As Net craft’s independent and statistically analyzed study shows, 1&1 are the World’s leading web hosting with 2,586,662 active websites and 10 million domains registered. 1&1 are financially stable, profitable, and will be serving and protecting your website for many years to come. 1&1 were powering in front charming a million subscribers to an early online service specialized for small offices, home-based users, entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized companies.

1&1 was in an ideal position to expand into flexible and affordable flat-rate solutions for small offices, home-based users, entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized companies. 1&1’s verdict to go public in 1998 was a key success, Shareholders are now enjoying an outstanding return on their investments. ..More

HostMonster is considered by many webmasters to be one of the internet’s Best New web hosting companies. They have garnered many web hosting awards and great testimonials from some high end clients who bsolutely love their service. HostMonster has a terrific service and reliability reputation with a friendly and esponsive staff who are exceedingly helpful.

One of the things that we hear so much about with the
HostMonster service plan is easy it is to take on multiple projects or web sites at once, this is truly the plan if you want to do a lot of multi-tasking. The main package from HostMonster provides you 1500 GB storage space and a mind boggling 15TB of andwidth and it allows you to host an Unlimited amount of domains with their advanced cPanel control panel.

That is not all. HostMonster also provides a free for life domain name. You also get numerous freebies, all included for free when you purchase hosting services provided by HostMonster . The company also provides a specially made website building tool. The tool is designed to be very simple. It can be used by any person who can so much as write an email.

Some other factors which make this one of the best companies is unlimited number of email accounts, SSH access., Frontpage extensions, Ruby on Rails and Perl Scripting. HostMonster is completely e-commerce enabled. The company also boasts of a great customer service track record.

Price:

The popular HostMonster plan is available for $5.95 a month. This plan comes with an extremely easy to use website builder, a free domain name, $50 worth of search engine marketing by Yahoo!, ability to host any number of sites you want and a lot of other features, the service is great value for money. For the people who want to manage their complete web presence from a single location, there is nothing better than HostMonster.

Server Reliability

HostMonster servers are among the best in business. All the servers are handcrafted by system administrators at the company. This means that they do not have to rely on the products sold out by OEMs or system integrators. They pick up the best hardware available in the market and make sure that the entire process of integration and deployment of server system is done in a very efficient manner. In this way the company can deploy very powerful and reliable server systems without having to invest too much in server hardware.

All these servers go through stringent performance and reliability tests before any of them is deployed in the server farm. HostMonster also makes sure that every server has top of the line cooling system to prevent any issues that would be caused by overheating or under cooling of the server.

Performance and Uptime

The uptime of server systems at HostMonster is phenomenal. It is extremely rare that any of the websites goes down because of reasons that are attributable to the hosting service provider. The company has its own data center. Connectivity is provided through multiple OC48 systems. There are multiple levels of backup and redundancy. Round the clock and round the calendar monitoring of server means that most of the issues are sorted before they start becoming a trouble.

Customer Service

HostMonster has one of the best customer services in the sector. All the executive are well versed in their craft. HostMonster has some of the best policies which allows them employee retention. The staff is efficient and most of the problems get sorted out at lightening fast pace.

Customer Feedback
HostMonster has gathered a following that many of the bigwigs in the website hosting sector would be jealous of. For a company that is as new in the industry as HostMonster , the customer feedback that it has generated is a dream come true. All this comes from three aspects of competitive price structure, immaculate range of freebies and a customer service that is fast and happy in solving any of the issues that may arise.

IX Web Hosting backs up their promises with more than mere words, they offer a terrific 24×7x365 support staff, great uptime, several web hosting packages to tailor to your needs, including an incredibly affordable baseline plan from whch you can upgrade from.

Price

The price of the IX Web Hosting plan is mere $3.95. For such a low price\, you get a bag full of features. To begin with IX Web Hosting provides you a total of $175 as advertising credit in Google, Miva and Yahoo. Even if you go for a yearlong subscription, all the money is accounted for here only. The IX Web Hosting plan comes with support for some of the best technologies out there. Some of them include a guest book, DHTML support, stat counter, and free-shared SSL certificate along with large number of multimedia formats. Domain name registration can be kept unlisted. This means that any ‘whois’ query on your domain name would not return your details. All in all, for just about four dollars, you are getting way more than what it’s worth. Who else can deliver such a great value for money!

Server Reliability

What use is a web hosting company if it is plagued by downtime! If you are running a website, you must be aware of the losses that you have to suffer due to service downtime. This is the reason that IX Web Hosting takes every possible measure to make sure that your site does not suffer downtime. The owner of IX Web Hosting claims to refund your money in case you are not satisfied because he knows that such a condition would not arise.

IX Web Hosting has its own data center. It is based in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. While this location might seem odd to some people, it is a fact that the location is relatively safe from a number of natural disasters that hit United States. The IX Web Hosting data center is equipped with Cisco routers and SONET systems. Multiple levels of redundancy are arranged for connectivity and power supply. They ensure that you would not have to suffer prolonged downtime.

Performance and Uptime

Service uptime is the single most important factor that should be considered about when you are about to choose web-hosting services. This is most important in case you are running e-commerce site. Here server downtime means direct loss of revenue. IX Web Hosting has one of the best data centers in the United States. IX Web Hosting has modified it to make it one of the best collocation facilities in United States. Since the company has always internally managed its data center, they are well aware of the causes of trouble if any. IX Web Hosting are also able to rectify these problems very fast. Since the data center connectivity is provided by a number of large names like Qwest Communications, Bell South AT&T and Verizon, network downtime is going to be the least of your worries. Overall the company is easily to deliver the 99.9% uptime that it claims.

Customer Service

Customer service is an integral part of the communication systems. This is the reason that if you want to deliver the best service to your clients, you must have a great customer support department as well. IX Web Hosting has left no stone unturned to make sure that the customer service they provide is best in business. The IX Web Hosting staff is one of the most highly trained in business. There is round the clock and across the calendar support for customers. The customer support can be contacted through various channels. Email based support comes with a single hour response time. In case there are any delays in reply the company would refund your money for the time that is lost.

Customer Feedback

For the most part, IX Web Hosting has received rave reviews for its service. While there are claims and guarantees abound in the web hosting industry, there are few companies, which are able to stand up to their claims. IX Web Hosting is one of the few companies, which are actually able to stand up to the claims it makes and guarantees it provides. Naturally the customer reviews are positive and people who have taken the services say that they would recommend them to other people.

Bluehost is among one of the most experienced web hosting service providers around today. Bluehost has built a relationship of trust with numerous web hosting service clients. Ever since the company’s founders started providing hosting services in mid 1990s, they have been known for the fact that they give a lot of attention to even the minuscule aspects of hosting services. Bluehost owns its own data center and call center for support services located on adjacent premises.

The company is among those few organizations which integrate their own servers, instead of purchasing servers available in the market. According to Matt Heaton, President of Bluehost, there are a number of advantages in building and customization of servers by the hosting company. They do not get bound by any hardware maintenance contracts and they get to have the advantage of being able to upgrade their server infrastructure according to their preferences.

Bluehost has some of the most attractive service plans. The most famous plan from Bluehost is charged at $6.95 a month. It comes with 1500 GB of server storage and 15000 GB of bandwidth. There are a number of value added features and you can host any number of domains.

Price 9.0/10
The plan that comes for $6.95 a month provides you superb value for money. You get the ability to host any number of domains. 1500 GB storage and 15000 TB of bandwidth is all that anyone can ask for. 2500 emails, e-commerce readiness, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Frontpage extensions etc. Bluehost also provides a free marketing plan for your website. Moreover you get free of cost statistical information about your website, something for which most of the companies would charge an extra buck

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Server Reliability 9.0/10
When it comes to integrity and server reliability, there are very few which can claim a record parallel to that of Bluehost. The fact that this company makes its own server systems is what makes a lot of difference. The company’s administrators are well aware of what hardware goes where.

They are not involved in maintenance contract with any third party organization. This means that the administrators can immediately swing into action if anything unwanted happens. Unlike some other hosting companies, they do not have to wait until some from the third party company comes in and tries to fix the matters.

In fact the problems are very rare as Bluehost does a ton of research and testing before it classifies any server as production class. This means that administrators are aware of what would have gone wrong and they do not have to spend hours, trying to isolate the fault.

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Performance and Uptime 8.5/10
Thanks to the very high degree of reliability of server systems, the company has one of the best uptime records in the hosting industry. Bluehost claims to have a track record of more than 99% of uptime in its services. As told earlier the company makes its own server systems. This allows it to make sure that only best possible systems are able to get into production line. Since Bluehost does extensive testing of all its systems before deployment, most of the equipment is already seasoned and able to deliver optimal performance when it is put in usage. Other than that, Bluehost has multiple levels of redundancy and backup in both connectivity and power supply. This means that as soon as the main infrastructure goes down, the redundancy takes over and prevents any serious downtime issues.

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Customer Service 9.0/10
Bluehost has excelled in customer support services as much as it has excelled in hosting services. The staff of this Bluehost is knowledgeable and friendly. Their speed of response is very fast. They are able to get back to clients very fast because of the extensive training that the company provides to its customer support service team. You might have to hold for some time but the response timings justify that.

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Customer Feedback 9.0/10
Bluehost has a large clientèle and most of the customers are fully satisfied with its services. Overall this is among one of the best hosting companies anyone can opt for.

StartLogic has evolved in the last few years into one of the best web hosting plans on the internet with a terrific reputation for uptime and response times in their customer service departments. They have a very affordable plan that has more space, bandwidth and more advanced features than many other providers.

The first thing that you see when you visit StartLogic is a picture of a 10 happy faces staring back at you and remarkably that is the attitude you get when you are talking with a representative of StartLogic. This company has probably the best reputation for friendly customer service in the industry. Not only is the staff friendly and knowledgeable but they are also available by phone chat and email 24×7x365.

Included with the package is Vdeck, one of the most advanced web hosting control panels ever designed. Included in this advanced control panel system is free a point and click web site builder, free search engine submission tools, a 500 page free how to internet market guide book, tons of easy to use scripts and a full ecommerce starter kit.

Huge Extra Value:
Receive $350 worth of of FREE: Online Marketing, SEO & Web Site Design Evaluation - Limited Offer!!

 
Price 9.0/10
The price, $3.95/mo, is certainly right for the StartLogic package and this is one of our most recommended packages over the last few years simply because it is so affordable, so advanced and so easy to use. You have enough space 600GB and enough Bandwidth 6000GB to handle any project and you can host 50 web sites on 1 account with no extra fees for the hosting.

If you think that is great you also get $50 Free no obligation marketing at both Yahoo and Google, the internet’s 2 largest search portals plus a free 500 page marketing manual. Upgrades in your package are automatic and are free, the free web site builder comes with 100’s of professional designs so you can get started right away, free AW Stats, webmail, ecommerce, stats reporting system and so much more.

For those techies looking for a great host StartLogic also has, MySQL, PHP, Perl, CGI-BIN, Form Mail, Guest Book, File Manager, Backup Servers, Frontpage and more.

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Server Reliability 9.5/10
At StartLogic they are serious about their reliability to their 200,000 + customers and have continuously invested in the most robust and best of breed hardware. They use top of the line Dual Intel Xeon processors from Dell and IBM with blazing fast hard drives and RAID-1 redundancy.

StartLogic offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and have a strenuous commitment to that guarantee so that their customers may know that they are 100% committed to them. They have to have this level of commitment because StartLogic backs up their service with a no questions asked 30 day money back guarantee.

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Performance and Uptime 9.5/10
At the core of StartLogic’s great uptime is their investment into one of the best data centers on the west coast in Los Angeles which has redundant power supplies in case of emergencies, UAC backup, environmental controls, powerful cooling systems, HVAC temperature systems and is protected by 24×7x365 security monitoring.

The sites we have with them that we have been monitoring since 2003 have shown that we have had remarkably few lapses in our uptime.

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Customer Service 9.0/10
We said it before but it is worth repeating, so we’re glad to be able to say it again that StartLogic has one of the friendliest and most knowledgeable support staff around. Response times have to be good in this industry and StartLogic’s responses in chats, phones and emails are very quick and they really know how to isolate a problem and get a resolution quickly.

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Customer Feedback 9.0/10
In our searches across the internet in web hosting forums and discussion groups we have seen that StartLogic is one of the few web hosts out there who have been unscathed by criticism. They have a terrific reputation for their friendly staff and their reliability. Everyone seems to like the affordability of the package as well as how robust that package really is. All in all StartLogic gets great customer reviews.

HostMonster is considered by many webmasters to be one of the internet’s Best New web hosting companies. They have garnered many web hosting awards and great testimonials from some high end clients who absolutely love their service. HostMonster has a terrific service and reliability reputation with a friendly and responsive staff who are exceedingly helpful.

One of the things that we hear so much about with the HostMonster service plan is easy it is to take on multiple projects or web sites at once, this is truly the plan if you want to do a lot of multi-tasking. The main package from HostMonster provides you 1500 GB storage space and a mind boggling 15TB of bandwidth and it allows you to host an Unlimited amount of domains with their advanced cPanel control panel.

That is not all. HostMonster also provides a free for life domain name. You also get numerous freebies, all included for free when you purchase hosting services provided by HostMonster . The company also provides a specially made website building tool. The tool is designed to be very simple. It can be used by any person who can so much as write an email.

Some other factors which make this one of the best companies is unlimited number of email accounts, SSH access., Frontpage extensions, Ruby on Rails and Perl Scripting. HostMonster is completely e-commerce enabled. The company also boasts of a great customer service track record.

 
Price 9.0/10
The popular HostMonster plan is available for $5.95 a month. This plan comes with an extremely easy to use website builder, a free domain name, $50 worth of search engine marketing by Yahoo!, ability to host any number of sites you want and a lot of other features, the service is great value for money. For the people who want to manage their complete web presence from a single location, there is nothing better than HostMonster.

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Server Reliability 9.5/10
HostMonster servers are among the best in business. All the servers are handcrafted by system administrators at the company. This means that they do not have to rely on the products sold out by OEMs or system integrators. They pick up the best hardware available in the market and make sure that the entire process of integration and deployment of server system is done in a very efficient manner. In this way the company can deploy very powerful and reliable server systems without having to invest too much in server hardware.

All these servers go through stringent performance and reliability tests before any of them is deployed in the server farm. HostMonster also makes sure that every server has top of the line cooling system to prevent any issues that would be caused by overheating or under cooling of the server.

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Performance and Uptime 9.5/10
The uptime of server systems at HostMonster is phenomenal. It is extremely rare that any of the websites goes down because of reasons that are attributable to the hosting service provider. The company has its own data center. Connectivity is provided through multiple OC48 systems. There are multiple levels of backup and redundancy. Round the clock and round the calendar monitoring of server means that most of the issues are sorted before they start becoming a trouble.

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Customer Service 9.0/10
HostMonster has one of the best customer services in the sector. All the executive are well versed in their craft. HostMonster has some of the best policies which allows them employee retention. The staff is efficient and most of the problems get sorted out at lightening fast pace.

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Customer Feedback 9.0/10
HostMonster has gathered a following that many of the bigwigs in the website hosting sector would be jealous of. For a company that is as new in the industry as HostMonster , the customer feedback that it has generated is a dream come true. All this comes from three aspects of competitive price structure, immaculate range of freebies and a customer service that is fast and happy in solving any of the issues that may arise.

The best way for you to get to the top web host services is to go through the reviews of various web hosting service companies. They would provide you with all the required information to make your search for a web site hosting service easy and fast.

Another aspect is that you need to check the word of mouth publicity that a web hosting service has been able to generate. People who have actually used the web hosting services from a company would be the best people to comment about the services of that company. They have first hand experience of the services and can tell you a lot of things. It is recommended that when it comes to word of mouth publicity you must only consider the experiences of people you can rely upon and not from every person you come across.

In case you have decided that it is best to take the entire matter in your own hands, you need to consider a number of aspects because all these aspects are what that makes any web hosting company a top web host company. To begin with you would have to use the internet search engines to locate different web hosting services that are available in the market. There are going to be hundreds of results because there are hundreds of web hosting companies spread all over the world.

Hosting-Review’s top web host reviews are your best way to filter the chaff from the grain. You can also use internet cross referencing for this purpose. You can go through the web site hosting service reviews that are provided here and see for yourself which companies are able to stand up to what they claim and to do what they promise to do. You should do a lot of homework on this juncture as there is a lot to lose if you make a mistake here.

One more important point you need to keep under consideration to see the work that companies in our list of web hosting companies have done with their own web sites. There is a huge variety and you would be able to find a lot of information by going through the list. If a company is not able to maintain its own site, you can easily estimate what can become of your web site. Look for obvious pieces of information like the address and contact details of the company and support related pages.

In fact support provided by the web hosting company is a very important aspect which you need to keep in mind when you go for web hosting services. You do not want go with a web hosting service with attractive prices and then have nowhere to go because you are left without any support options. Live support is an absolute must. This support must be available through phone line or through online text or voice chat. The advantage of live support is that you can start fixing the problem immediately.

The choice when it comes to a top class web hosting company is going to differ from person to person. The reason is simple. Every person has different requirements from his web hosting service. He would place those companies as the top web host companies which suit his requirements better. For this reason the companies have designed various service packages for various people. When you consider the service plan it is a must to consider the up grade options as well.

You would not be able to decide on a top web host company unless you actually use the services provided by the company. It is recommended to stay away from long term commitment because mobility in web hosting would allow you to search for a better hosting service in a more comfortable manner.

The first thing I look at (and this has only come on board within the past year or two) is does the website offer a live chat option.

It’s not hard to figure out why its so important, the web hosting industry can be a non personal industry where most consumers like to go about their business in a behind the scenes role. Retrieving answers to their questions in a quick and easy online fashion allows consumers to make informed decisions right then and there.

Not to mention, the live chat feature must be easily accessible but not too intruding on every page. What I mean by that is to have the live chat icon accessible on all pages so that if the consumer would like assistance they know where to ask.

There are some websites who like to take a pro-active stance with the tools provided and try and initiate a chat with the visitor. It’s usually started with a pop-up asking if you have any questions or would you like to see our current specials not posted on the site. This is a great way to initiate a conversion with a potential customer should they not know the live chat option is even available and/or if they might have any questions that need addressed.

The one problem I see with the pro-active approach are those websites that soon as you land on their homepage and or any other sub page within their website you are embarked with a pop-up asking to chat. I recommend a few minutes before requesting a chat and not to ping the same customer twice if they did not accept the first request. This will ensure the potential buyer is not turned off by this feature as it can sometimes be quite annoying when it pops up on every page.

Looking to purchase a live chat software for your website? Here are three that I’ve used in the past that I recommend:

Live Person
http://solutions.liveperson.com
You receive all the tools mentioned above with the added benefit of not having the host or configure the system on your own server. All systems are hosted with Live Person so little knowledge on setup is required.

PHP Live Support
http://www.phplivesupport.com
I personally like this live chat software. You have the optioin of hosting it on their servers or buying the software outright and running it from your very own servers. Features are very similiar to Live Person and installation assistance is available if needed.

Kayako
http://www.kayako.com
The live chat feature from Kayako is built into their ticketing system software. So not only do you receive a Sales, Billing, Support ticketing system but each department can have their very own live chat. Considering this live chat feature comes with the support ticket system, its great when your trying to keep everything under the one roof, however both Live Person and PHP Live Support are superior when it comes to features and reliability.

Feel free to comment on experiences with any other live chat software programs.

So what is a content management system and why is CMS web hosting important?

A content management system is very simply exactly what it states – a system that assists webmasters in maintaining and editing their content on a day-to-day basis. In the web hosting realm, using a CMS to manage your dedicated server is what many webmasters do to minimize effort and outsourcing technical support. Content management systems are designed to be as user-friendly and effortless as possible, as they are designed with the new and inexperienced webmaster in mind. So you can be sure that when you are using a content management system with dedicated web hosting that you will be able to fully maintain your website and implement new changes, add text and photos, blog and links with ease.

Some of the most popular content management systems for web hosting are Joomla, Mambo, WordPress, b2evolution, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Moveable Type, and Typo. Joomla web hosting has become extremely popular recently due to the many free Joomla extensions available, and WordPress Web Hosting is arguably the easiest CMS web hosting platform available for novice webmasters.