February 16, 2011 - Web Hosting Reviews and Guidance

Fatcow Review, Is Fatcow Good?

Fatcow Overview

Fatcow has been offering affordable rich feature hosting service since 1998. Specialized in personal, small to midum size web site hosting, Fatcow is powering more than one million clients. Started with a single shared hosting plan and now with multiple solutions, fatcow be able to support any level website hosting requirement.

Fatcow Review – Hosting Features

Fatcow provides total of 4 different hosting plans with different features – Shared hosting, vps and dedicated hosting plus two wordpress hosting plans.

Shared Hosting: the longest history plan by fatcow company with everything unlimited. This plan provides a free domain name, free sitebuilder and ecommerce builder wizard. Now each account can get 1GB free cloud storage from justcloud service. For most of the time, fatcow shows yearly price so people know how much they pay exactly without doing math work.

VPS server: Fatcow provides 3 class rich feature cloud vps plans for production server purpose. Everything is pre-configured so clients don't have to repeat the manual work for time saving. Client has a cpanel and cloud server panel for full control.

Dedicated Hosting: Fatcow dedicated servers are cloud based with guaranteed resource & performance. Servers are fully scalable according to business growth. Similar to VPS service, each dedicated server has everything pre-configured for production server environment. Client has full access for full control and could be notified if there's any abnormal access to server. The monitor service is 100% mobile compatible so you get full control from anywhere.

WordPress Hosting: There're two wordpress hosting plans offered by fatcow. Dedicated from all other services from fatcow company, wordpress hosting is setup on seperate servers to ensure its performance. Clients get customized control panel which is dedicated for wordpress purpose. There we have option to use multiple wordpress themes and plugins. We also have access to most wordpress tools from control panel center.

Fatcow also provides a neat drag-and-drop website builder, web analytics, FrontPage extensions, FTP access and Google custom search tools. The simplescripts one-click installer provides a number of applications including WordPress, Joomla, phpBB. For shopping cart purpose, fatcow also provided an ecommerce wizard called "shopsite" where people be able to setup a live store in few minutes and ready to accept money online!

Furthermore, fatcow offers a variety of professional services which can be requested with extra costs. For example Facebook and web site design, premium support, SEO services and more etc.

Fatcow Review – Performance

FatCow is 100% Wind Energy green. Fatcow ensure all web servers 99.9% uptime by improved customer service and server technologies. Their server platform are based DELL production and cloud technologies from multiple famous data centers in Utah, Huston and Dallas. Each data center is setup for advanced server cooling/monitoring. The important thing is fatcow support team is working in each data center directly for fast action in case any problem. Each server is properly controlled for load balancing, a single website problem will be isolated so other sites on same server won't be affected.

Fatcow Review – Customer Support

Fatcow is supported from one center which is from headquarter directly. Each support department in the office is running around the clock. While they're ready to pick customers' call, they're working on every minute to post new articles in knowledge base. They want to simplify their support and fix most problems directly by following tutorial article base. Their phone support, chat support and ticket suppor stay on same time line so they can communicate efficiently. We submitted multiple support requests and our general waiting is between 2~4 hours in ticket and only few seconds from chat window.

Fatcow Review – Price

Fatcow hosting plan is configured on yearly fee between $24~$49/yr. Change to monthly price is between $2/mo or $3.15/mo which is pretty affordable. For vps & dedicated server plans they even provide 20% discount for initial payment.

Futhermore, Fatcow gives out $100 Google Adwords credit, $25 Yahoo/Bing search marketing credit and a $50 Facebook advertising credit to all newly signed up accounts. Client will use it directly from webmaster center in control panel, thus you don't have to sign up google independently and you'll be able to manage everything altogether.

Does Fatcow offer any coupon code?

Yes! there is some fatcow coupon available, but it's hard to find it anywhere on the website. Here we will tell you how to get the code. please follow the below steps:

1. Go to fatcow order page and continue to step2.
2. Close the order page browser, Yes! close it!
3. It will prompt up a window for a discount rate if you continue with the order. there will be 40% – 50% discount rate.
4. click "cancel" and continue to order. That's it!

No matter what the price is on fatcow site, above steps will always lead you to the best offer!

Claim fatcow best promo @ www.Fatcow.com

Do we recommend Fatcow?

Absolutely yes. Especially for small to medium size websites. Fatcow provides different solutions to support your web requirements side by side. No matter if you need their inhouse developped control panel or standard cpanel, you can always get the option. If you operate a heavy traffic wordpress blog, the fatcow wordpress plans are perfect choice.

Ipower reviews

iPower Introduction

iPower was firstly created in 1999 with multiple hosting solutions for both linux and windows server plans. iPower currently serves more than 700,000 worldwide clients with over 1000,000 websites hosted. Beside website hosting, the company also provide website design and marketing service at affordable prices.

iPower Review – Hosting Plans

iPower starts with 3 classes of Linux plans and a windows pro plan with good good support over asp.net, SQL server and other popular technologies. Client be able to choose among shared, VPS and dedicated solutions.

Shared hosting: iPower offers rich feature shared hosting including a free domain, free site builder tool, $50 in Facebook ad credits, $25 for Yahoo/Bing advertising and $100 in Google ad credits. It's also possible to sign up for a free listing on YP.com and claim a toll-free number via Nextiva. In addition, there's a Marketplace where customers can buy top-up add-on services such as SSL certificates, SEO services and online backup tools. In terms of scripts, only one is offered: EmailBrain, a mailing list application.

iPower provides a single windows hosting plan based windows server 2003 platform. Though there're lots of leading features provided for this hosting, the highest .net framework is limited to 3.0 which is pretty old now. There's no news or phenomenon they're going to upgrade to latest windows server system.

VPS Hosting: Since 2014, iPower started to offer vps server plans based cloud platform. Server can be ready instantly upon order confirmation, so we don't have to wait long time or contact manual support for server setup. The cloud management panel provides every needed tools for server configuration and monitoring.

Dedicated Hosting: Very similar to vps server but customer get dedicated resources other than shared. The cloud server system is fully scalable to meet your business growth. Server specs can be upgraded on the fly with no service interruption. Each server comes with one free domain name and search engine credits over google, yahoo and bing.

iPower Review – Control panel

There're two control panel systems used by iPower service – vDeck and cpanel control panel. vDeck is provided for all shared hosting plans(both linux & windows hosting). All tools and services are properly configured from account login. Some frequently accessed service like account management, domain & DNS management are all available with easy navigation. We also have google webmaster tools from control panel center.

For vps and dedicated server service, cPanel is standard option for server services. Plus, we get a cloud control panel for real time server monitoring. Even the server is unaccessible for some reason, we still have access to its data from control panel center. We also be able to configure sms notification for any abnormal activity. Fully mobile compatible!

iPower Review – Performance

Because iPower operates cross-platform services on multiple plans, their performance varies depends the service you select. The shared linux hosting service is no difference than other vdeck based hosting provider. Just be noted that they use Debian linux instead others like centos. From all our testing and experience of their platform, the linux hosting service is pretty stable. Although ping tests are between 300~500ms, the real service loading on website is between 3~6 seconds which is acceptable.

About windows, because it's setup on server 2003 and lack of some popular features on new server system, so we can not test some new applications for system limitation.

What really highlights their service would be vps and dedicated service. Either from server features or platform view, it's leading comparing to any other provider. Cloud based platform and leading server management system simply drives everything on top edge.

iPower Review – Price

The most valued service from iPower is "Pro Plan" hosting which is offered at $3.95/mo. This price includes a free domain name, unlimited disk storage & data transfer plus hundreds of search engine credits.

Their vps & dedicated service are also provided on promotional price which is pretty affordable by most customers. VPS starts at $19.99/mo and dedicated server on $119.99/mo with fully managed support.

iPower Review – Support

iPower is handling excellent support service. Either basic sales question or complicated tech support, their people can always respond friendly via professional knowledges. Their main support channel is from web chat and ticket system, though they do have multiple other support services. Most of the time, we can find answers directly from knowledge base. Their support team is trying to post as more problem fixing articles as possible. But for complex problem solutions, ticket system is highly suggested.

Do we recommend iPower service?

Although iPower provides excellent linux hosting, vps and dedicated server services, they provides an outdated windows hosting plan too. There's no reason they keep the linux service on cutting edge level but do nothing to windows. It's a common problem over other endurance brands with windows hosting service. Looks like they stopped updating everything on this platform. So if you seek for leading windows hosting service, ipower is not the right place to go, but for linux services, they're doing perfect

Visit iPower for Plan offers www.iPower.com

Arvixe Reviews, Is Arvixe The Best?

Arvixe Brief View

Arvixe is founded 2003in San Luis Obispo, CA, as privately held limited liability corporation built on a basis of solid ground work and planned growth. Arvixe provides full hosting solutions and mostly featured for its Affordable .net & SQL Server Hosting. Being member of Inc500 magazine, arvixe provides hosting solutions to personal, small to large business with over half million sites hosted. This arvixe review page will guide you to check side by side and select the perfect hosting plan.

Arvixe Review – Hosting Features

Arvixe provides hosting services to start users as well as web developers by several hosting plans. There're shared hosting, business hosting, reseller, VPS and dedicated server hosting plans to meet your hosting needs on any side.

Shared Plans: Arvixe provides shared hosting on both linux and windows platforms – Personal class & Personal class ASP. Either linux or windows, the service is configured on latest server platform with up to date configuration. Both plans provides unlimited storage and free domain for life. Either mysql or ms sql databases are offered unlimited. General features includes:

One Free domain for life
Unlimited sub domain names
Unlimited disk space & bandwidth
Standard cpanel and websitepanel hosting
60 days money back guarantee
24×7 live support & 99.9% server up time

VPS Hosting: Based Virtuozzo technology, arvixe vps server provides guaranteed performance other than just trying to low down price for selling purpose. Each vps server provides dedicated resource but not shared each other. The vps server also provides whmcs billing system for business site purpose. We can manage client account and purchase order easily & professionally.

Business Hosting: Similar to vps but without server management option. Client use same hosting control panel for website and other services. The actual difference is about server resources. While shared hosting server is by many client accounts, there're much fewer on business hosting server. That's why we pay a little more for this plan for vps level performance.

Reseller Hosting: The arvixe reseller hosting is setup the same way of shared hosting. We get part of server resources for reselling purpose and start our own hosting business. We have control panel & billing panel & all necessary features for web hosting business. While all server end management is handled by arvixe team, we only focus on business and customer support and earn success.

Dedicated Hosting: There're both bare metal server and cloud server plans available. For people who would like to get everything under control on single server, the dedicated server can be fully customized upon requirements. As about cloud server, it's based hyper-v technology and fully scalable on the go. However, the plan features can not be customized during registration at the moment, we have to choose pre-configured plan.

Arvixe Review – Hosting Performance

What about arvixe server performance? Based our personal website experience, it's quite responsive for most of the time. Our main site is hosted with arvixe since 2010 on shared server. During this period, we had once migration because of spam issue. The entire process had been smooth and quick. We monitored our site via google service with weekly reports. Ping and real response time is between 200~230ms and 3~5 seconds. This business site got around 500 visits per day which is not heavy loading.

To understand their connectivity better, let's see their data center specs. Arivxe multiple SAS 70 Type II Certified data centers located in Chicago, New Jersey, and Dallas. The network speed and capacity eliminate bandwidth traffic jams and roadblocks to assure high volume, instantaneous response for hosted applications. UPS backup ensures no power outage and your business is always online and accessible.

Speed test of arvixe networking:

United States (Dallas) – 10 MB File Download
Europe (Amsterdam) – 10 MB File Download
Asia (Hong Kong) – 10 MB File Download

Arvixe Review – Usability

Arvixe is probably one of the most standard service provider. Not only about their plan structures but their management system and all tools. Arvixe uses cPanel & WebsitePanel for account management. There's no doubt people can get started quickly because of the software popularity. What you experienced on official demo is the same with arvixe.

Arvixe Review – Support

Arvixe provides super friendly and helpful support. Unlike any other hosting company who put all supports from a central office, arvixe does not have it. Their support staffs are everywhere in United States with free work style. They're connected together by virtual management system to ensure there're support online for 24*7. We have been dealing with knowlegeble and professional support service since 2010 and they actualled saved our business in 2013 which we posted on this article

Their free work style make sure both staff and client can be communicated in good mood. Their people are not forced to work on fixed seat but to assit you any time available.

How do we think about Arvixe Hosting?

Absolutely great, Arvixe is so far so good for our hosting provider. From the last two years we hardly received any downtime report on website. Actually we haven't a tech support request to their people. We highly recommend their service to webmasters who want to sleep well at middle night without worrying about website down. Being top hosting provider, arvixe won't wake you up at midnight for customer complaints.

Furthermore, Arvixe is a good choice for life time saving. When you get the best price from registration, renewal price will not go up to regular rate like many other cheap hosts. Arvixe will treat you the same as every other valued customer!

Go to www.Arvixe.com and claim best offer!

Ipage review, is it the best?

Ipage Overview

Ipage started as pure linux hosting with more than 10 years experience in offering website hosting service to personal and non-profit websites. Currently they have more than 150,0000 websites being served worldwide with fast growth. Ipage provides full hosting solutions to power your online business. Why should you sign up iPage? What you should aware with their service? This ipage review article provides you side by side check and guidance with their service.

iPage Review – Hosting Plan

iPage provides shared, VPS and dedicated server solutions with over $450 search engine credits. Ipage is fully php mysql based service on each level plan. After 10 years development, they're now 100% green energy powered with zero pollusion to atmosphere.

Shared hosting: The most popular offer from ipage since 1999. For many years they have been featured for this single hosting plan with everything unlimited at very affordable price. The shared server comes unlimited disk storage plus 1GB of cloud storage for all of your documents to be accessable from anywhere, at anytime, from any device. Shared hosting plan also provides a template based website builder and e-commerce builder for instant shopping art solution.

Unlimited Disk Space & bandwidth
Free Domain registration and free Setup
ANYTIME Money Back Guarantee
99.9% Uptime
Vdeck with Scripts installer
Over $450 of FREE bonus

VPS Server: Total of three vps plans to choose from, the ipage VPS services are generated from bluehost data centers directly for guaranteed performance. The cloud based platform is configured for instant provisioning upon order confirmation. Though they have tried to low down the price, each vps server provides outstanding features with full managed service via cpanel.

Dedicated Hosting: Same as VPS server but provides dedicated hardware setup with mirrored storage for advanced data protection. Each server provides a free domain name and cpanel software for professional management. Whenever we need to upgrade, the process can be done extremely quick on cloud system.

iPage Review – Performance

iPage Servers/network is powered by 2 data centers in Boston and each data center is equipped with 24×7 security, N+1 power (both A/C and D/C). After merged into endurance, the company got more space to grow from the largest data center networks such as bluehost data centers and softlayers. All those data centers are setup for advanced IT requirements.

iPage hosting servers and their network facilities are fully managed & monitored by both human and smart electric device. Whenever the server is over heating or got inomal traffic, technicians will be alerted for urgent fix. Furthermore, their IT genius programmed system level solutions to avoid common issues to ensure your service is always online.

iPage Review – Support

Aside from traditional hosting support, ipage provides support for lots of services such as web design, programming and almost every side of website hosting. The company operates a huge support network on different locations on the planet, each support channel is available for 24*7 with professional & friendly response.

Beside real human support, iPage created lots of support resources on their help page. This includes FAQ base in different categories. Tutorials of scripts setup & problem fixing. Their people are also responsive in lots of webmaster communities for direct assistance. Especially when you need support or advice or web development, their people can provide extra support since this is their business from very beginning.

iPage Review – Price

iPage hosting plan starts from $2.25/mo for all hosting features you need. The fact is no matter if you want to sign up one month, one quarter or one year, the price is kept the same! No extra fees for the contract periods we choose. Many web hosts provides very promotional price for 36 months but charges high on year or monthly registration which is not good for people. However, iPage managed to offer the same price for all terms.

How do we think of iPage Hosting?

The iPage service is rated top among many other web hosting providers. Their affordable hosting plans with rich features come with extremely high reliability. You don't have to worry about potential website growth at all because they have full upgrade solutions. Especially for people who has great concern on price, iPage gives out $1.99/mo unbeatable price. In case you're not awared yet, just follow the steps below to claim the special offer

1. Go to www.iPage.com page
2. Proceed with registration to step 2
3. try to leave the page
4. a prompt up will be displayed with special offer
5. follow to claim the offer!

Hostpapa Reviews, Is it Good?

Hostpapa Introduction

Hostpapa founded in 2006 & located in Oakville with a goal to provide rich feature web hosting packages with green power supply. Hostpapa offers a three shared Linux hosting plans for the moment. The starter plan provided at $1.95/mon gives out 100G disk space including free domain registration. Hostpapa have branchs in United States, Canada, UK, France and other 3 centers in Europe.

Hostpapa Review – Hosting Features

From the very beginning, HostPapa provided a simple all-in-one web hosting plan that comes with 1 free domain for life, hosting unlimit domains and $340 search engine credits over google, yahoo and bing. Since 2014, the company starts to offer 3 hosting plans with more features added. For quick view, here's a table list of three plan general features

Hosting Plan	Starter	Business	Business Pro
Disk storage	100G	unlimited	unlimited
CDN network	no	yes	yes
Premium server	no	no	yes
Sitebuilder	3 pages	unlimited + HTML edit	unlimited + HTML + css edit
Price	$1.95/mo	$3.95/mo	$12.95/mo

Each plan provides a free domain name registration and standard cpanel management panel. The hostpapa provides free migration from your current hosting provider with guaranteed compatibility on new hosting service.

About the three hosting plans, the real difference is about server performance and dedicated ip/ssl offers. The business pro provides free ssl certificate and required dedicated ip for installation and account is hosted on their "Rocket Fast Premium Servers". Means they have different servers setup for this plan with guaranteed performance. The starter plan also does not support CDN while its included from business & business pro plans.

Hostpapa Review – Performance

Hostpapa data center is home of more than 150 telecommunications companies. Data center come with complete climate and temperature control, raised floor facility, fault protection, security, fire-suppression systems. Hosting servers are standard DELL production with up to 32 GB RAM. The hostpapa cutting edge technologies have full control over all server loadings and outages. A single server failure will not bring down its neighbours but just be hanged up for fixing.

However, we must realize the difference among their three hosting plans. Higher hosting plan accounts are hosted on different hosting servers for guaranteed resource & performance. You get what you pay, it's very clear that higher costs will give back better performance. For ecommerce solutions, we highly suggest their business pro plan because we can not only get much better performance but will save money on ssl certificates too.

Hostpapa Review – Customer Support

Hostpapa manage multiple support centers from both Europe and North America. Their support service is running 24*7*365 on every available channels like chat & tickets. Their support centers are always standby to answer your questions efficiently and professionally. Following are call numbers of their different centers

More about Hostpapa

Hostpapa is Green! – Hostpapa is one of the earliest green hosting provider while many other servers are polluting the atmosphere, hostpapa purchased "green tag" from certified green engergy supplier which calculate the power consumption very seriously and accurate and they will pump in 100% equivalent energy back into the power grid. This will save a large amount of non-renewable energy resource and cut down the co2 rising into the air.

99.99% uptime – Another point is server uptime guarantee, 99.99% outstanding uptime is so confident to webmaster and your business. Today there're many hosting provider announced to be 99% uptime while they're really hard to archive it and finally approved to be fraud advertising, but hostpapa does it! no more advertice or any sort of, what you see is what you're actually experiencing with hostpapa!

Mobile compatible hosting – Hostpapa is one of the very first hosting providers that co-operate with GoMobile by offering mobile website creation service. The super friendly sitebuilder wizard will get your website mobile friendly in few minutes!

What would be the weakness of hostpapa service?

Before 2014, hostpapa is blamed for their extremely high setup fee – $29.95 per hosting account setup. Now they removed this fee and everything seems to be fair enough. The only weakness might be their shared feature. If we outgrow the shared environment, we have no choice but to switch hosts for higher hosting solution. However, since they have been focused on small to medium size business, it's not a real problem. If we really have to upgrade, hostpapa will find a way to save your business.

How do we think about Hostpapa hosting?

From either hosting plan feature or customer support and client feedback, hostpapa is on top budget hosting. They have been improving and seek any possibility to serve their clients well. Based their huge support network, each customer request can be handled properly. Especially when you need local support in your country, hostpapa is unbeatable comparing to any competitor!

Pacifichost review

Pacifichost Introduction

A popular hosting provider for small to midium size website at low costs. Pacifichost strive to offer the fastest, most-reliable service in the industry. Their tech team is trying to make their hosting server compatible with any website requirements at affordable costs. Is pacifichost doing good hosting service? Can we host our site safely on their server? What should I pay attention to before registration? Our editorial team has done research with 5 years monitoring experience. This article will guide you to review pacifichost side by side and determine if it's perfect choice for your website

Pacifichost quick view

Website address	www.pacifichost.com
Business setup time	2002
Datacenter	Giganet, Chicago
Demo site	colossus.pacifichost.com
Hosting Price	$2.49/mo
Web server	Litespeed

Pacifichost Review – Hosting Feature

Pacifichost provides multiple hosting solutions from shared to dedicated server. Pacifichost uses cloudlinux platform with 16 X Intel Xeon E5620 installation for all shared hosting servers. Each server provides 24GB RAM and RAID 10 disk storage. Pacifichost hosting plans includes following unbeatable offers:

Unlimited space and premium bandwidth support
FFmpeg video hosting compatible
Free website migration from other hosts
Daily backup to remote hosting account
Litespeed & cloudlinux hosting server
Free cloudflare CDN plan included

Pacifichost hosting is powered by Litespeed web server which is recognized the best choice for linux hosting. If you need better performance and better security. Litespeed is highly recommended.

Plus, pacifichost provides multiple upgrade solutions to VPS or dedicated server at affordable costs

Pacifichost Review – Performance

Pacifichost is operated through 5 datacenters that utilize Peer1's network for Tier 1 OC-192 Internet backbone with over 15,000 miles of fiber connectivity. Multiple Tier III connections ensures full network redundancy. For quick understanding of their connectivities, you can check the below sites for speed tests.

colossus.pacifichost.com 69.65.43.224 (Shared Servers)
gambit.pacifichost.com 69.65.43.221 (Shared Servers)
juggernaut.pacifichost.com 69.65.41.170 (Shared Servers)
magneto.pacifichost.com 69.65.43.214 (Shared Servers)

We can load each test site within 3 seconds with 10mb network connection. Our personal photo gallery test site can be loaded within 5 seconds which is all about pictures.

Pacifichost Review – Price

Pacifichost provides multiple hosting plans with very affordable prices. Shared hosting starts at only $2.49/mo. VPS provides full managed service at $39.95/mo for starts and dedicated server starts at $135/mo which is very promotional offer. Considering they do not offer free domain registration for any plan, their price is just acceptable. If we already have domain name to use, then their price is great enough. Do we suggest register domain via pacifichost? Definitely not, because they charge at $15/yr per domain which is a little expensive than major domain providers.

Pacifichost Review – Support

We can connect to pacifichost support via web chat, phone call, ticket and social websites like facebook, twitter and linkedin etc. Their support is pretty active on these support channels. Their official blog is also updated frequently for discussion. Support quality? Well, based editorial experience, their live support is more about sales service, if we need tech communication, we can only go ticket channel and normally we can get response within 2 hours.

What might be the weakness of Pacifichost?

There're multiple points to look around. First is their domain name offer, while they do not offer free domain, the registration fee is quite high with them. Considering to have domain and hosting seperately, we highly suggest register domain name somewhere else such as godaddy.

Another point is they don't support shared ssl for basic plan which could not be understood by us. It means if we want to deal with sensitive data transaction with this plan, we have to use our own SSL certificate.

The last one is about shell access, while this feature is being offered popularly from other hosts. We have to pay extra to enable it. It might be no need for most people, but it's not good at all to have this enabled only by paying.

How do we think about Pacifichost hosting?

We had good experience under their testing account from initial starts. But things go to another side after a short period. We found they tried to post positive comments everywhere including WHT as well as our websites which is quite spammy! Although they have lowered their price recently for some plans, PH is no longer in our up to date recommendation list. If you need the litespeed hosting server, we highly recommend to check out Hawkhost for guaranteed service.

Visit HawkHost for better service! www.Hawkhost.com

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