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Following the article "How many independent shared hosting companies are there?", I was curious to see how resellers compare to the original plan. Since the original vendor and the resellers share the same platform and the same technical team, the main difference should be the price. Which is cheaper: the reseller or the original vendor?

GoDaddy vs. resellers

The basic plan starts at $4.99/month with a 3-month contract. You can see all the details of the plan here.

Some of the GoDaddy resellers offer the same plan:

• http://www.sfwebhost.com/ $4.95/month (on sale, regular price is $9.95/month)
• http://www.snndomains.com/ $3.99/month (-20%)
• http://www.webmassala.com/ $5.39/month (+8%)
• http://www.eserveglobal.com/ $5.75/month (+15%)
• http://www.nolabydesign.com/ $3.99/month (-20%)

SF WebHost (Reseller) & GoDaddy

Fatcow & others

Fatcow's plan is $66/year. Fatcow belongs to the Endurance International Group which offers the same hosting plans through multiple companies:

• StartLogic $83.40/year ($6.95/month) (+26%)
• Pow Web $58.56/year (-11%)
• Dot5 Hosting $59.40 (-10%)
• Globat $53.28 (-19%)

Price varies between resellers. It can be financially advantageous to use a reseller rather than the original vendor.

A search for "web hosting" returns hundreds of web hosting company results. But how many of them are really unique offers?

Resellers.

Most web hosting companies, such as GoDaddy and 1&1 offer reseller accounts. Anyone can resell these hosting plans under another name. These ‘re-branded’ offers can cost less than the original plan and the technical support is usually provided by the original company. However, any first-level contact is provided by the reseller. You can find details of the GoDaddy reseller account plan on their website.

To make reseller accounts more attractive, hosting companies give away templates and tools for resellers to create their own website. As a result, the reseller home pages often look the same.

SF WebHost (Reseller) & GoDaddy. Yes, the image was taken from 2 different websites!

SF Web Host, a GoDaddy reseller.

GoDaddy website

Some resellers combine offers from different companies under their own brand, and may have a unique design.

Working with a reseller may help you save money, but you need to know that they do not own the infrastructure; they are limited to what the seller provides and cannot provide customers with a better service than the original provider, merely the same service. If you suspect a web hosting company is a reseller, inquire by email or compare their listed offers to the offers we list on our site. If you find exact services, they are very likely a reseller.

GoDaddy resellers:

• http://www.sfwebhost.com/
• http://www.webnusites.com/
• http://www.snndomains.com/
• http://www.webmassala.com/
• http://www.eserveglobal.com/
• http://www.nolabydesign.com/
• and hundreds of others!

Different companies, same owner.

Different companies can belong to the same owner. For example, Nexx and HostICan belong to the same group. They share the same data center, and very likely the same internal infrastructure: DNS server, firewalls, etc. Each company offers different plans at different prices.

If you are happy with the customer service offered by one of the providers in the group, you can switch to any plan under this group to better suit your needs, or to save money, knowing that the same team is behind it.

Endurance International Group owns 20 hosting companies, including:

• iPowerWeb
• Pow Web
• Dot5 Hosting
• StartLogic
• Fatcow
• Globat

Dedicated server split to shared plans.

Selling shared hosting plans seems like an easy way to make a buck to some people. Buy or rent a dedicated server, install one of the many free software (examples) to splice it into smaller parts, and resale them to the public. This was very popular a few years back.

But a good shared hosting experience requires 24/7 monitoring, a support team to answer customers, an operation team to handle software updates and hardware failures, etc. Margins are very low in this business; a company must own a lot of servers and have a lot of customers to survive.

While this type of substandard hosting service may be cheaper, it is certainly not the best way to go. Always check to see how long a hosting company has been in business. If they haven’t been in business very long, they may not provide a very good service.

There are many web hosting companies, but few of them manage their own infrastructure. Check carefully before switching hosting companies, you might actually end up changing to a reseller host with your original company!

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GoDaddy website - Detailed information on GoDaddy plans

Go Daddy Custom Web site Design

HTTP performances with a 12 kb static file

This test shows how much time it takes to download a single static file. Small images are around 12kb (each graph on this page is about 20kb), CSS and Javascript can be smaller. HTML is often 5kb-10kb This 12kb static file is representative of a large portion of elements on a web site.

GoDaddy's s servers are located in Scottsdale, Arizona. The measurements were done from several sites in the US and in Europe. Sites which are geographically closer to GoDaddy have a lower download time. The graphs show the average download time at the different hours of the day. Measures were done every 10 minute during several days.

Performances with GoDaddy HTTP servers

Unlike DNS responses, HTTP requests are served from one location only. This means the download time from Europe is much longer than the download time from Texas or California.

Berkeley, CA: average: 499 ms, slowest: 2,345 ms, fastest: 118 ms

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Dallas, TX: average: 183 ms, slowest: 3.351 ms, fastest: 111 ms

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Herndon, VA: average: 278 ms, slowest: 917 ms, fastest: 232 ms

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Montreal, Canada: average: 414 ms, slowest: 963 ms, fastest: 359 ms

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London, UK: average: 564 ms, slowest: 832 ms, fastest: 504 ms

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Stockholm, Sweden: average: 712 ms, slowest: 938 ms, fastest: 628 ms

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go to website

DNS Response Time

The DNS response time shows how much time it takes to resolve your domain name into its IP address. A DNS resolution is usually performed for each user the first time they visit your website, and every 30 minutes thereafter. The longer it takes to respond, the longer users have to wait to display your website.

inMotion Hosting's U.S. servers are located in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The measurements were performed from several sites in the US and in Europe. Sites located geographically closer to inMotion Hosting have a lower response time. The graphs show the average response time at different hours of the day. Measures were completed every 10 minutes during several days.

Remember that you can host your domain name and hosting plans with two different companies.

Performances with inMotion Hosting DNS Servers

inMotion Hosting has quite a low DNS response time from both North America and Europe. But the response time fluctuates a lot during the day.

Berkeley, CA: average: 219 ms, slowest: 1,295 ms, fastest: 74 ms

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Dallas, TX: average: 313 ms, slowest: 1,583 ms, fastest: 37 ms

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Herndon, VA: average: 313 ms, slowest: 2,632 ms, fastest: 25 ms

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Montreal, Canada: average: 265 ms, slowest: 1,774 ms, fastest: 98 ms

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London, UK: average: 554 ms, slowest: 2,527 ms, fastest: 85 ms

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Stockholm, Sweden: average: 326 ms, slowest: 3,100 ms, fastest: 182 ms

go to website

JustHost offers 2 unlimited plans from $3.95/month to $11.95/month. The web hosting company is based of Chicago, Illinois. It ranks 15th in popularity.

A few web hosting companies offer advertising credits on different networks. Be warned: these credits usually apply to new accounts only. If you already have an advertising account with on of these networks, you will not be able to use the credits.

These credits allow you place ads on website to attracts vistiors to your website. The most well known network is Adwords from Google. You can bid on keywords to display your ads on the Google search engine, or on websites related to those keywords.

Google Adwords

Adwords is the most popular advertising program. It allows you to place your ads on the search engine, or on websites that applied to the Adsense program.

Being the most popular program means being the most competitive as well: keywords are more expensive since your are competing with more people.

Reminder: Google Adwords credits apply to new accounts only.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo Search Marketing is a cheaper alternative to Google Adwords. Keywords are less expensive, so it is cheaper to get on the first page of the Yahoo search engine. If your plan does not include credits for Yahoo, you can use this special offer:

Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.

Reminder:Yahoo Search Marketing credits apply to new accounts only.

Microsoft Adcenter

Microsoft Adcenter comes behind Yahoo and Google. Like Yahoo Search Marketing, it is a more affordable advertising network than Adwords.

Reminder: Microsoft Adcenter credits apply to new accounts only.

Facebook Ad

Facebook, the famous social network, lets you target precisely a demography: age, sex, occupation, marital status, etc. It is a powerful tool if you know your audience target very well.

Reminder: Facebook Ad credits apply to new accounts only.

Citysearch Ad Center

Citysearch targets local businesses: restaurants, hotels, night clubs, etc.

Reminder: Citysearch Ad Center credits apply to new accounts only.

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DNS Response Time

The DNS response time shows how much time it takes to resolve your domain name into its IP address. A DNS resolution is usually performed for each user the first time they visit your website, and every 30 minutes thereafter. The longer it takes to respond, the longer users have to wait to display your website.

1&1's U.S. servers are located in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The measurements were performed from several sites in the US and in Europe. Sites located geographically closer to 1&1 have a lower response time. The graphs show the average response time at different hours of the day. Measures were completed every 10 minutes during several days.

Remember that you can host your domain name and hosting plans with two different companies.

Performances with 1&1 DNS Servers

1&1 has a low DNS response time from both North America and Europe. But the response time fluctuates a lot during the day.

Berkeley, CA: average: 224 ms, slowest: 1,492 ms, fastest: 108 ms

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Montreal, Canada: average: 108 ms, slowest: 1,509 ms, fastest: 38 ms

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London, UK: average: 157 ms, slowest: 1,022 ms, fastest: 133 ms

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Super Green Hosting offers 1 plan from from $3.95/month to $7.95/month. The web hosting company is based of Chicago, Illinois. It ranks 33th in popularity.

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To build a dynamic website, you need a server-side programming language. There are many languages to choose from, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. To give you an example of their syntax, here’s the classical "Hello World" program for each of them.

PHP

PHP is now arguably the most popular language for web applications. It has a small learning curve, and is well suited for small and quick projects.

PHP is offered on virtually all hosting plans. The most common versions are PHP 4 and 5. If you are starting a new project, you should use the latest version.

<h1><?php echo 'Hello, world!'; ?></h1>

Perl

Perl was the most popular language for the Web before PHP. It still has a larger set of libraries. It remains a good choice for developing a new Web application today.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "<h1>Hello, world!</h1>\n";

Ruby

Ruby is becoming more and more popular for Web applications thanks to its framework Ruby on Rails, known as RoR. However, Ruby and Ruby on Rails are two different features. Some web hosting plans include Ruby (served as CGI), but not Ruby on Rails.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

puts "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
puts "<h1>Hello, world!</h1>\n";

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails has been praised as a new development paradigm for Web applications. Ruby itself is a nice language to work with. If you want to deploy an application using Ruby on Rails, make sure that your plan includes Ruby on Rails - and not just Ruby.

class HelloController < ApplicationController  
	def index  
	render_text "<h1>Hello, world!</h1>\n";	
	end
 end  

Python

Like Ruby, Python is a relatively new comer. The language is more modern than Perl, especially for object-oriented programmation. This language is a good candidate if you want to learn a new language.

#!/usr/bin/env python

print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n"
print "<h1>Hello, world!</h1>\n";	

Java

Java, developed by Sun, is mainly used for large scale applications. Its target is the enterprise market. Only a few web hosting companies offer Java, since it requires more resources for small projects.

class helloworld
{  
	public static void main(String args[])
	{
		System.out.println("Content-type: text/html\n\n");
		System.out.println("<h1>Hello, world!</h1>");
	}
}

Server Side Includes (SSI)

Server Side Includes are not exactly a programming language, but rather a set of commands. Server Side Include, as their name suggests, are a tool used to easily add external files inside an HTML page

They are particularly useful for keeping the header and/or footer of a website identical. Using SSI, you can modify a single file to change the footer/header on all pages.

<!--#include virtual="/path/file.html" -->

FrontPage Extensions

FrontPage from Microsoft used to be a very popular software to build websites. With the release of Office 12, Microsoft abandoned FrontPage.

FrontPage comes wit a set of proprietary built-in scripts (hit counters, data collection, etc.) to create dynamic sites. These scripts require Frontpage extensions on the server to run. You need the FrontPage extensions on your web hosting plans only if you make use of these scripts. Otherwise you can use Frontapge and deploy your web site on any plan.

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DNS Response Time

The DNS response time shows how much time it takes to resolve your domain name into its IP address. A DNS resolution is usually performed for each user the first time they visit your website, and every 30 minutes thereafter. The longer it takes to respond, the longer users have to wait to display your website.

GoDaddy's U.S. servers are located in Scottsdale, Arizona. The measurements were performed from several sites in the US and in Europe. Sites located geographically closer to Godaddy have a lower response time. The graphs show the average response time at different hours of the day. Measures were completed every 10 minutes during several days.

Remember that you can host your domain name and hosting plans with two different companies.

Performances with Godaddy DNS Servers

GoDaddy is present in both North American and Europe. Their global presence means a global server architecture that achieves low latency from both continents.

Their DNS response time is about the same throughout the day, which means they have enough server capacity to absorb internet traffic at rush hour.

GoDaddy offers both great prices for domain names, and a fast global server architecture with a low response time.

Berkeley, CA: average: 147 ms, slowest: 213 ms, fastest: 89 ms

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Dallas, TX: average: 40 ms, slowest: 60 ms, fastest: 35 ms

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Montreal, Canada: average: 99 ms, slowest: 109 ms, fastest: 90 ms

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London, UK: average: 90 ms, slowest: 127 ms, fastest: 84 ms

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Stockholm, Sweden: average: 200 ms, slowest: 380 ms, fastest: 174 ms

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You have just finished your website, and you would like other people to know about it. One way to quickly present your website to the world is to advertise it. This is the fastest way to attract your first visitors. You won't need to advertise much once when your website appears on the first page of search engines for containing the right keywords or when enough websites links to your website. You can also reduce advertising when many people follow your blog.

I have used the following programs to advertise Reviews-Web-Hosting:

• Google Adsense
• Yahoo Search Marketing (get $25 credit)
• Facebook Ads
• Stumble Upon
• Press Release

Pay per Click, Pay per Impression.

You can pay foryour ads by the number of impressions or the number of clicks. In both casea, your cost is defined as CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Mili. or cost per thousands of impressions). I highly recommend beginning with a payment for number of clicks because it is hard to evaluate your CPM. Some ads that I run have a CPM of $0.07 while others are $0.22. Don't be surprised if thousands of impressions bring you just one click on average. By using a CPC, you have a budget so you know how many people visit your website.

All of the programs I compare are based on Pay per Click.

Bounce Rate

How do you measure the success of a campaign? If you sell items on your website, it is easy: How many people bought something on your website after clicking on an ad? If you don't sell items on your website, the measure can be how many users browse your website and visit at least one more page. Website statistics tools such as Google Analytics can tell you both. They can show you the bounce rate per referral site which is the percentage of people who landed on your website and left immediately.

With this data, you can calculate your cost of acquisition: how much does it cost you to attract one customer or an interested user to your site. The formula is simple: CPC / (1 - Bounce Rate). If I pay $0.95 for my ad, and the bounce rate is 75% (75% of the clickers leave, 2%5 buy something or browse the site), my cost of acquisition is $0.95 / (1 - 0.75) = $3.80. This is the real cost of my advertising: $3.80 per "successful" click.

Bounce rate data from Google Analytics

Google Adsense & Yahoo Search Marketing

Both programs work the same way. First, you bid on keywords to display an ad. Then, you can choose whether to display your ads on the Google/Yahoo search engine or on other websites that display ads from these two vendors. For example, you can bid $0.95 for the keywords "web hosting reviews" and "web hosting plans." This means:

• I want my ad to appear when a user search includes "web hosting reviews" or "web hosting plans"
• If a user click on my ad, I will pay $0.95

Choosing the right keywords at the right price can be tricky at first. If you bid too low, your ad will never be displayed. If you bid too high, you are overpaying to be number one on the search engines. You need to keep a couple of things in mind:

• Choose very specific keywords; you will keep your bids low and ensure an often display of your site.
• Most users set up a daily budget. You may get lower prices on keywords late at night when everyone's budget has been reached.
• You associate different ads with different keywords.

Both programs will give you information on your ads after a couple of hours or days. The information will contain the following:

1. minimum price to appear in the top 5
2. average position of your ad with your current bid
3. number of displays
4. number of clicks

You need to keep an eye on these parameters continuously to get the best for your dollar. If your position is always 1 or 2, you are overpaying so it is best to lower your bid. Ideally, you want to target position number 3 to be in a good position for a low price. If your ratio click/display is low, your ads are either not attractive enough, or you are targeting the wrong keywords. Also, if you already appear in the top 3 or 5 in the search results, you do not need to advertise. Users will probably click on your website for free.

Yahoo and Google offer practically the same tools and provide the same the same information about your campaign. However, Google is by far the leader, which can be a disadvantage for you. More people use Adsense so there are more bidders for your keywordswhich raise the price and there are more ads to display per search (an even higher price!). You can see it for your self. Make the same search in Google and Yahoo and see how many ads are displayed on the right. For my keywords, Yahoo is half to a third of the price from Google to be displayed in the top 3.

The second advantage of Yahoo is that it is less restrictive in using brands as keywords or in your ad. If you have a website about product reviews, fan groups, discounts, etc., chances are that you would like to mention the corresponding brands in your ads. Google will not let you do that, but Yahoo will.To advertise Reviews-Web-Hosting to people looking for a specific company, I have to use Yahoo Search Marketing.

You might be able to use Google and still keep a low price for your bid. Most people have a daily budget (I encourage you to do the same to avoid any bad surprise). After spending a certain amount of money within 24 hours, the bidder stops displaying his ad to keep his budget under control. Some keywords are entered millions of times per day on Google. After some time, most bidders may have reached their daily limit for these words. Then, you can display your ads for a much smaller price.

Facebook Ads

Unlike Adsense and Search Marketing, this program is not associated with an active search from the user. They are more like billboards, or ads in news paper, they appear in front of you whether you are interested in the subject or not. So the number of impressions per click is a lot higher and the bounce rate is usually a lot higher too.

With Facebook Ads, you do not bid on keywords, but on a target such as age, sex, marital status, etc. In my experience, the bids are about the same price as Yahoo Search Marketing, but the bounce rate is much higher (93% versus 63%). This is because I haven't figured out who is my main audience. You might receive a much better bounce rate if you know your audience well.

Facebook Ads campaign

Stumble Upon

Stumble Upon defines itself as "Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web". Like Digg or Reddit, users share what they find on the web.

Stumble Upon is similar to Facebook Ads in the sense hat you target a demography. You can choose the sex, age, location of the users, and a category. However, the advertising is forced on the user every few pages; users have to click on a website. You need to grab their attention quickly to prevent them from simply getting to the next website on their list. The bounce rate for my site was 93%! But Stumble Upon is very cheap: I paid only $0.05 per user and maxed out my daily budget. If your website has the cool factor that Stumble Upon users expect, this is the most affordable advertising program.

Stumble Upon campaign statistics

Press Release

I know a lot of people think press releases are a thing of the past and just a waste of money. However, I don't agree. A press release allows you to reach a broader audience. It also helps to be picked up by Google Alerts. A professionally-written press release such as ours cost about $80. A good distribution is around $80 as well. Don't overlook the distribution: your press release is worthless if nobody sees it.

My Personal Experience

Your bounce rate can become much better by optimizing your keywords, demographic target, and ad content as you acquire more data on who is interested on your website. Here are the results I got for this site:

• Google Adsense: 65%
• Yahoo Search Marketing: 63%
• Facebook Ads: 93%
• Stumble Upon: 91%
• Press release: 63 %
• All sources: 83%

I have a very low budget, so I am more concerned about my cost per acquisition (getting the most number of clicks with a low bounce rate) than by the number of clicks I get. I started with Google, but I now prefer Yahoo. With cheaper keywords and the option to include web hosting company names (which is not allowed by Adsense), I get a lower price and a lower bounce rate.

Globat ofers 2 plans from $4.44/month to $19.95/month with a 12-month engagement, no setup fee. The web hosting company is based of Burlington, Massachusetts. It ranks 20th in popularity.

You may have noticed a few changes to the design of Reviews-Web-Hosting. Thanks to your feedback, we have made a number of improvements:

• new home page: it highlights the different sections of the website
• more pictures: company logos, more illustrations in the articles. This should make the website more fun and more attractive
• comments in the articles: you can now add comments to most articles and interact directly with us. Your feedback is always appreciated.
• faster website: we have trimmed down pages to make them faster to load
• small layout changes here and there

Web hosting companies commonly offer a variety of software that you can install and use for free as part of your hosting plan. How do you choose the one you need? Here is an overview of the categories of software commonly included with Web hosting plans, including the most popular software.

Installable Software

Many Web hosting companies have a set of applications that you can easily install on your Web hosting account. You are free to install other compatible software, or a different version of programs offered by your hosting company. However, this usually requires more skill, and most companies will not provide support for programs that you install yourself. A few Web hosting companies offer their own proprietary software as part of a Web hosting plan.

The following programs are mostly written in PHP, a programming language available on all plans. They are open-source applications, meaning that anyone can use them, free of charge.

Blog

A blog allows you to quickly write and publish short articles, news items, and images. You can easily interact with your audience by letting them post comments on your blog. Blogs include an RSS feed which readers can subscribe to, and which notifies them automatically of any new blog post.

These are the most common software programs for publishing blogs:

Wordpress

One of the three most popular blog platforms. Wordpress lets you host your blog with their free hosting service, or on your own Web site. There are a lot of plug-ins that add additional features to Wordpress.

b2evolution

b2evolution supports multiple authors and multiple blogs with one installation. You can find a detailed list of features here.

LifeType

LifeType also supports multiple authors and multiple blogs with one installation. You can find a detailed list of features here.

Serendipity

Serendipity is one of the easiest to use. You can find a detailed list of features here.

Forums

A blog allows you to communicate with your visitors, while a forum lets your users communicate among themselves. Forums can be moderated.

The most common forum software offered are as follows:

phpBB

phpBB is by far the most popular forum software. It is also famous for requiring more resources from the server than the alternatives. You can find a detailed list of features here.

SMF (Simple Machines Forum)

SMF is a lighter alternative to phpBB. You can find a detailed list of features here.

Vanilla Forum

Vanilla Forum supports multiple languages.

Administration

Administrations software helps you manage your databases, table indexes, etc.

The most popular administration software programs are:

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is the standard application to manage MySQL databases.

paFileDB

This is an older, now obsolete alternative to phpMyAdmin.

Advertising

Only a few plans offer advertising software:

Noah's Classifieds

This software lets you create classified listings. You can find a detailed list of features here.

OpenX (formerly phpAdsNew)

OpenX will handle your ads.

E-commerce

If you sell goods or services on your website, you will need shopping cart software, or a full ready-to-use online store.

The most common e-commerce applications are:

osCommerce

This is the most popular online store application. You can customize it with thousands of free add-ons. To see it in action, look at the live demo here.

AgoraCart Shopping Cart

If you just need a shopping cart, AgoraCart is easier to manage than osCommerce. The list of features is here.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is another easy-to-use shopping cart program.

phpCOIN

phpCOIN stands for Clients, Orders, Invoices, and Notes. Originally designed for Web hosting resellers, it can now be used for any type of business.

Content Management System (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) is a powerful application that allows you to create a dynamic website without any knowledge of HTML, Javascript or PHP. A CMS provides several applications which are integrated and interdependent. You can use all of them, or just a few of them:

• a wiki
• a blog
• a forums

A CMS can be a great tool to easily manage an entire website. The user communities of the most popular CMS design add-ons that greatly expand their features.

The best known CMS are the following:

Drupal

This is currently the most popular CMS, and one of the first.

Joomla

Joomla is a relatively new player, but its user base has expanded very quickly.

Mambo

Mambo is another easy-to-use CMS.

PHP-Nuke

Another popular CMS.

The best way to choose which CMS would be best for your site is to test them. opensourceCMS has hundreds of CMS already installed that you can try for free without having to install them.

Project Management

Project management systems have a wide array of features, from bug tracking systems to a collaboration tools. They are aimed at small or medium businesses to coordinate the work of a team.

PHProjekt

PHProjekt is a groupware, a tool to coordinate a group or a community: calendar, events, file sharing, etc. The list of features is available here.

Mantis

Mantis is a bug tracking system. It can be used as a more generic ticketing system for doing customer support.

dotProject

dotProject is a project and task management system. You can try a live demo of the program here.

Image Gallery

Using image gallery tools, you can easily display photographs or artwork on your Web site. They can be your own photos, or your users' pictures that they want to share with the world.

Coppermine Photo Gallery

Coppermine is the most popular photo gallery software. You can check out demos on their website.

Gallery

Show off your photos in one or more albums using Gallery. The list of features is available here.

4images

This is another image gallery management system. The list of features is available here.

Social Network

A wiki is a collection of Web pages which can be accessed and modified by anyone using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to share frequently updated information.. The most well-known example of a wiki is Wikipedia. You can use a wiki to build an entire website, or use a Content Management System if you need a dynamic site.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is the wiki software that powers Wikipedia.

pmWiki

This is a simple wiki. The list of features is available here.

Twiki

Twiki is a modern-looking wiki. The list of features is available on the home page.

Other Software

Web hosting companies can offer more than 100 applications, not all of them are always useful. The other most popular software are the following:

Site builder

This application is an easy way to quickly create a few static pages from a template. However, this is not as powerful as a wiki or Content Management System.

Guestbook

Having a guestbook, where visitors could write down their comments about the site, was very popular early in the Web's history. Now, they're considered outdated, and attract too much spam.

phpMyVisites

phpMyVisites tracks Web statistics. This tool doesn't offer much more than the standard statistics already provided by most Web hosting companies.

Find the web hosting plan that YOU need

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Reviews-Web-Hosting (available online at http://www.reviews-web-hosting.com) helps users sift through the thousands of web hosting offers that are available today. The web site reviews over 35 web hosting companies, over 90 plans, and over 250 web hosting offers. In each plan, Reviews-Web-Hosting analyzes a huge number of parameters, including the true cost of the hosting service.

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The web site's reviews, in addition, are comprehensive and detailed, going over not only basics like disk space, monthly transfer size and webmail, but also the nitty-gritty like forums software, Adwords credits and guaranteed uptime. With its extensive archive of articles, Reviews-Web-Hosting also functions as a resource of materials for both beginners and advanced users.

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Get a clear explanation of the technical terms used to describe e-mail features: PGP/GPG encryption, e-mail alias, e-mail forward, etc.

Emails

In addition to hosting your website, your plan should offer management of your e-mail accounts for you. This allows you to have multiple e-mail addresses with your domain name in it, such as jsobrier@www.reviews-web-hosting.com. Having an e-mail address with your domain name looks more professional, and it is easier for your visitor to communicate with you: you should use common addresses such as webmaster@your-domain.com and contact@your-domain.com.

An alternative to our hosting provider is to use Gmail for your domain, which combines the great features of Gmail and addresses with your domain name.

E-mail Account

An e-mail account allows you to send and receive e-mails to a particular address, such as john@reviews-web-hosting.com. An e-mail account corresponds to an e-mail address attached to a mailbox. A web hosting plan usually offers several (often thousands) of e-mail accounts. You can give one to each person working with you on your website, or you can use different e-mail accounts for different purposes:

• a personal address for private exchanges
• an address for sales, one for feedback, etc.
• webmaster@your-domain.net for any inquiry about your website
• etc.

If you want to use several e-mail addresses, but want all of them to go to the same mailbox, look at the e-mail aliases.

E-mail Forwards / E-mail Forward Accounts

Instead of getting a new mailbox for each e-mail account, it is possible to forward e-mail addresses to another one, either to another e-mail address from your plan, or to your existing personal account @yahoo.com or @gmail.com.

Some web hosting plans limit the number of such e-mail addresses, and count them separately from regular e-mail accounts with a mailbox as e-mail forwards.

E-mail Forwarder

Like e-mail forwards, the e-mail forwarder feature allows you to forward e-mail accounts to another e-mail address. The only difference with an e-mail forward account is that it applies to all e-mail accounts.

E-mail Alias

An e-mail alias is simply a forwarding e-mail address.

E-mail Auto-Responder

You can set-up your e-mail account to reply automatically to each e-mail when you are unavailable or on vacation.

E-mail Catch-All Address

This is a special address that receives all e-mais to your domain. You can use a catch-all address to ensure that you will get e-mails even when the sender mistype your address. But in practice, you will get a lot of spam.

E-mail Storage

Your hosting plan may limit the size of your e-mail boxes. It can be a limit per e-mail account (such as 1GB per account), or across all accounts (such as 1,000GB across all e-mail accounts).

Webmail

You can use a desktop software such as Microsoft Mail, Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird to check your e-mails. A webmail lets you check your e-mails from any computer through your web browser. You can use both your e-mail client at home with all its feature, and the webmail from other computers.

Webmail for Mobiles

Some pans offers a special version of their webmail for mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android G1/G2. You can then check your e-mails from your cell phone.

Antivirus & Antiphishing

The antivirus flags all the e-mails that contain a virus as an attachment automatically, and prevents your computer from being infected by those viruses. The antiphishing filter detects forged e-mails which claim to come from your bank or Paypal to steal your login and passwords.

E-mail PGP/GPG Encryption

The webmail can give you the option to encrypt your e-mail, so that it can only be read by your recipient, using PGP/GPG. This requires you and your recipient to have a PGP key. This is a feature for advanced users.

We make it easier to find discounts for the web hosting company you have chosen. Some of these special offers are not availble on the company website.

Find coupons, discount, or special deals.

Good Avocado is the only shared hosting company we reviewed to guarantee 100% uptime. It is also a green company powered by wind energy.

Good Avocado offers 1 plan at $4.99/month with a 24-month engagement, no setup fee, or $9.59/month with a 12-month engagement, no setup fee. The web hosting company is based in Kansas. It ranks 36th in popularity.

FatCow offers 1 plan at $5.50/month with a 12-month engagement, no setup fee. The web hosting company is based of Burlington, Massachusetts. It ranks 18th in popularity.

What is SSL? Do I need it? Get the facts about HTTP encryption.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

SSL provides data encryption and server authentication. It is used to safeguard the data transmitted between the website and the browser, and for the user to guarantee the identity of the server.

SSL used in conjunction with HTTP is called HTTPS for HTTP Secure. You should use HTTPS every time sensitive information is exchanged between your website and the user:

• login and password
• credit card number
• important information
• etc.

The padlock on the right of the address bar indicates SSL access.

SSL Certificate

SSL requires the use of an SSL certificate. The SSL certificate can be purchased from your Web hosting company, or from another company (see SSL offers).

A unique certificate has to be issued for each full domain. If you receive a certificate for https://www.reviews-web-hosting.com/, you cannot use it for https://blog.reviews-web-hosting.com/ or even for https://reviews-web-hosting.com/ (except for a wild card certificate which is more expensive). If you want to secure several domains, or different subdomains, you have to buy a different certificate for each of them.

Similar to domain names, SSL certificates are usually valid for one year, and must then be renewed yearly. However, it is possible to buy a certificate which is valid for several years..

This SSL certificate identifies online.citibank.com.

Dedicated IP Address

When you buy a shared plan, the most common and cheapest hosting plan, your are hosted on a computer along with of other websites. Because of technical restrictions, each SSL certificate requires a dedicated IP address. To secure your website, you need to buy both a SSL certificate and a dedicated IP address for your plan.

Domain Name

Domain names are used in URLs to identify a particular Web site. For example, in the URL http://www.reviews-web-hosting.com/articles/index.html, the domain name is reviews-web-hosting.com. Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain (TLD) it belongs to. There are only a limited number of TLDS. The following are examples of top level domains:

• com - Commercial business
• gov - Government agencies
• edu - Educational institutions
• org - Organizations (nonprofit)
• net - Network organizations
• us - United States

The most popular domain suffix is .com, even for non-commercial entities. Each country has it own suffix (ca for Canada, mx for Mexico, etc.). The registration of some of these suffixes is restricted, such as .gov, others are available to anybody (.net, .com. .org, etc.).

Free Domains

Some web hosting companies offer one or more free domain name registrations with their plans. If you decide to take such an offer, you should verify with the company:

• How long is it free: for the first year only, or for the duration of your plan?
• Who is the legal owner of the free domain(s): you, or the Web hosting companies?
• Can you transfer your domain name to another company at any time?

It is nice to save money by getting a free domain, but you must ensure the Web hosting company cannot use it to force you into their plan forever. For this reason, many webmasters prefer to register their domain names themselves, independently from their Web hosting plan.

Additional Domain

If you do not already own a domain name, you can buy one either with your hosting plan, or with any other registrar. You may also decide to host the same website under different domain names (see domain alias), for example http://www.reviews-web-hosting.com/ and http://www.reviews-hosting.net/ lead to the same website.

External Domains

Some Web hosting companies put restrictions of the number of domains not registered with them that point to your hosting plan. For example, if you buy your hosting plan with company Host, and ten domains names with company Domains, Host may only allow you to point five of these ten domains to your website. See also domain alias.

Subdomains

In the address http://www.reviews-web-hosting.com/, www is a subdomain. Having a subdomain in the web site address is not required, for example http://reviews-web-hosting.com/ works quite well. Subdomains are useful when a website appears accross several computers or to redirect part of the web site to a third party. Here are two examples:

• http://mail.reviews-web-hosting.com/ to redirect to a webmail
• http://blog.reviews-web-hosting.com/ to redirect to an external blog service such as Blogger or Wordpress

Most websites do not require the use of subdomains, besides the usual www always included in the web hosting plans.

Multiple Websites

In addition to having several domain names (reviews-web-hosting.com, reviews-web-hosting.net) pointing to the same Web hosting plan, you may want to display different content for each of them. A plan with multiple websites allows you to buy a single host for different websites. You do not need this feature if you want all your domain names to display the same content (see domain alias), or if you have a single domain name.

Domain Alias

Domain name aliases are additional domain names associated with your primary domain. For instance, the alias reviews-web-hosting.net redirects you to the primary domain name reviews-web-hosting.com, that is http://wwww.reviews-web-hosting.net/ which points to the same site as http://wwww.reviews-web-hosting.com/.

Domain aliases enable users to access the same Web site through a number of different addresses. For example, many companies register several similar domain names (such as common misspellings of their domain name, or different TLDs) and then use domain aliases to have all of the domain names point to the same site.

One of the best ways that you can find the right web hosting service or plan for your individual needs and requirements is to see what other people are saying by way of web hosting review comparison websites. When people find a hosting service or a hosting plan that meets their needs or exceeds their expectations, or when they find a service that disappoints them, they are going to want to spread the word. As a result, web hosting review comparison websites are regularly springing up across the world wide web to allow prospective web hosting customers to weigh the pros and cons for each web hosting company to know what they are getting into before they get there. Why jump headlong into a service contract with an unknown hosting company, when instead you can sign on the dotted line knowing that you are signing up for a sure thing?

There are different resources for web hosting review comparisons online, and you can also obtain web hosting reviews not only from personal individual users, but also business users. Some websites are designed to allow users to submit their web hosting review comparisons, so that you can get a lot of different reviews of web hosting companies and can compare and contrast them in order to get the information that you seek. More web hosting reviews will give you a lot of in depth information about the web hosting company, even sometimes more information than the hosting company will give you. If you want to know what you are getting into before signing up for a specific hosting company, then it would be wise to see what other people are saying.

If you have specific needs regarding web hosting, it would be worthwhile to see what web hosting reviews have to say about those specific features. For example, if you are looking for solid PHP support, it would be wise to see what web hosting review comparison websites are saying about the PHP support provided by different web hosting companies. Most reviewers who are as serious about PHP support as you are will likely mention whether or not they were satisfied with the level of support offered by a specific hosting company. This will indicate whether or not it is worthwhile for you to try out a certain hosting company.

If you are serious about choosing the right web hosting company, then it would be wise to use web hosting review comparison websites to your advantage. By comparing and contrasting different web hosting companies through reviews written by customers of those hosting companies, you can get a much more thorough feel for what each hosting company offers in order to make sure that you sign up for the right hosting company the first time. The more you are willing to research beforehand regarding web hosting review comparisons, the better off you will be in the long run as you will save time, money and hassle by making the right choice the first time.

Did you know you can use Gmail and keep your own domain name: name@domain.net? Don't look for it under http://mail.google.com/ (@gmail addresses only), but under http://www.google.com/apps/. You will find a lot of online applications: Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar. You can sign up for any of them, or just to Messaging, also referred as Gmail for your domain. This is not restricted to actual companies, any individual with its own domain name can register.

Like the regular Gmail, it is free and has all the great features:

• 7GB by e-mail account
• Great Webmail
• Webmail for mobile
• IMAP, IMAPS, POP3, POP3S
• Spam/Phishing/Antivirus filter
• auto-responder
• etc.

In addition to the regular Gmail features, you get:

• up to 50 users for your domain(s)
• e-mail aliases
• handle several domain names
• etc.

The paid version offers more user and more disk space (up to 25GB).

Gmail offers much more than most of the web hosting companies. They also have a good record of high availability.

A few of the benefits of using Gmail for your domains rather than your web hosting plan:

• easy transition from one web hosting company to another one: no e-mail lost, no temporary outage
• use your hosting company for what they do best: hosting web sites
• get all the features you need

I personally switched to Gmail for my domains a long time ago, and I am not going back!