45 days, they will refund you 100% which says a lot about the confidence in their hosting.
Reliability? Score: 9.983HostGator data centers feature raised floors, multiple power supplies and redundant connections to Internet backbone providers like AT&T. All this means more website uptime and protection for your data. In fact, HostGator offers a 99.9% website uptime guarantee. While most other hosts preach this kind of uptime, HostGator will actually give you a month of free hosting if the 99.9% benchmark isn’t met.
Money Back Guarantee? Score:9.943All accounts come with a full 30 day money-back guarantee. If you are unhappy with the service for any reason, just ask for a full refund. There is also a 99.9% website uptime guarantee: if your sites don’t meet this guideline in a given month, you get a free month of hosting. Make your purchase with the assurance that HostGator stands behind its product 100%
Control Panel? Score: 9.943A customized cPanel, control panel, is standard with every hosting account. HostGator resellers get full access to Web Host Manager (WHM) with cPanel. For site design, they provide not one but two different website creation software programs – SiteBuilder & SiteStudio. Every hosting plan comes with full access to over 4,500 professional pre-made and customizable site design templates making this deal even sweeter. Throw in access to tons of scripts from forums, e-commerce sites, and blogs like Wordpress to be automatically installed with just a click and you’ve got a great combination.
Customer Support? Score: 9.996When deciding on a web host, the last thing you will think about is something going awry. But what if something goes terribly wrong at 3 AM? It’s nice to know you can get a hold of HostGator any time. Many hosts claim 24/7 support but HostGator puts their money where their mouth is, especially in the support category. Their office in Houston, TX (USA) is staffed around the clock with agents available through their Live Chat help, e-mail ticket system, and toll-free
Hosting Plans
HostGator offers 3 different Linux Platform Web Hosting Plans:
Hatchling 4.95/month
Baby - $7.95/month
Swamp $12.95/month
None of the plans have set-up fees or require a long-term contract, giving you maximum flexibility and savings. While most of us only need the Baby package to begin, once you have success, it’s simple to upgrade and continue growing your business.
- Special - FREE WEB HOSTING DEAL: Only available in this web blog, If you purchase any of the 3 plans above , we will rebate you for 2 months of service if you purchase the 12 month , 2 months if you purchase the 24 or 36 month plan and In order to get your rebate, you need to send us by email ( harbus@aol.com) a proof of purchase from Hostgator, and you must not cancel for the first 46 days. PLUS $9.94 off (equivalent to 1 month free) by using coupon code: "jury" or "webhostingunleashed" or "hgc25" or "hostcritique" so 2 months free plus the codes above equals 3 months of free quality web hosting!
- Summary
- With a combination of customer service, simplicity and value, Hostgator makes it to 1st on our list with a combine power score 9.92001. Hostgator is especially suited for "newbie" online marketers where bandwidth transfer and web space requirements are light. We like to look at Hostgator as online business training wheels. So as you become more web savvy, your business grows and requires more bandwidth transfer and web space, you can transfer your account to IX Web Hosting or Web Hosting Pad.
- For more information on Hostgator, or to order Hostgator web hosting services, click here.
Our Number 2 Ranked Web Host is: IX Web Hosting --Score-->9.924/10.00
IX Web Hosting -----Score-->9.924/10.00
FREE 3 months of WEB HOSTING DEAL - see below.
What Is Included? Score: 9.756
Price Value? Score:9.892
- Google Adwords - $75.00
- Yahoo YSM - $50
- Micrsoft MSN - $75.00
- Miva - $50.00
- Bid Advertiser - 50.00
- ABC Search $50-100
- Ingenio $25.00
- Enhance #25.00
Reliability? Score: 9.986
Money Back Guarantee? Score:9.978
Control Panel? Score: 9.945
Customer Support? Score: 9.997
Hosting Plans FREE WEB HOSTING FOR 3 MONTHS - SEE BELOW
- Expert Plan - $4.95/mo - If Prepaid for 24 months, $5.95/mo - for 12 months
- Business Plan - $7.95/mo - for 24 months, $8.95/mo - 12 months
- Unlimited Pro -$14.95/mo - for 24 months $16.95/mo - 12 months
All 3 plans come with unlimited domains, unlimited web space and data transfer and $0 set-up fees. Special offer: Only available in this web blog, If you purchase any of the 3 plans above , we will rebate you for one month of service if you purchase the Expert plan, 2 months if you purchase the Business plan and 3 months of service if you purchase the Unlimited plan. In order to get your rebate, you need to send us by email ( harbus@aol.com) a proof of purchase from IX Web Hosting, and you must not cancel for the first 31 days.
Summary
If you would like to join, please click here
Our Number 3 Ranked Web Host is: Web Hosting Pad -----Score-->9.821/10.00
FREE 3 MONTHS of WEB HOSTING DEAL BELOW
Web Hosting Pad, based in Torrence, California has, since 2005, set the tone for web hosting industry. They were one of the first to introduce a no hidden fee hosting plan structure. Their all inclusive plan set the path for others to follow and have been the leader in the hosting services ever since. Web Hosting Pad guarantees their server uptime of 99.9% and a network uptime guarantee of 100% with High Quality Quad Intel Xeon servers, a customized Apache web server , with a state of the art data center with 24/7 monitoring with redundant generators. Web Hosting Pad offers tons of space, bandwidth and features at a great price, backs it up with friendly customer service and a money-back guarantee. Whether you're managing a heavily-trafficked social networking site, own a group of marketing sites, or just find peace of mind in having plenty of room to grow, Web Hosting Pad is an excellent choice.
- What is included? Score: 9.759
- All Web Hosting Pad plans include the same package as IX Web Hosting (above) which include website statistics and raw log files, free search engine submission services, professional web design software, an online file manager and WebShell, WorldWide WebMail access, and eCommerce Shopping Carts. All of its plans support CGI-BIN, Perl 5, CGI-scripts, PHP 4 scripting, Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia DreamWeaver, Flash, and ShockWave, Real Media, MP3s, Quicktime, streaming audio, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Webalizer and ModLogan statistics, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). ColdFusion, Microsoft SQL servers and Active Server Pages supported by only Windows packages.
- Price Value? Score: 9.754
- Web Hosting Pad's plan offers THE BEST value – tons of disk space and bandwidth with unlimited domains, unlimited POP accounts and unlimited email forwarding. For all those bloggers and people who need databases, they offer unlimited MySQL databases; and they just announced Wordpress and b2evolution as an auto installer. All this for ONLY $4.95/mo. Similar to IX Web Hosting, Web Hosting Pad, also provides free "pay-per-click advertising credits, however not as extensive, but just enough to get you started in promoting your web site. These are the credit currently being offered:
- Google Adwords - $30.00
- Yahoo YSM - $25.00
- Reliability? Score: 9.902
- Web Hosting Pad went through the same rigorous tests that all the hosts have been through, at it come out with flying colors! Their server performances were exceptional, showing only rare periods of slowness. In our tests we experienced no down time with Web Hosting Pad, which is rather impressive. In short, we found their performance was good overall, and the reliability was exceptional.
Control Panel? Score: 9.935Web Hosting Pad currently uses cPanel as their choice for their hosting control panel and cPanel is considered one of the best in the industry. cPanel includes web stats and total management of email, domains, files, forums, and much more. With cPanel comes Fantastico , which lets you install all of the leading open source content management systems such as blogs, shopping carts and Wikis, with just a few clicks. There were no problems experienced at all with the cPanel. Web Hosting Pad also has RVsitebuilder for free within cPanel .
Customer Support? Score: 9.923When it comes to support and customer service, Web Hosting Pad is considered one of the best. With their live 24x7 you can reach them with a hold time of less then 3 min and a email response time of under 15 min 24x7. They have plenty of people on staff and truly know how to take care of their customers. There is also a helpful FAQ with answers to over 50 commonly asked questions. Here, you can submit help requests to a responsive ticket system, or help yourself to in-depth articles such as "How to restore a database from cPanel." This is useful if you prefer to learn on your own. This is probably why they won best customer service for 2 years in a row.Money Back Guarantee? Score: 9.901
- All accounts come with a 30 day money-back guarantee. If you are unhappy with the service for any reason, just ask for a full refund. Like other hosts, the domain registration fee associated with giving you a free domain, is deducted from the refund. Web Hosting Pad does not provide and "anytime" guarantee as in the case of IX Web Hosting, however it takes great lengths in its 24/7 customer service to make sure that everyone is satisfied.
- Hosting Plans FREE WEB HOSTING FOR 3 MONTHS - BELOW
- Web Hosting Pad only offers Linux platform, which is where most of the industry is gravitating to, so no problems here. There plans are very simple and staight-forward. They offer a 1 year plan for $5.95/month and a 2 year for $4.95/month, both without setup fees and a free domain for life. You can also get free unlimited domains added to your account, along with 1,700GB of disk space and 17,000GB of bandwidth transfer per month. Both more than adequate for most purposes.
- Special FREE WEB HOSTING DEAL: Only available in this web blog, If you purchase any of the 2 plans above , we will rebate you for one month of service if you purchase the 12 month , 3 months if you purchase the 24 month plan and In order to get your rebate, you need to send us by email ( harbus@aol.com) a proof of purchase from Web Hosting Pad, and you must not cancel for the first 31 days.
- Summary
- Web Hosting Pad reached a power score of 9.821/10. Web Hosting Pad.com offers tons of space, bandwidth and features at a great price, backs it up with friendly customer service and a money-back guarantee. Whether you're managing a heavily-trafficked social networking site, own a group of marketing sites, or just find peace of mind in having plenty of room to grow, Web Hosting Pad is an excellent choice.
Honorable Mention - This web host has not quite cracked the top 3, but they are getting close, and are up-and-coming.
Honorable Mention - This web host has not quite cracked the top 3, but they are getting close, and are up-and-coming. (Free 3 months WEB HOSTING DEAL below)
Lunarpages -----Score--> 9.7540/10.00
Lunarpage's Shuttle Shared Plan offers just about every feature and ability that anybody, hosting any type of site, could ever want. Plus, this host supports a generous amount of storage at 1500 GB and 15000 GB of data transfer per month. This plan also includes one free add-on domain, unlimited POP3 email accounts and features that support ecommerce as well as applications to assist online educators, auctioneers, and just about everybody else.
Moodle is included for educators and PHPAuction for online auctions. In addition, the Shuttle plan includes a long list of extremely useful features such as, Fantastico Script Library, a FAQ builder, Image and Coppermine Photo Gallery. It also includes the ability to support up to three blogs, chat and SMF forums-just to list a few. Lunarpage offers many more features with the basic plan.
One of the most useful features for new users is the Quicksite Plan. This feature is for novice website creators who need to get a site up and running in under 2 hours with assistance from Lunarpages.
Lunarpages supported programs include PHP, Perl, FrontPage, MySQL, PostgresSQL databases and a CGI directory, and they are one of the few top hosts that support ASP (for an extra $1/month).
Reliability? Score: 9.8740/10.00
In terms of reliability they boast 99.9% uptime, 2,000 Mbit Connectivity, tape backup, a power generator to protect against power outages, Ddos protection and 24/7/365 server monitoring.
If you are interested in hosting a site that requires multimedia support, Lunarpages provides streaming video and audio support, Real Media audio and video, as well as flash, shockwave and MIDI capabilities.
Lunarpages offers an array of email capabilities, including forwarding, auto responders, two forms of web mail, catchall, spam protection and SMTP. Lunarpages also supports sub-domains in a "www.subdomain.website.com" format.
For eCommerce they offer Zen, osCommcerce and Cube shopping carts as well as Open PGP /GPG encryption and a shared SSL Certificate.
Lunarpages offers other features not listed and is capable of hosting most sites efficiently, and includes about any tool you could need, from surveys to running classifieds.
Customer Service? Score: 9.7645/10.00
Lunarpages offers several support options, such as email, support tickets (a method to index your past questions and resolutions in case of reoccurrence), live-chat rooms, forum style (not one-on-one; there may be several different support techs available at once) and toll-free telephone support.
However, telephone support is not available 24/7, so if you have a problem late in the day or on a weekend, you will have to resort to email. An email response could take up to 24 hours. The support staff proved responsive and new accounts are set up quickly and professionally.
One unique support option that Lunarpages provides is an online forum comprised of customers that share experiences and advice. Lunarpages also offers over 50 online tutorials, FAQs, an online control panel manual and a glossary.
Control Panel? Score: 9.9490/10.00
Lumarpages uses a Cpanel that contains most of what you need to manage your site, including the ability to park domains, create subdomains, add-on domains and email accounts as well as filter and forward email. From this panel you can also monitor site traffic and the guest books, forums and contact lists. The Cpanel displays over 40 icons that link to many website management functions and are arranged intuitively and logically.
Summary (Free 3 months of web hosting with the purchase of any LunarPages plan, must not cancel for 61 days - To claim FREE WEB HOSTING, you must send Lunarpages receipt to harbus@aol.com)
Lunarpages does everything and does it well-all for $6.95 a month. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee and comprehensive customer and technical support.
With Lunarpages as your web host, you can expect reliable service and launch a powerful, interactive website. To join Lunar pages, click here
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