HostMonster is one of the best providers of website hosting solutions in the world. The company was founded by Matt Heaton, the founder of another legendary company, BlueHost. Both companies have shown remarkable ability to provide customers with exactly what they need. HostMonster provides even lower rates than BlueHost and offers the same great quality of service. The company has won the “Best Web Hosting Award” twice and is considered as a very prestigious and outstanding service provider.

The company was founded in 1996 and has been providing great quality services ever since. Over the years, HostMonster has gained the trust of many of its customers who are now afraid to try out any other service provider.

Price & Features
The company offers only one concise and well-designed webhosting package. The package is usually offered at $6.95 but is being offered at $5.95 at the moment in a special promotion offer. Key features include unlimited web space for hosting website content, unlimited data transfer bandwidth and support to host unlimited domains. Add-on, parked and subdomains are also unlimited.

However, one downside to this hosting package is the limitation of number of MySQL databases. Users can only create up to 100 MySQL databases which is a slight turn down since the company provides hosting unlimited domains on one account.

One innovative feature of HostMonster is the drag and drop website builder which can be used to create high quality websites; even a beginner can build a website through this. The users only have to select one template from thousands of professionally designed templates, drag and drop objects on the template from the rich featured website editor and Walla! The website is ready.

The company provides support for a number of development platforms and content management systems such as Joomla!, WordPress, Durpal, PHP 5, Perl 5, Python, Ruby and many more. The package also includes some ecommerce tools which can be used to create websites with a shopping cart system or online order system. The package provides rich content support for various multimedia file types including Flash content. On top of all that, the company provides $50 worth of Google Ad credits so customers can start earning from their website as quickly as possible.

Support & UP Time
Support and Uptime are the main areas where HostMosnter truly shines. The company guarantees 99.9% uptime and its ever growing number of hosted domains suggests that customers are satisfied with the service provided by the company. The company has always put customer needs as their first priority and takes every possible step to make sure it stays that way. 24 hour help line and live chat facility is provided to all clients and other users who wish to seek information about the company. Technical support staff is highly qualified and adequate to deal with any kind of technical issue that customers might encounter.

Conclusion
The company is one of the best website hosts in the world and is clearly very popular among web developers. The limited number of MySQL databases might be a turndown for some customers, but most would simply ignore it and prefer good quality of service over this minor issue.

Powweb is a web hosting company that has been around since 1999 and was the pioneer of effective web solutions, with low cost packages. It is a private business that develops their own web hosting software and automation. Being a winner of multiple prestigious awards in the web hosting world, the company aims to provide its clients with security software programs such as spam filters, easy to use control panels and many more effective features.

There are however some contradictory stories for Powweb considering its initial hiccups as a hosting company, however through the passage of time, the company has in some way resolved its issues and is now providing clients with satisfactory results. It still has a long way to go though before becoming market leaders.

Price & Features
Powweb uses BGP4 technology and Tier 1 backbone services that aims to provide users with excellent routing services and redundancy. Powweb hosted websites always load very quickly as compared to other websites, due to their multiple Gigabit fiber-optic connections. The routers have OSPF protocols which makes them effectively redundant. They obtain hardware from names like Foudry, Cisco and Juniper Networks. The company provides an infrastructure to all businesses; complex or startup; all are given the best services and total reliability.

Powweb has one plan, one price package of $4.88/month, $34.68/year that offers the complete set of hosting solutions along with disk space, bandwidth and many other features.

Support & UP Time
Powweb has a very effective technical support just like other web hosting companies. It has a knowledge base, FAQs, different sections for help, suggestions, submission of request and also a live call and chat center. They also have a forum where users can communicate with each other and share strategies. The average uptime for Powweb for year 2010 has been recorded as 100%.

Conclusion
Powweb is economically suitable for starters in the field of web hosting, but for professionals and large firms, better options should be considered.

StartLogic is one of the most prominent names when it comes to website hosting services providers. The company has a current record of proudly hosting 100,000 websites and providing them with excellent services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The website is has servers based in Boston, Massachusetts and provides top quality services every second of the day. Thomas Gorny is the founder of the company and also owns two other sister companies i.e. iPowerWeb and Blue Domino. Although, iPowerWeb has had some complaints registered against it due to lack of technical support and unanswered complaints, the company has promised to improve its service very soon.

Price & Features
StartLogic offers a number of hosting plans to suit the needs of different people. StartLogic offers three basic packages i.e. PersonalLogic, ProLogic and WindowsLogic. PersonalLogic is the most basic program offered by the company and is also the cheapest of them all. The package is being offered at $3.95 per month and offers 60 GB of storage capacity and 600 GB of data transfer bandwidth.

ProLogic, as the name suggest is for professional companies. The package is being offered at $5.95 per month and offers virtually unlimited storage capacity and data transfer bandwidth. The third plan, WindowsLogic, offers 100 GB of Web space and 1000 GB of bandwidth. This package is being offered at $8.95 per month and offers support for windows based developmental tools such as AJAX, ASP.NET and MS-SQL. This package also provides the facility to host unlimited domains on the server.

All packages offer free setup utility and fully integrated Google webmasters tools to help customers get started on their website. However, premium plans like ProLogic and WindowsLogic also offer one free domain, $50 worth of Google Adwords credit and $25 worth of yahoo search credit. One prominent feature on all plans is the RatePoint Customer Feedback Platform.

Support & UP Time
Even though one of its sister companies has had a few issues in the area of customer support, StartLogic continues to offer high quality service and support. There is also the facility for 24 hour online live chat assistance which actually works and 99% of the time you wouldn’t have to wait for an operator to talk to you. If you are in a hurry, you can get technical assistance via their toll free number which is provided on their website. The response time to most technical problems is very impressive. Even though they might seem a bit slow on highly technical problems, but they aren’t exactly to blame as anything can go wrong in the world of computers without any notice. What really matters is that they get the job done and within a reasonable period of time.

Conclusion
So, over all it can be said that the StartLogic is a very reasonable company for hosting your website. The prices and features are highly competitive and the company has a good reputation. The current customer stats of 100,000 speak in favour of the company as 100,000 people cannot be wrong. In a nutshell, the company offers competitive packages and customer support to suffice the needs of most website owners.

Though IPowerweb has just been in the web hosting industry since 2001, it has turned out to be one of the giant of this industry, hosting around 700,000 sites, and has grown to become one of the largest and most popular web hosting companies in the world of internet. The company states its mission as, “The goal of IPOWERWEB is to innovate and provide advanced, quality products and solutions, along with industry-leading customer service and support, at affordable prices.”

This statement by the company has proved itself true. Winning multiple awards such as the 2006 Editor’s Pick Award and the 2006 Gold Award, the company aims to provide more excellent services to its clients. Located in Boston, they have two data centers; each has a building of 2400 sq feet equipped with the latest servers and state of the art technology.

Price & Features
The company provides domain registration, where clients will get their own domain name, under the rate of $10.95/year. Then they provide windows hosting for active server and Access database support, at the cost of $9.95/month. Web hosting and a dedicated server are given at the price of $7.95/month and $129/month respectively.

Besides this basic web hosting solutions there are features where you can launch your own site at the price of $4.95/month. If a user wants to launch the business online, then tools and services are provided for that too at the reduced cost of $3.95/month. And, finally if a user wants to sell products online, then online inventories, promotions, checkouts etc are all provided to the user at the rate of $14.95/month.

Support & UP Time
The company’s site has a help center where all basic tutorials are given along with respective pages on website, domain or email help. Other than that they also have call and chat facility, the number of which is located on the home page of the site. Support is provided 24/7 along with live chat. The up time of Ipowerweb has been recorded as 99.96% since 2005 and this record has brought it in excellent rankings.

Conclusion
Ipowerweb is now one of the most competent web hosting companies of the world and people who are relatively new to this field should opt for this company, for their economical packages. Considering their different packages many small firms have benefited from this web hosting company.

IPower, a renowned web hosting company, developed in 2001, has become a world leader in the web hosting business. The company caters to the online needs of millions of small and medium sized companies of the world. Boasting a proud customer base of 700,000 from more than 100 countries globally, Ipower is truly a prominent figure in web hosting. A whooping amount of 200 tools are available for web hosting customers, and each one of them instantiates speed, reliability, security and excellent performance.

The company’s mission is to focus on customers and for this aim they even have a specialized, “Customer Experience” team that is dedicated to check customer satisfaction on monthly basis, through surveys and forums. The company has strong ties with Google, Yahoo, WordPress, ShopSite and Constant Contact, and is thus able to provide their customers with all the benefits of web hosting.

Price & Features
Web hosting solutions provided on Ipower have three basic categories; Starter Plan, Pro Plan and Pro Plus, each of which have their own various specifications and price strategies. The features too are designed to meet the individual needs of the three plans. The central features of Ipower include a 5GB starting disk space which becomes unlimited for the Pro and Pro Plus Plan; a transfer bandwidth that initially provides 250GB for a Starter Plan and also leads to unlimited for the latter two plans.

Then there is the facility of a personalized domain name that charges $10.95/year and again becomes free for Pro and Pro Plus. One domain is allowed for Starter, and unlimited for other two plans. MySQL Database, ShopSite, and an FTP Account are also included.
Besides all these fantastic features, Ipower also provides Email tools and features POP3 Email accounts, spam filters and a webmail. One of the best features in Ipower is its website builder service. Not only can now users host their websites, but they can also get it built using the website creator provided by the company. There is Website Creator pages and design templates available too.

All required software, all database scripts; in short every tool required for a website to be all set and working is conveniently provided to the user. Marketing guides, online shopping facilities, promotion schemes, web statistics, power plug-in and many more services.

The price is divided into a 3,6,9,12,24 month’s scheme with a decline in the rates as the user selects an increase in months. Starting from $5.95/month for a Starter Plan, 3 month package, it drops to 3.95/month for a 24 month scheme. The Pro and Pro Plus plans have prices from $6.95/month reduced to $3.95 and $14.95 reduced to $11.95/month.

Support & UP Time
Like every other web hosting site, a user can get all the help from the knowledgebase provided at the site. Besides that there is 24/7 customer support, live chat with customer service representatives and logging in to write them a mail. The up time of Ipower has been recorded as 99%.

Conclusion
For any small and medium sized online business, that needs a full-fledged web hosting facility, Ipower is the best option, considering the brilliant features and economical packages that they provide to customers.

According to the company, MaxESP will be the first highly available completely PCI compliant (web + data) Microsoft ASP.NET shared web hosting platform. The MaxESP core focus is to cater to all aspects of the application life cycle. Customers can quickly upgrade the standard plan and make their application load balanced and more robust with 1 mouse click. Introductory accounts will be available in October free of charge for 30 days and just $49 a month after the trial period.

Besides the usual features of a hosting solution like email, SQL databases, SAN-supported storage, free backups, etc., the MaxESP elastic shared platform adds an SSL VPN service free of charge, PCI compliance at a shared price point, and on-demand application-aware load balancing and simultaneous application instances without forcing customers to rewrite their code.

As a leading Windows-based hosting provider, MaximumASP keeps up with the latest developments in Microsoft technologies while continually seeking customer feedback.

Matt Griffin, product manager at MaxESP explained, ”Windows Server 2008 R2, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5, and Application Request Routing, which is an IIS extension, offers tremendous benefits to both our company and our customers in our new shared hosting platform.”

MaxESP is a highly scalable, cost-effective hosting solution that makes it easier for customers to manage their applications. In a shared-hosting architecture, multiple customers use the same physical server. These environments have traditionally been difficult to manage as they grow to include thousands of customers and applications, the MaxESP solution makes it easier for MaximumASP to support a rapidly expanding customer base.

With both its current offerings and MaxESP, MaximumASP simplified the administration of shared hosting for its IT staff. Dominic Foster, CTO of MaximumASP added, ”With Application Request Routing on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, we’ve created a rock-solid platform that’s scalable to any level and takes care of all the headaches normally associated with shared hosting.”

John Zanni, general manager of the Worldwide Software plus Services Industry in the Microsoft Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. offered, ”With Application Request Routing from Microsoft, hosting providers can offer elastic scalability, optimized resource utilization and reduced management costs to their customers in a simple process. MaximumASP, as our Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year, continues to innovate and demonstrate in-depth knowledge of Microsoft technologies with its MaxESP platform.”

Additionally, MaximumASP takes advantage of the ability of ARR to manage multiple server farms and to manage and monitor all configuration settings through easy-to-use tools including IIS Remote Management.

Mr. Griffin added, ”ARR sits on top of a common, or shared, configuration system provided by IIS, which makes it very easy for us to develop custom modules or apply custom provisioning that plugs into the rest of our IT pipeline. We can use this to support billing, track customers, scale up or down, or add capacity for on-demand products that we want to roll out.”

MaximumASP can quickly provision highly available and scalable server farms and expand customers’ self-service options. Multiple layers of load balancing, enterprise SAN storage and redundant server farms will support high-performance requirements. The result will be better service for hosting customers and savings of up to U.S. $166,000 a year for MaximumASP in labor and hardware costs.

Mr. Foster continued, ”We are very excited about MaxESP as well as the IIS 7.5 architecture and anxious for more customer feedback on how it simplifies management of hosted sites and Web applications. MaximumASP continues to lead the hosting industry by giving our customers a competitive edge and enabling them to be first-to-market with new solutions.”

Created in IIS 7.5 and Windows Server 2008 R2 MaxESP has many exciting new features:

• Easily create and control your applications in IIS 7.5 using IIS Remote Management
• Highly available shared hosting with application aware load balancing
• Need more power? No problem. Add instances of your application to seamlessly scale capacity
• Decrease the number of nodes when not operating at peak times – or allocate to other website(s)
• Customizable scalability right at your fingertips

MaximumASP, based in Louisville, Kentucky, was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Windows-based hosting services. MaximumASP was named by Microsoft as its 2009 Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year. The company currently hosts more than 50,000 domains for customers in over 120 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications.

Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a provider of Windows-based hosting and managed IT services, MaximumASP, will soon release a new shared windows hosting platform.

According to the company, MaxESP will be the first highly available completely PCI compliant (web + data) Microsoft ASP.NET shared web hosting platform. The MaxESP core focus is to cater to all aspects of the application life cycle. Customers can quickly upgrade the standard plan and make their application load balanced and more robust with 1 mouse click. Introductory accounts will be available in October free of charge for 30 days and just $49 a month after the trial period.

Besides the usual features of a hosting solution like email, SQL databases, SAN-supported storage, free backups, etc., the MaxESP elastic shared platform adds an SSL VPN service free of charge, PCI compliance at a shared price point, and on-demand application-aware load balancing and simultaneous application instances without forcing customers to rewrite their code.

As a leading Windows-based hosting provider, MaximumASP keeps up with the latest developments in Microsoft technologies while continually seeking customer feedback.

Matt Griffin, product manager at MaxESP explained, ”Windows Server 2008 R2, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5, and Application Request Routing, which is an IIS extension, offers tremendous benefits to both our company and our customers in our new shared hosting platform.”

MaxESP is a highly scalable, cost-effective hosting solution that makes it easier for customers to manage their applications. In a shared-hosting architecture, multiple customers use the same physical server. These environments have traditionally been difficult to manage as they grow to include thousands of customers and applications, the MaxESP solution makes it easier for MaximumASP to support a rapidly expanding customer base.

With both its current offerings and MaxESP, MaximumASP simplified the administration of shared hosting for its IT staff. Dominic Foster, CTO of MaximumASP added, ”With Application Request Routing on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, we’ve created a rock-solid platform that’s scalable to any level and takes care of all the headaches normally associated with shared hosting.”

John Zanni, general manager of the Worldwide Software plus Services Industry in the Microsoft Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. offered, ”With Application Request Routing from Microsoft, hosting providers can offer elastic scalability, optimized resource utilization and reduced management costs to their customers in a simple process. MaximumASP, as our Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year, continues to innovate and demonstrate in-depth knowledge of Microsoft technologies with its MaxESP platform.”

Additionally, MaximumASP takes advantage of the ability of ARR to manage multiple server farms and to manage and monitor all configuration settings through easy-to-use tools including IIS Remote Management.

Mr. Griffin added, ”ARR sits on top of a common, or shared, configuration system provided by IIS, which makes it very easy for us to develop custom modules or apply custom provisioning that plugs into the rest of our IT pipeline. We can use this to support billing, track customers, scale up or down, or add capacity for on-demand products that we want to roll out.”

MaximumASP can quickly provision highly available and scalable server farms and expand customers’ self-service options. Multiple layers of load balancing, enterprise SAN storage and redundant server farms will support high-performance requirements. The result will be better service for hosting customers and savings of up to U.S. $166,000 a year for MaximumASP in labor and hardware costs.

Mr. Foster continued, ”We are very excited about MaxESP as well as the IIS 7.5 architecture and anxious for more customer feedback on how it simplifies management of hosted sites and Web applications. MaximumASP continues to lead the hosting industry by giving our customers a competitive edge and enabling them to be first-to-market with new solutions.”

Created in IIS 7.5 and Windows Server 2008 R2 MaxESP has many exciting new features:

• Easily create and control your applications in IIS 7.5 using IIS Remote Management
• Highly available shared hosting with application aware load balancing
• Need more power? No problem. Add instances of your application to seamlessly scale capacity
• Decrease the number of nodes when not operating at peak times – or allocate to other website(s)
• Customizable scalability right at your fingertips

MaximumASP, based in Louisville, Kentucky, was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Windows-based hosting services. MaximumASP was named by Microsoft as its 2009 Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year. The company currently hosts more than 50,000 domains for customers in over 120 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications.

If you’ve got the idea to build a main domain, with several spinoff subdomains, then your new web host that allows you to add subdomains without an additional charge.  Otherwise, you’d be unable to build a website the way that it was originally designed.  Some of the features you’re going to need to build a successful website are e-mail, FTP accounts, and analytics.  Although you could potentially get by without them, you’re far better off paying a little bit more to get the features that you’ll need to build your website the right way.

There are basically three types of hosting accounts, all of which vary in some form or another.  Shared hosting means that you are sharing resources with several other websites, which can be dangerous if you have a website with a lot of traffic.  VPS hosting is a form of shared hosting, although each website has an instanced server environment that is dedicated for that website.  Dedicated hosting means that you have one server dedicated to your website, which in exchange for providing the most efficiency and speed is also the most expensive.

Buying Web hosting can be a lengthy process but it is important that you spend the time to research all of your options so you can get the most bang for your buck.  Since it is difficult to transfer a website from one host to another, you’re far better off getting it right the first time then trying to transfer it down the road.

One last thing to be cautious of when purchasing web hosting, is that the company you choose has good customer service.  It does you no good to get cheap hosting if you can’t contact your provider in the event of a technical issue or outage.  That is why I’d rather pay a little bit more and have access to customer service and technical support without a hassle.