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Discussion on the 10 Selected Web Hosts
Bluehost
Established in 1996, Bluehost provide hosting solutions to businesses and individuals at a rate of about 20,000 new customers each month, boasting millions of customers today. Bluehost maintain their own servers and have their own nationwide fiber network. With a 50,000-square foot headquarter office housing two secondary data centres covering 20,000 square feet of space, UPS power, diesel generators and multiple 10 gigabit fiber connections to locations worldwide, performance quality and reliability are assured. At USD4.95 a month with no hidden fees and anytime-money-back-guarantee, reliable and cost effective web host solution is within reach for the beginner and novice user to try out with confidence and peace of mind. Do check their page at www.bluehost.com to see if there are special offers today. Here are the pros and cons.
- Free domain name of your choice is included on first sign-up
- Unlimited hosting space and bandwidth
- Unlimited domain hosting and email accounts
- Comprehensive cPanel control panel with various service for ease of setup
- 24/7 phone, chat and email support
- Free site builder with templates
- Secure shell, SSL, FTP and Stats
- CGI, Ruby-on-Rails, Perl, PHP, MySQL
- Anytime money-back guarantee
- Includes $100 Google AdWords advertising offer
- only one hosting plan available, although a good balance between price and performance – one size fits all!
- Shared hosting at $4.95 per month (off normal price of $6.95 per month)
- Features and Specifications – 9/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 8/10
- Customer Service and Support – 10/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 9/10
- Overall Rating – 90% Excellent
Click here to find out more about 
Dreamhost
DreamHost offer a number of ways to host your website, depending on your need and the way your business is run. For the casual blogger, website designer, eCommerce store and small business, shared hosting provides the ideal solution with one-click software installer, advanced functionality to write your own web apps using code languages and enterprise-level reliability with 24/7 email, chat and phone support. A 100% uptime guarantee is provided even with this basic DreamHost package at USD8.95, which makes this the most ideal of web host solution so far, considering storage space, monthly bandwidth, hosted domains, email accounts and MySQL databases are unlimited! For the more serious user running websites with heavy traffic or complex applications, Virtual Private Server hosting offers dedicated resources, scalability and a high level of control with root access to virtual server, at an additional cost based on the RAM required. For even higher demands, a Dedicated Server option is available for the customer who requires his own physical server with full CPU and RAM resources at his disposal. At time of writing, a special discount off the regular price for shared hosting is offered, and a free domain name is offered. Check out their latest rates at www.dreamhost.com today.
- Flexible hosting packages and solutions for various needs – Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server
- Enterprise-Level reliability with 100% server uptime guarantee, including compensation plan for any downtime
- Unlimited hosting space and bandwidth
- Unlimited domain hosting and email accounts
- Comprehensive cPanel control panel with various service for ease of setup
- 24/7 phone, chat and email support
- One-Click software installer
- Secure shell, SSL, FTP and Stats
- CGI, Ruby-on-Rails, Perl, PHP, MySQL
- 97-day money-back guarantee
- Slightly more expensive than other web host providers for basic package, although with uptime level guarantee
- Shared hosting at $8.95 per month
- Features and Specifications – 8/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 7/10
- Customer Service and Support – 8/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 7/10
- Overall Rating – 78% Good
Click here to find out more about 
Fasthosts
Fasthosts have been delivering market-leading online services to the home, home office and SME markets since 1999. Fasthosts were ranked in the Sunday Times as one of the Fast Track Top 100 Companies. They regularly receive prestigious awards for their outstanding service, and were rated 4.5 out of 5 for their business-class email hosting services by The Independent. Some of the awards received include:
- named as Global Hosting Solutions Partner of The Year by Microsoft Worldwide 2011
- voted Best Web Host 2011 by Computer Shopper Magazine readers
- ranked Top 10 Website January to June 2011, Experian Hitwise
- rated No.1 for budget hosting and reseller hosting by leading industry news portal, Web Host Directory
- nominated by customers as the Best Web Host in the 2006 PC Pro Magazine Awards
Fasthosts have with them over 13 years of hosting experience since 1999, with secure wholly-owned data centres based in the UK, managed and maintained by onsite engineers working 24/7. If your business is based predominantly in the UK, Fasthosts can be considered as a suitable choice for a web host provider for your business. Find out more at www.fasthosts.co.uk.
- Three different hosting packages to suit for various needs – Business Bronze, Business Silver and Business Gold
- Provides Cloud Storage Solutions, Virtual Servers, and Dedicated Servers on top of regular hosting service
- Packages vary from 50GB disk space for the simple blogs to unlimited disk space for more complex websites with eCommerce transactions
- Includes free first .uk domain name
- Unlimited domain hosting and email accounts
- Comprehensive cPanel control panel with various service for ease of setup
- 24/7 phone support served by very friendly CS staff as reported by customers
- One-Click software installer
- Secure shell, SSL, FTP and Stats
- Includes 10-page and 25-page SiteBuilder
- Unlimited bandwidth and website traffic
- No mention of money-back guarantee but hosting package comes with 50% discount for the first 3 months, at time of writing
- Only one website hosted for basic Business Bronze package, and 2 and 3 websites for Business Silver and Business Gold respectively
- Business Silver Web Hosting Plan at £3.49 per month
- Features and Specifications – 8/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 8/10
- Customer Service and Support – 8/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 4/10
- Overall Rating – 74% Average
Click here to find out more about 
FatCow
FatCow were established in 1998 with the objective of providing simpler and more customer-friendly approach to web hosting, without the techno babble and confusing pricing scheme. To achieve that, FatCow created the one plan one price package for the personal or small business to set up a web presence fast. Today, FatCow still pride themselves as the ideal provider of web host solutions for the small to medium-sized business and individual. If you’re a supporter of the environment and renewable energy utilisation, you will be pleased to know that FatCow have recently purchased wind-generated renewable energy certificates to offset 100% of the electricity used in their web hosting services. At time of writing, there is a special introductory rate for new sign-ups. Check out their latest offerings and price at www.fatcow.com.
- Robust all-in-one hosting solution for long-term business and personal site management.
- Includes point-and-click site building tools to create professional-looking websites without programming experience and HTML knowledge.
- Integrated Google Webmaster Tools to provide you detailed reports about your site’s visibility.
- Easy setup of CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, phpBB etc.
- Comprehensive cPanel control panel with various service for ease of setup.
- 24/7 customer support via phone, email and online chat.
- PHP support, CGI directory, MySQL databases, Python, Perl, Ruby-on-Rails, script library etc.
- Install Wizards for adding a variety of applications such as photo galleries and blogging software to your website.
- Offer a variety of eCommerce tools including ShopSite online store, shopping carts, catalogues with coupon and sale options, PayPal integration, PowerPay, Shared SSL, and ability for online credit card transactions.
- Free Yellowpages.com listing, Search Engine Marketing and $50 Social Networking Ad Credits.
- Unlimited domains, FTP users and sub-users.
- Almost unlimited disk space and bandwidth (see disclaimer in Cons List).
- Almost unlimited POP email accounts (see disclaimer in Cons List).
- While no limits are set for disk space and bandwidth and are usually more than enough for the normal user, a constraint is placed on accounts which fall outside of this normal range. These are usually sites which serve as online storage and file sharing. I believe this is a fair policy for the price you are paying, but I will list it under cons anyway for your attention. If you are planning to run such high traffic sites, this plan will not be suitable for you. A 48-hour notice is served to users to make adjustments for any abnormal disk space and bandwidth utilisation.
- FatCow allow their hosting customers to create practically unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts. However, each email account and mailbox is capped at a maximum of 250MB or 10,000 emails, whichever comes first.
- 30-day money-back guarantee is a shorter period compared to most other web host providers.
- The Original FatCow Plan at $4.10 per month
- Features and Specifications – 9/10
- Performance and Uptime – 7/10
- Pricing and Value – 7/10
- Customer Service and Support – 6/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 7/10
- Overall Rating – 72% Average
Click here to find out more about 
Go Daddy
I remember over 10 years ago when Go Daddy was the place to go when you wanted to register a domain name, and with more than 55 million domain names and growing under their management, it is not surprising to learn that they are still the world’s largest domain name registrar. With registration, renewal and transfer of domain name at the rate of more than one every second, every day, they are also the world’s largest mass-market web host provider by annual revenue. What’s more important is that they are the largest web host provider of secure websites and net-new SSL certificates in the world. Go Daddy was founded in 1997, operated by more than 3,400 employees and 600 in-house developers. You would likely have come across their ads in computer and internet magazines, but in any case, do check their latest rates and offerings at www.godaddy.com.
- Flexible hosting packages and solutions for various needs – Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server
- Enterprise-Level reliability with 100% server uptime guarantee, including compensation plan for any downtime
- Unlimited bandwidth.
- 3 flexible hosting plans – Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate.
- Depending on hosting plan, database number varies from 10 to unlimited.
- Depending on hosting plan, email addresses varies from 100 to unlimited.
- Free domain name included with any annual plan.
- Premium DNS, SSL Certificate and Malware Scanner included with top hosting plan.
- 24/7 support via web, phone, email and Twitter.
- One-Click software installer for Zen Cart, WordPress, Joomla, Gallery, Drupal, SimpleMachines etc.
- 99.9% hosted site uptime guarantee.
- Award-winning data centre.
- Also offer advanced hosting – Virtual Private Server, Dedicated Server and Reseller Hosting.
- Include DudaMobile-powered mobile site converter which automatically converts and optimizes your site for the most popular smartphones – iPhone, Android, BlackBerry etc.
- Disk space for most basic plan capped at 100GB, but could otherwise be offered with unlimited space to keep up with the competition.
- Although most likely included, cPanel or Control Panel not stated in the list of features at time of writing.
- Deluxe Shared Hosting Plan at $4.49 per month
- Features and Specifications – 7/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 7/10
- Customer Service and Support – 8/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 7/10
- Overall Rating – 76% Good
Click here to find out more about 
HostGator
HostGator were established in 2002 and currently host over 9 million domains with clients from over 200 countries internationally. Their headquarters is located in Houston, Texas, and the company is run by over 750 employees. Like Fasthosts, HostGator have also received numerous awards in their last 10 years of service, some of which are:
Awards:
- DailyHostNews February 2013 Editor’s Choice Award
- Blogging.org No.1 Host for Bloggers
- WordPress Hosting Review 2011 and 2012 Best Host
- Joomla Hosting Review 2011 and 2012 Best Host
- 2011 Best Small Business Hosting
- 2011 Best Reseller Web Hosting by WebHostingGeeks.com
- 2011 FindMyHost Editor’s Choice Award
- No.1 Recommended Most Popular Host for 2009, 2010 and 2011 by HostingCoupons.org
- Websitehosting.com Best Web Host Winner
HostGator also provide users with access to their community forum board, so that information and knowledge can be exchanged and shared in a free community environment. Their online support portal also contains over 500 video tutorial and over 680 help articles so that users get instant assistance at their own time. HostGator is worth a look at www.hostgator.com.
- 3 Flexible shared hosting plans – Hatchling Plan, Baby Plan, and Business Plan
- Also provide Virtual Private Server, Dedicated Server and Reseller Hosting
- cPanel for site hosting management and control
- Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
- Unlimited subdomain, FTP accounts and POP3 email accounts with SMTP
- Includes free BaseKit SiteBuilder, Website Building Tools, website transfer, domain transfer, MySQL transfer, script transfer
- 4,500 free website templates and 75 free open-source scripts instantly installed with a few clicks
- 24/7 award-winning premium phone, chat and email support
- One-Click software installer for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc
- Free eCommerce platform Magneto hosting for your own online store
- Wiki hosting with MediaWiki
- Secure shell, SSL, FTP and Stats
- CGI, Fast CGI, Ruby-on-Rails, Perl, Python, SSI, PHP, MySQL
- SSH Access and Cron Job scheduling
- 24/7 server monitoring and automatic weekly off-site data backups
- No contract with 45-day money back guarantee
- Includes $100 Google AdWords advertising offer
- First free domain name not included, which is provided by most competitor web host provider
- .com name registration of $12.95 per year is also higher than most other registrars
- Baby Plan at $6.36 per month
- Features and Specifications – 9/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 6/10
- Customer Service and Support – 8/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 8/10
- Overall Rating – 80% Good
Click here to find out more about 
Media Temple
Media Temple began operations in 1998, with focus in offering premium professional web host service at a competitive price. Their customers range from top bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises such as Adidas, Adobe, CBS, L’Oréal Paris, NBC Universal, Red Bull, Samsung, Sony, Starbucks, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Warner Bros. As of April 2013, they serve over 125,000 customers in 100 countries, hosting over 700,000 domains internationally. Media Temple have been recognised as one of the fastest growing companies in North America, with 200 dedicated US-based employees to help run the operation. Visit www.mediatemple.net today to check out details on their premium plans and enterprise-level features and services.
- Shared hosting plan Virb hosts unlimited media galleries, blogs, stores and other eCommerce and online options
- Cloud hosting for fast, reliable and secure hosting service from any location
- Dozens of customisable themes specially pre-coded to work with different screen size and resolutions – for desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile phone
- Built-in search engine optimization and integration with Google Tools and social media networks
- Include 10-day free trial without credit card sign-up
- Provide Virtual Private Server, Grid, and Cloud hosting plans
- Highly scalable specifications depending on user demand – offering flexibility
- Premium plans run exclusively on HP Proliant servers with RAID-10 SAS drives and efficient virtualisation
- Unlimited hosting space and bandwidth
- Unlimited domain hosting and email accounts
- Plesk Control Panel for powerful control of site management
- 24/7 Skype, phone, Twitter and email support by trained engineers, not salespersons
- 7- to 30-day money-back guarantee for advanced server options
- More expensive than other web host providers reviewed here due to premium features, even with basic plan. Not for the casual blogger
- No mention of expected 99.9% or 100% server uptime guarantee, although servers are rated at RAID-10 protection
- No money back guarantee for shared hosting
- Virb at $10 per month, with free 10-day trial
- Features and Specifications – 9/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 4/10
- Customer Service and Support – 9/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 8/10
- Overall Rating – 78% Good
Click here to find out more about 
RSHosting
RSHosting were established in 2003 and specialise in secure and reliable web hosting services with dedicated servers physically hosted in the United States and the United Kingdom. They are not tied to one particular data centre, and hence are able to offer customers with redundancy and support services on multiple networks. RSHosting claim to emphasize on performance and place it before profit, and their server performance and loads are continually monitored and upgraded upon demand. Websites are hosted on high-performance Intel Quad Core servers connected to the web with the fastest connectivity of dedicated 1000 Mbps uplink. With cheap and affordable hosting plans, RSHosting is ideal for hobby sites, eCommerce business websites and personal blogs. Whilst checking their site, I was prompted to initiate a chat with customer service representative for support. Take a look at their site at www.rshosting.co.uk for current features.
- Multiple hosting with various platforms based on cPanel or Windows – Starter, Intermediate, Expert and E-Commerce – varying from $1.25 to $6.99 monthly.
- Enterprise-Level reliability with 100% server uptime guarantee, including compensation plan for any downtime
- Guaranteed 99.9% server uptime and 100% SLA network uptime.
- Unlimited domains and email accounts.
- Unlimited MySQL databases.
- Reseller web hosting, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server hosting options.
- Cloud server storage on cloud grids located in US- and UK-based data centres.
- Comprehensive cPanel for site management and control.
- Knowledgebase and forum for shared resources and knowledge.
- RapidSSL and GeoTrust SSL Certificates for site security.
- Limited disk space from 500MB to 20GB depending on hosting plan.
- Limited bandwidth from 5GB to 100GB depending on hosting plan.
- 24/7 support listed only for live chat. Email and phone were not claimed to be 24/7.
- No mention of money back guarantee.
- Expert US Datacenter cPanel at $3.75 per month
- Features and Specifications – 8/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 7/10
- Customer Service and Support – 10/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 9/10
- Overall Rating – 86% Excellent
Click here to find out more about 
123-reg
123-reg are an integral part of the Host Europe Group, the largest privately-owned hosting company in Europe, and have registered over 3 million domain names and currently host over 1.4 million websites making them the largest domain provider in the UK since its inception in 2001. 123-reg aim to make website creation simple and their products are geared to support the novice user as well as the more internet savvy customer. With an eco-friendly data centre located in the UK, their facility is run by onsite experts 24/7 every day of the year. Some of the awards which they have won include:
- Most Popular Domain Name Provider February 2012 by DomainsDir.co.uk
- Top Pick Web Hosts 2012 by Web Hosting Search
- Best Small Business Domain Registration 2011
- Best Small Businness Service Provider 2010
- Best Domain Registrar 2008 by HostReview
- No.1 Budget Hosting by WebHost Directory
123-reg make it easy for anyone, especially the beginner, to set up an online presence, simply by choosing your skill level at the start. Customers can choose from Beginner, Business and Advanced options, and then select the follow-up product that aids in the website creation. Nevertheless, conventional shared hosting plans are also available, ranging from Starter and Business to Unlimited. Take a look at www.123-reg.co.uk to get an understanding of this.
- Flexible hosting packages and solutions for various needs – Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server
- Enterprise-Level reliability with 100% server uptime guarantee, including compensation plan for any downtime
- 500MB to unlimited disk space depending on hosting plan
- Unlimited bandwidth for all hosting plans
- Unlimited domain hosting for all hosting plans
- 100 to unlimited mailboxes depending on hosting plan
- Provide Virtual Private Server, Dedicated Server, and Cloud hosting solutions
- Plans include free .co.uk domain name – up to 3 for Unlimited hosting plan
- Comprehensive cPanel control panel with various service for ease of setup
- 24/7 phone, chat and email support
- One-Click software installer to create blogs, photo galleries, forums etc.
- InstantTraffic Search Engine Optimisation options at additional cost for guaranteed Google listing, submission to up to 400 search engines, targeted keyword research, and dynamic website optimiser
- Various SSL certificate packages, including 123-SSL, Domain SSL, Organisational SSL, and Estended SSL
- Includes £75 Google AdWords advertising offer
- Free domain name is .co.uk instead of .com as offered by most other web host providers
- Basic hosting plan comes with very limited features
- Basic hosting plan does not support database-driven site and hence is not suitable for blogs, forums, and installation of content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla.
- No support for customised programming languages and scripts such as CGI, Ruby-on-Rails, Perl, Python etc.
- Phone and live chat support is UK-based on not 24/7 at time of writing – Monday to Friday between 9.00 am and 7.00 pm
- InstantTraffic SEO is not available with 123-reg eCommerce packages at time of writing
- Business Package at £4.99 per month
- Features and Specifications – 7/10
- Performance and Uptime – 9/10
- Pricing and Value – 6/10
- Customer Service and Support – 10/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 9/10
- Overall Rating – 82% Good
Click here to find out more about 
1&1
1&1 was established in 1988 and is one of the largest web host provider in the world, handling over 10 million customers and about 11 million domain names. When I first wanted to get online and sign up with a web host provider, I looked to 1&1 as they had heavy advertising that graced the inside front and back cover of magazines related to computing and the internet. I was somewhat disappointed that I was not able to sign up for an account, and for the life of me, I cannot remember what the exact reason was. Nevertheless, that does not mean that 1&1 is unfavourable, and they do have a wide customer base that speaks of their popularity. However, a quick search online will reveal many negative reviews and feedback about this company, so if you like the popularity but don’t mind the flak, register at your discretion. Depending on whether you’re based in the US or the UK, go to www.1and1.com (US) or www.1and1.co.uk (UK) to find out more.
- Domain name starting at $0.99 on the first year at time of writing, but most other web host providers are providing this for free
- Unlimited pages and bandwidth (traffic)
- Easy website builder in 4 steps for the novice user
- Multiple hosting packages from Personal and Business to Servers and eCommerce to suit various user requirements
- High-performance US data centres for Virtual, Cloud and Dedicated servers
- Server monitoring app for Android, iOS and Symbian
- Search Engine Marketing as a paid service (free 30-day trial)
- Only 5 subdomains
- Email account with only 2GB of space
- Standard package with reduced performance and below industry standard features
- Only 30-day money back guarantee
- Poor phone support as reported by many customers
- Generally negative feedback provided by previous and existing customers
- Unlimited hosting plan from $3.99 per month depending on term
- Features and Specifications – 8/10
- Performance and Uptime – 5/10
- Pricing and Value – 7/10
- Customer Service and Support – 2/10
- Customer Feedback and Opinion – 3/10
- Overall Rating – 50% Poor
Click here to find out more about 
Conclusions and Recommendations – The Good
From the ratings and reviews above, the recommended top web host providers for US-based web host providers in order of descending ranking are:
| RANKING | US-BASED WEB HOST PROVIDER | RATING | LINK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
90% | www.bluehost.com |
| 2 |  |
80% | www.hostgator.com |
| 3 |  |
78% | www.dreamhost.com |
| 3 |  |
78% | www.mediatemple.net |
If your business is based predominantly in the UK, you may still use one of the US-based web host providers above, but you may want to opt for a UK-based web host provider instead for better accessibility and search engine rankings. The top three UK-based web host providers based on the reviews, ratings and research in this article are:
| RANKING | UK-BASED WEB HOST PROVIDER | RATING | LINK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
86% | www.rshosting.com |
| 2 |  |
82% | www.123-reg.co.uk |
| 3 |  |
74% | www.fasthosts.co.uk |
The Bad and The Ugly…
Based on reviews and overall rating, the web host provider to avoid is 1&1. Despite the heavy advertising on inside magazine covers and listing of promising features, they have failed to meet the expectations of a majority of their users, as given in feedback by existing and previous customers.
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