A Review Of Web Hosts

With all the web hosts out there people must be like "Which is best?" Well here is a review of some of the big names out there in web hosting.

GoDaddy.com:

GoDaddy’s web hosting packages come loaded with features. GoDaddy is proud of their world class data center and physical services, and reasonably so. GoDaddy actually owns their hosting facilities, which feature state of the art security and advanced backup technology for complete and competent network servers.

Each GoDaddy hosting plan comes with web site statistic tools to help you keep an eye on how your hosted page is performing. Setup is absolutely free, and includes access to the GoDaddy.com Hosting Connection, where you can interact with other GoDaddy users and find free applications to use on your web site.

Each GoDaddy hosting plan also comes with a variety of free software and credits to help you get the word out on your site. The Deluxe plan that we reviewed includes a $25 Google AdWord credit, a $50 Microsoft adCenter credit, and a $50 Facebook credit.

GoDaddy provides other tools as well for further adding function to your site. You can host forums on your GoDaddy website, start a blog, and show off your photos. And while GoDaddy doesn’t include a free shopping cart, they do have e-commerce solutions available, including merchant accounts and the Quick Shopping Cart.
Customer Service:

GoDaddy has a variety of help and support options available, and they’re accessible all of the time. The online support forum and FAQs section are well organized and contain a wealth of knowledge for beginners and advanced users alike.

GoDaddy service representatives can also be contacted on the phone, or through email. GoDaddy is a large company with several users, so personal help would be expectedly slower than others. However, GoDaddy’s support team is quick to respond, and the expected response time for emails has significantly decreased since our last review. The 10 to 12 hour response time has been cut down to 1.
Control Panel:

GoDaddy helps beginners easily set up their site, and includes additional tools for advanced developers to work with. GoDaddy also offers a variety of professional site building services and designs for additional fees. Regardless, all GoDaddy solutions support several programming languages. The deluxe plan we reviewed supports CGI (Python and Ruby), PHP, Perl, ASP, MySQL, ColdFusion, and FrontPage extensions.

Most functions within the Account Management tool are similar to other control panels. In addition, with GoDaddy.com you can perform account management tasks, email management, web security, database setup and management, and manage statistic tools.
Summary:

GoDaddy is a worthy competitor and worthwhile web hosting service. They provide all the essentials and then some, complete with secure facilities. The setup process is straightforward, and GoDaddy has an option for all levels of management, from beginner to expert. Though not as complete as a couple of our other reviewed web hosting services, GoDaddy has what it takes, and is definitely a great option.

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HostGator:

Hostgator, founded in 2002 is one of top shared hosting companies, ranking consistently among the best by most of the review sites. What makes hostgator stand out from the crowd is their excellent support and customer friendliness. If you are not satisfied with the support, you could even get hostgator president Brent Oxley to personally take a look at your problem.

Hostgator offers linux hosting only(even though they are expected to start windows hosting in the near future). All their packages come with all the features needed for a serious website. Baby and Swamp packages allow unlimited domains(add on), which makes a lot of sense if you have multiple websites. They use cPanel, which is the best control panel around. You get Fantastico script installer which will install most of the popular open source scripts with few clicks.

They support PHP4 & 5, SSH, Cron jobs, Python, Ruby On Rails etc. Also, all the packages include enough POP3 accounts(20 for Hatchling and unlimited for others).

We started realtime testing of hostgator uptime on Feb 2008. The test is done on a site hosted with hostgator, using a third party uptime monitor service. Overall, hostgator had been the best performing host from all the hosts monitored. They provided consistently high uptime, month after month. There has never been a single case of site being down for more than 10 minutes at a stretch. Hostgator indeed lived up to their reputation.

They have three hosting packages starting from Hatchling ($6.95 pm) to Swamp ($14.95 pm). The price is reasonable for the features and space/bandwidth provided. Recently Hostgator increased the space and bandwidth to unimaginable levels. They also reduced the price of all plans, by introducing 24 and 34 month pre-payment options. The monthly payment now have a small set up charge and is costlier than 12 month rates. Our advice - don't get excited by the unlimited space and bandwidth. They do have limits on file numbers(inodes) and CPU usage to make sure that only reasonable sized accounts remains in the shared servers. But for any site with a reasonable traffic, hostgator plans are more than sufficient. You obviously can not expect a site with few million page views a month to run on a shared host, no matter what bandwidth they offer.