The Best Web Hosting Review

Blue Host has been in the hosting picture since 1996. Wow. They have had more than a decade to get it right, and indeed they have! They have over 400,000 clients, and are still gaining. Blue Host is one of the very best in the hosting game.

Go to Blue Host web site.

Customer service is top-notch. Not quite as phenomenal as Lunar Pages, but very close. Where they do excel Lunar Pages in the support arena is the toll-free number. Lunar Pages only offers the standard number, and long distance charges will apply unless you are calling from a cell phone.

Blue Host offers users cPanel for management, which is standard fare for web hosts (except Powweb and Start Logic), so experienced users and webmasters will feel right at host with Blue Host.

Blue Host now offers 600 GB of storage (previously 300) and 6000 GB of bandwidth per month (previously 3000). They do not offer a dedicated hosting solutions, nor do they offer even a VPS plan. The shared hosting price is $6.95. No hidden fees. No mysteries. Because of the lack of choices, however, I am still recommending Lunar Pages as the host of choice on this site.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the Blue Host home page, open an account, and try it for yourself.

Host Monster offers a variety of features at a very low price: $5.95 a month.

Go to the Host Monster website.

Host Monster has one very strong selling point: up-time. 99.9% uptime, actually. Yes, I know, many companies claim the 99.9% uptime, but Host Monster can back up the claim. Ultimately, it is what the customers think that matters most, and the customers are saying that Host Monster has the least downtime in the industry.

Host Monster also has the e-commerce options that small businesses want and need. If you want it, they’ve got it. Let’s look at the list of features.

• OS Commerce Shopping Cart
• Agora Shopping Cart
• Password Protected Directories
• Open PGP/GPG Encryption
• SSL Secure Server

They even have FREE generated certificates, which will encrypt internet traffic in secure areas of your website (and give your address bar the lock icon, which so many shoppers want to see for before whipping out their credit card).

Disk storage is a whopping 600 GB! For bandwidth Host Monster gives you an incredible 6000 GB per month (I wonder what the fascination with the number “6″ is).

For management, they use cPanel, just like many of its competitors, which has a clean look and is easy to use. They also offer free search engine submission, but I believe that you are better off doing that sort of thing yourself (but, that is a another story).

In conclusion, I believe that Host Monster could the best around if they offered a dedicated solution, or at least a Virtual Private Server solution.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the Host Monster home page, open an account, and try it for yourself.

This host is a very close second to Lunar Pages. The only reason that they did not win was the fact that I prefer Linux/Unix for hosting over Microsoft Windows. Some people prefer Microsoft, and I accept that. So, if you don’t have a preference between Linux and Windows (or if you prefer Windows), easyCGI may be for you.

Go the easyCGI website.

In an independent review of internet hosting companies, easyCGI received a whopping 5 stars (out of 5 stars), out of 54 votes. No other hosting companies had a perfect score. It seems the easyCGI’s customers are very loyal, which means they must be very happy with the company.

Much like Powweb, EasyCGI is another host that stands out from the crowd. If you search around for web hosts, you will soon find that 99% of shared hosting is done on Linux. Even then, most hosting companies still have no options for Windows-based hosting, even on dedicated machines. EasyCGI differentiates itself by having nothing but Windows hosting options - both shared and dedicated.

EasyCGI, again like Powweb, has its own in-house management software which allows complete control of your hosted space and services. As stated in the Powweb review, I think that control panels developed by in-house programmers have the ability to evolve quickly, which gives them an advantage over cPanel in many ways. You can try a demo of the program on easyCGI’s website, under “hosting control panel” on the left-hand navigation pane.

The shared hosting is the most popular choice for new customers, and on first glance you may think that it does not include SQL databases. The confusion arises when you see that the advanced plans come with Microsoft SQL Server. Rest assured, however, that the basic 7.95 plan comes with 50 MySQL databases.

In addition to the shared hosting, easyCGI offers dedicated hosting solutions, which are quite nice when it comes to hosting a larger site, or a site which sees a lot of traffic.

Here’s a breakdown on pricing:

• Shared Hosting - $7.96
• X2 Shared Hosting - $15.96
• X4 Shared Hosting - $21.56
• Dedicated VPS Hosting - $43.96
• X2 Dedicated VPS Hosting - $55.96
• X4 Dedicated VPS Hosting - $95.96

EasyCGI has a yet another extremely cool feature: e-Mail only hosting!

Yes, not many companies do this anymore, and to my knowledge this is the only host in the Top 7 hosts that does this. The price can’t be beat, either: $3.95 a month. This is perfect for those clients who don’t need a website, but still need e-mail. I had a client about a year ago who needed an e-mail solution, but did not need a website. The franchise corporate office hosted the main site, but did not host e-mail. This would have been perfect for my client, but at the time I didn’t know of easyCGI’s services. Considering the reputation of EasyCGI, I am thinking of changing this particular client over to easyCGI.

Another interesting option which is related to the e-mail-only hosting, is the web forwarding service. If you wish to change your domain name from pizzaplaza.com to coloradopizza.com, you don’t have to change web hosts. With easyCGI’s domain forwarding service, users are redirected to the old site from the new domain name. You even have the choice of having the address (in the browswer’s address bar) either change to the old address or stay the same. On top of that, easyCGI’s domain forwarding service includes e-mail services, so you can have up to 500 e-mail accounts at your new domain.

Lastly, two other great features of easyCGI (which I won’t go into great detail on here) is the server co-location service. For $79.96, you can have easyCGI monitor your very own 1U or 2U rack-mounted server in their climat-controlled environment. Also, easy CGI offers secure SSL certificates for your website for $149 per year.

Looking at all of the features of easyCGI, it’s easy to see why so many people are extremely satisfied with the level of service that this company provides. Even I am impressed with this Windows-based hosting company, and, being the Linux junkie that I am, that is saying something.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the easyCGI home page, open an account, and try it for yourself.

. . . . You may find that Windows-based hosting is a perfect fit for your site.

Visit the site!

Here is a hosting company that is close to my heart, for sure.

Although they only offer a flat hosting plan, with no choices for upgrading, they do get an honorable mention. They sponsor the Toys for Tots charity for needy children.

For $4.95, An Hosting offers 500 GB of storage and 5 GB per month for bandwidth. This is a bit more than most low-cost hosts offer. They offer a host of goodies on each account, including free domain for life, unlimited e-mail accounts, unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited MySQL account, and a torrent of other extras such as e-commerce tools, etc.

The unlimited FTP accounts is my favorite feature of them all. If you need a large number of FTP accounts, you can do that here. Why would you want to have an unlimited number of FTP accounts? Say, for example, you have a client-base of 5000. You could create a little program which takes a certain amount of data and uploads it to an FTP server for off-site storage. This could be offered to your 5000 clients as a paid service… such as “For only $9.99 per month, upload your Quickbooks Database file to our secure servers every night.” So, every time you sign a client up for this service, you can create an FTP account for them, plug the information into the little program, point it to the Quickbooks files, and your done. That’s $9.99 in recurring income, every month from each of your clients.

The customer support staff at An Hosting is very helpful when you get them on the phone, and I am usually able get to a live person fairly quickly. I have only had to wait on hold a few times, but on those occasions the wait was over 30 minutes.

One thing that you might be interested in is that An Hosting backs up client data for you. This is a huge piece of mind when you have valuable data on a web host. Personally, I think that you should always have your own back-up of the most important information, but it is nice to know that someone else is looking out for your data too.

Unfortunately, An Hosting doesn’t offer dedicated hosting, or co-located server options, but the shared hosting is pretty good. If you are looking for a company with unlimited FTP account, unlimited e-mail accounts, and/or unlimited MySQL accounts, An Hosting may be the just the hosting company for you.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the An Hosting home page, open an account, and try it for yourself.

Powweb is a little “different” when it comes to hosting. The first difference that most experienced webmasters will notice is the OPS Panel.

Go to Powweb! 

The folks at Powweb looked at the customer feedback concerning the difficulties and limitations of cPanel. Using this information, the in-house programmers developed their own proprietary solution, called OPS. Being an in-house solution has its benefits, namely quick evolution. I have used OPS for about 4 years now, and I have seen many changes. All of them have been for the better. Although I know cPanel well from using it with other hosts, OPS is highly intuitive and takes very little time to learn.

Another nice thing about Powweb is the forums. I am an avid lurker in the Powweb forums, and there are some very knowledgeable users there. Not only that, but help-desk personnel poke around in there too. It is certainly nice to see admins posting answers to users questions on occasion.

Where Powweb does not shine is in its long wait in the queue. I have been in there for 30 minutes on occasion, even after midnight. This is disappointing, but common with low-cost hosts. In Powweb’s defense, however, I have been able to solve many problems with the help of its forum, knowledge-base, and online chat support.

Powweb does not offer a dedicated or VPS solutions. They only offer one price for their shared hosting: $5.77. They used to charge $7.77, but I am guessing they dropped their prices to be more competitive.

Another feature of Powweb, that few other companies have, is Microsoft Exchange hosting. They have two different hosting plans: one for 500 MB mailboxes, and one for 1000 MB mailboxes. The price is per mailbox (but still a bargain if you only need one or two accounts).

• 500 MB - $12.95
• 1000 MB - $19.95

If you have ever experienced the productive power that is Microsoft Exchange, you will immediately see the benefits of having a Microsoft Exchange server at your disposal.

• Have access to your calendar, e-mail and contacts from any computer on the web
• Sync your PDA or SmartPhone with your calendar, e-mail and contacts
• Share e-mail and calendars with co-workers, friends, and family members

If you have ever administered an Exchange account, and had problems with it, you will see the benefits of having someone else host it for you. With Powweb doing the Exchange hosting for you, you don’t have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of Exchange, Windows Server, Active Directory, or hardware issues. Excellent!  For a limited time only, they have a deal going on at the moment for one month FREE.  Check it out.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the Powweb home page, open an account, and try it for yourself.

Start Logic is owned by the same company that owns iPower and Dot5. So when you see those bogus review that speak of these hosts as different companies, beware. They are the same host, on the same machines.

Go to the Start Logic home page. 

With that being said, Start Logic is a good host. There has been some complaints of support, but not an excessive amount. The primary complaint is a long wait in the queue. Unfortunately, this is on par with most of the other hosts out there (except for Lunar Pages). Up-time is 99.9%, which seems to the best it gets in the web hosting business.

It might be important to mention that Start Logic (and the other sister hosts mentioned above) uses vDeck for its management interface. This is not all bad, as vDeck has its own strengths. Some webmasters, who are used to cPanel, may feel a bit disgruntled when they learn of this after they have purchased a package.

They have a few different pricing plans, based on Linux vs. Windows and Shared vs. Dedicated. Here is a quick overview per month:

• ProLogic (Linux) - $5.95
• WindowsLogic (Windows) - $9.95
• VirtualServer - $29.95
• DedicatedServer - $99.95

They offer “Search Engine Optimization” at $24.95 per month. <soapbox>Personally, I think this is crazy. Personally, I believe that even a layman with the right tutorial can do their own SEO. Plus, some parts of SEO, such as title tags, are best left unchanged. The best SEO is accomplished by the owner of the site, via fresh content.</soapbox>

If you overlook the occasional the long wait time to speak with a technician, this is host is nice choice for hosting. After all, it beat out many of the other hosts out there to make our BEST 7. They offer a dedicated hosting solution and a VPS solution, which many larger hosts do not bother with. All things considered, this is a good web host, worthy of your business.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the Start Logic home page, open an account, and try it for yourself.

When it comes to the Top 7 performers in the web-hosting world, you will find many things are the same all around. Many of them offer a nice user interface, low prices, lot’s goodies to install, great prices, excellent up-time, etc. What really sets a company apart is customer service. That is key.

Lunar Pages has the best customer service out of any company around. Period. Any of their customer service people are friendly, knowledgeable, and very technical.

Go to their website.

Support is offered through a variety of channels, including but not limited to phone, e-mail, and forums - http://www.lunarforums.com. The forums are open to paying customers and the general public (only the best hosts have forums open to the general public). Lunar pages is a great host, and you will find many happy customers in their forums.

Just go to their website and see for yourself. The testimonials on the front page show real faces of real people with real websites.

Most hosts have testimonials by mystery clients, such as the lady named “Julie M.” from Kansas. Who is Julie M., and why should I believe her or even believe that she is a real person? Most likely “Julie M. is the figment of someone’s marketing imagination. Lunar pages uses real testimonials, from real clients.

Speaking of home pages, Lunar Pages is one of the few companies reviewed that had such a clean-looking home page. You can check a domain name for availability, review features, login, or check prices without having to dig around on the site.

This leads us to pricing…

The shared hosting plan is what most users will need. This service starts at only $6.95 per month, and includes 1500 GB of storage and 15,000 GB per month data transfer limit. In layman’s terms, it’s more than enough storage and bandwidth for the average person, family, or small business…. and certainly enough to host any blog.

They provide both Linux and Windows hosting solutions, Virtual Private Hosting (VPS), and Dedicated Hosting. The VPS hosting solution and dedicated hosting is perfect for those with large newsletter lists. There is no limitation on e-mails with either solutions. VPS hosting starts at $39.95 per month for Linux virtual servers, and $69.95 per month for Windows VPS (due to the cost of Microsoft licensing). Linux is the web hosting platform that most webmasters are most familiar with.

Another note that is worthy of mention is the ease of installation of aMember Membership software. Those webmasters needing to install this popular and powerful membership site software will be very pleased. Just create a database through cPanel, plug the information into aMember (or aMember Lite), and off you go.

I don’t usually speak of the owner of a web hosting company, however I think that this tidbit is worth mentioning. Ron Riddle is the founder and director of Lunar Pages. Although I have never spoken to Ron personally, he seems like an incredibly upstanding guy in his interviews. Anyone who dedicates so much time and resources to helping the public school system is alright by me. Ron is the type of business person I want to be when I grow up.

All in all, this is the best choice in the world of web hosting.

The only way that you can know if a host is right for you is to try it yourself. Since all of the hosts on this list offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose. Go to the Lunar Pages home page, open an account, and experience for youself the joy of stress-free web mastering.