Introduction and review of the popular softwares & Apps to support hosting service. This includes hosting control panel solutions, plugin & modules for different technical requirements

Best Oracle Hosting

best oracle hosting

Oracle Brief Introduction

Oracle database, also called Oracle RDBMS or oracle, is a powerful commercial database engine released by SUN group. Oracle is capable of handling large data efficiently and professionally. Oracle is engineering in speed, reliability, security, and manageability.

Core features of Oracle database

  • Powerful – Oracle is the most powerful database system for multi user and multi task management. Especially when you're running a huge online platform with frequent data reading/executing, oracle is the best choice.
  • Security – Oracle provides advanced security control, it's the best choice for commercial application when considering both performance & security.
  • Fast – Oracle protocols are different than other database engines and be able to handle multi task concurrently with fast response.
  • Portable – The Oracle system is cross platform compatible and other databases are portable to oracle perfectly. The system is ready to accept any database platform transfer.

Oracle database versions

There're three main edition for Oracle. Express, Standard and Enterprise Editions, just the same as sql server database. Oracle Corporation supports a variety of platforms and secondary platforms, which make it a viable option to be used, and it is supported on both Linux and Windows web servers.

The Best Oracle Hosting Service?

Because of the expensive setup and deployment, oracle is mainly used by those enterprise IT departments themselves in dedicated environments. For live hosting service, it's offered by very few hosting giants like Rackspace and Amazon.

It's not offered yet under shared web hosting service. Oracle programming skills are required by many developers for its leading concept because they can optimize any other database system after learnt oracle. If any of you is planning to use oracle, it's highly recommended to evaluate carefully and see if it's a MUST go, or else the other popular database systems will work too. If Oracle is a must, there're two options – Sign up the service from Amazon or rackspace for service ready plans OR use a dedicated server then install oracle by yourself.

Who's Using Oracle?

Because the great amount features with oracle, this database system is mainly used by world class enterprise such as the airline groups and financial corps. For small business companies, oracle is not an affordable solution.

Oracle vs Mssql vs Mysql

There are various different database service providers, which provide different tools for small-end to very high-end requirements on data on different platforms and each of these databases has its pros and cons. The main database options available include MS SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle.

Oracle is definitely standing at the top because of it's golden value(100% working with almost all platforms including MacOS, Windows, Linux, IBM, Sun etc). Especially in dealing with heavy traffic website, oracle is found to be very stable and performing steadily. Ms SQL is affordable DB system which serves Ms technologies directly. As for mysql, it's completely open sourced database software and free downloading available to everyone. The mysql database is mainly working with PHP scripting.

Basically, if it's a small website with limited budget, mysql is definitely the right choice. If we're developing a medium to large site with asp.net or other Ms scripting languages, mssql is what we needed. If it's for large enterprise IT solution that have pretty high technical requirements, no matter how you compare, oracle is the only perfect choice.

Best Ms Access Web Hosting

Best ms access web hosting

Ms Access database Introduction

Ms Access database or Ms Access is Microsoft most basic pseudo-relational database management system. Ms Access is included from Microsoft Office pack. The latest access version is 2013 and also available from Office 365 as a cloud service.

Access database works as regular files, you don't have to install extra service independently like mysql or ms sql server. You can host unlimited access databases and manipulate with ASP or asp.net applications. Access database scripting is popularly handled via ODBC DSN and DSN-less OLEDB connection strings.

Best Access Database Hosting Provider

100% windows hosting providers should support Ms Access database unless they restricted the service purposely. We highly recommend from the top list which is available on the windows hosting page. For short, you can take a look at the following for quick guidance:

ArvixeArvixe windows plan is fully Ms Access compatible and TOP recommended for windows hosting with ms access support. All newly sign ups will be located on the latest windows server 2012 for best performance. No matter if you connect via DSN or OLEDB, the engine is pre-configured for every hosting server. Just use as you're doing on local computer. There's no difference in using their service as your locall server.

Arvixe Ms access database hosting plan provides everything you need for successful website hosting. This includes a free domain name for life, unlimited server space and dedicated application pool

Arvixe ms access hosting

Basically, the arvixe windows server have all available engines installed and fully optimized for production website purpose. Since from 2003, they have been working with Microsoft to deliver the best part of windows hosting service and satisify every client as possible. During the past few years, arvixe is certified hosting provider for lots of windows projects and web applications.


How dowe Rate the best Access hosting?

As long as the hosting provides windows server, ms access will be supported as default. The difference is the supported engine and performance. For Ms access database, you just upload to web server and no special setup required to make it working. The best Ms Access hosting must meet up with following minimum requirement.

High performance server – The hosting server must be on server 2008 or 2012 with enterprise class hardware production. Take arvixe for instance, they use newest DELL production with max available resources on CPU/RAM. Their RAID 10 disk storage is centrally managed and properly controlled for every hosting account.

Security – Security is the biggest concern for Ms access database. Normally the access database can be downloaded directly from web browser if you know the full path to your mdb file, the hosting should be configured not to download it, they normally need to configure a script map from IIS. They should also support odbc connections to enhance the database security.

Another point is the permission restriction. If the permission is insufficient then your website will produce coding error, if permission set too high then mostly will cause security problem, a good hosting provider always test out the best permission value from hosting servers.

Customer support – Not only about the ms access. Most of the time customer be able to fix database problems by themselves. The real support they need is proper suggestion and responsive communication to support team. No matter which way customer choose to connect support, it should be available and working fast.

In a word, the best ms access web hosting is not only focused on this service but general rating of the hosting provider.

Why Access database?

MS Access is good choice for small to medium size website purpose. Especially when you do not want to keep a big database system, access is perfect choice. Comparing to other database engines, Ms Access provides following unbeatable features:

Easy to get – You don't have to buy it separately from Microsoft in order to use Ms Access, if you have office installed on your computer, then ms accss already included.

Small and user friendly – Absolutely, Ms Access has the smallest size comparing to any other database systems. It's GUI interface let people design tables fast and efficiently.

Easy to manage – You don't need a separate database server in order to use Ms Access but just put it directly on web server, Access database is just a single .mdb /.accdb file. You just manage it the same as regular windows documents.

Easy upgrade – In case MS access is no longer sufficient for your website growth, you can easily convert to other database engines like Mysql and Ms SQL server database. It's 100% risk free!

Best Sitebuilder Hosting

plesk sitebuilder hosting

Sitebuilder Quick View

Sitebuilder is quick solution for people who want to put up a website without dealing with programming. Users just follow up pre-designed templates and publish the site step by step. No coding skill required on its GUI interface. There're many sitebuilder solutions like RVsitebuilder and instant website etc that are used by lots of hosting service.

After trying and testing all those popular sitebuilder solutions, we are going to introduce the best – Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder

Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder Overview

The Plesk sitebuilder wizard is an easy to use, scalable web application designed to create and manage websites. This next-generation software can be integrated into any business process. Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder is the ideal marketing tool for converting your site traffic into a new client base.

Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder Outstanding features:

  • INSTANT Website, Shopping Cart, Blog, Forum, Guestbook, Flash Intro, Photo Gallery, Member Registration and more!
  • Professional Templates and Supports All Languages!
    You can choose over 2000+ professionally designed and customizable templates to create your websites!
  • No Software to download!
    The administration/publishing interface is web browser-based, so it can be accessed from anywhere in the world at anytime.
  • Navigation Bar / Buttons / Menus
    Allows you to create customizable / professional looking navigation menus and buttons.
  • WYSIWYG browser based editor
    Interactive editor that allows you to style your html contents without knowing html codes or any other programming language.  This editor is very similar to MS FrontPage/Dreamweaver and it's web based!
  • Real Time Integrated Shopping Cart
    There is an integrated Shopping Cart that can be added VERY quickly. The shopping cart has real-time UPS shipping integration, 3rd party credit card processor integration, and a fully customizable administration utility.
  • List Manager
    Build-in list manager that will allow your visitors to subscribe their email address to your site.  You can then broadcast your advertisement or information to your subscribers as easy as 1-2-3!
  • Real Time Stats
    Real time webstats that will display traffic and visitor information of your website.  This will help you manage your growth and marketing directions!
  • Page Colors
    Select from over 1000's of background colors, text colors and link colors for that unique look.
  • Background Images
    Most templates allow you to choose from over 100's of background images for your page. The background images are optional.  You can even upload your own!
  • Image Library
    Select from over 1200 images in the image library.
  • Icon Library
    Some of our templates use an Icon for the upper left of the page. You can select from our library or upload your own Icon.
  • File Up-Loads
    File up-loads through the browser, both images and HTML files.
  • File Management
    Complete file management through the browser. Eliminating all need for FTP. You can Up-Load Files, Rename Files, or Delete Files.
  • Advanced Page Editor
    The HTML code for your pages can be edited at any time. You may add JavaScript or enhance your pages in any way.

Sitebuilder Online Demo: http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/sitebuilder/demo/

Plesk sitebuilder is previously developed by SWsoft group, after merged to Parallels, it's named to plesk sitebuilder and got it's further development. They have both linux and windows editions and working as independent software package. The wizard can be easily integrated to any hosting control panel via it's API.

Best Plesk Sitebuilder Hosting

HostGator is award winning provider of best plesk sitebuilder hosting. The sitebuilder service is standard offer for every hostgator plans and offered for free. The hostgator sitebuilder service provides up to 4500 templates in various categories. No matter if you just want to create a showcase site or photo gallery or ecommerce application, you can get it ready in few minutes by following template.

hostgator sitebuilder hosting

Hostgator sitebuilder hosting includes:

  • Free siteBuilder tools
  • 4,500 free website templates
  • Free website & database transfer
  • $100 Google adwords offer

Visit Hostgator for sitebuilder hosting plans www.Hostgator.com

More about Sitebuilder Hosting

Almost every hosting provides some kind of sitebuilder service. Besides the software itself, what more we should focus on is service quality such as server performance, security and customer support etc. For today's web hosting, we have more choice to setup a website by one click installer. Especially when we need to build a high performance dynamic website, those open source solution like wordpress and joomla are best choice because it's supported everywhere by a large community in the world.

Best Website Auto Installer

website script auto installer

Scripts Auto Installer overview

Auto installer is used for quick installation over website scripts like wordpress, joomla, drupal and many other open source applications. It's highly recommended for website quick setup. If you're a webmaster, you don't need go through the boring steps but just by few clicks away for mass websites deployment. If you're a newbie user, you don't need to deal with various tech stuff and be able to get the site running by clicking your mouse point!  The auto installer scripts come with almost every web hosting provider, Here we're going to introduce the most popular ones that's used by web hosting providers

Fantastico – Developped by netenberg group, the first and the oldest scripts auto installer for cpanel. Just from several years ago, fantastico is recognized the standard add-on for cpanel control panel. With more than 10.000 installations, it provides more than one million end users the ability to quickly install dozens of the leading open source content management systems into their web space.

However, comparing to newly competitors, fantastico seems a bit backward, its scripts library is very limited and always not updated with the newest script versions.

Softaculous – Softaculous is a great Auto Installer with over 150 great scripts and the library is still keep growing. Softaculous is ideal for Web Hosting companies and it could give a significant boost to your sales. These scripts cover most of the uses a customer could ever have. The best part is it's always kept with the newest software updates and in case there's new release of your installed script you will get email notification, you will be able to update via one click in control panel.

Installatron – Installatron is a state-of-the-art web application auto-installer and auto-upgrader (also known as a script installer) plugin for web hosting control panels. Installatron enables your users to install, manage, and upgrade a premier collection of the best applications on the web, all instantly at the click of a button. This installer is not yet popularly implemented by leading hosting providers.

SimpleScripts – Simplescripts is initially developped by bluehost group and provided for FREE with easy one-click management of over 100 of the web's top applications including WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, Roundcube, Gallery, and more. SimpleScripts is a "hosted service", so you can add applications to your existing web hosting account from their official site directly, no matter if your host added it to control panel or not!

Which auto installer is the best for web hosting purpose?

Softaculous is absolutely the best and introduced into most leading web hosting providers. Not just because it's used mostly by hosting providers, it's best for it's update frequency (both the scripts library and latest version scripts). In that we we'll always get the newest stable version script.

The second is Simplescripts. Being a free software, it's mainly introduced into Vdeck hosting control panel by EIG group. The only cpanel support over simplescripts is bluehost. So if you're using cpanel and looking for best auto installer for your clients, we highly recommend Softaculous as it has the largest scripts library and be able to keep everything up to date.

Best WebsitePanel Hosting

websitepanel hosting

Websitepanel Quick View

Websitepanel(dotnetpanel) is user friendly and easy to use windows hosting control panel. It is a complete portal for hosting company to automate the provisioning of a full suite of services on Windows servers. The powerful and flexible platform gives users simple point-and-click control over Windows Server applications including IIS, SQL Server, Exchange 2010, Sharepoint 2010, OCS, Lync and Hyper-V Deployments.

Websitepanel also provides a list of tools/modules to manage different services properly like Awstats, user import tools and whmcs module etc.

Best WebsitePanel Hosting

WebsitePanel is designed purposely for windows server and can only be working for windows hosting service. Till present, there're hundreds of providers use it for their business and the number is fast growing up for competitive service. Arvixe is award winning websitepanel hosting provider for its rich feature plans and superior service. Not only their seamless support to websitepanel software, they provide more than what we expect for website hosting.

Arvixe websitepanell hostingWebsitepanel hosting plan starts with only $5/mo and comes with 20% discount for yearly service deals. Hosting plan provides unlimited disk space, unlimited database plus a free domain name for life.

Check arvixe websitepanel hosting plans at www.Arvixe.com

For every arvixe websitepanel hosting account, customer get dedicated application pools and full trust support. All available features in websitepanel are provided as it is with no change.

  • Multiple domain name hosting opportunity
  • Free domain name registration
  • Unlimited database support
  • Unlimited disk space /data transfer
  • Low cost hosting plans
  • Full accessibility to hosting service
  • 99% server uptime guarantee
  • Websitepanel official certified partner

More advantages can be discovered by your solely experience with their hosting. Websitepanel is only simple support by arvixe hosting and their real advantages are about technical features, server performance and customer support. Always remember, websitepanel is only the software for hosting service management and what we really purchased is the real hosting service and the standards to charge a good hosting is always about performance and support.

More about Websitepanel

1. Ability to manage hosting account sign up & Activation as well as suspension, range from standard hosting account, domain account, reseller account. you can manage all stuff under one place.

2. Billing integration, manage third party billing system can be integrated with Dotnetpanel such as whmcs.

3. Website IIS settings, space & bandwidth analyzation and log illustration.

4. Security, websitepanel allows you log all user login activity and track any account change such as profile update and other sensitive changes.

Websitepanel is offered by light weight windows installers. The setup and configuration is pretty straight and fast. Just click through the guidance and the installer will setup everything on your server.

Websitepanel open source

Before this name, websitepanel was popularly known as dotnetpanel. In 2011, dotnetpanel revised all codes and jumped from a paid software to open source “free” software! Dotnetpanel is renamed to "websitepanel". Since then, the microsoft group even started to support the project. No matter if you want to manage a dedicated server or hosting services or customize your own control panel, websitepanel is the ideal solution you can benefit from.

Websitepanel vs Plesk

Websitepanel and Plesk are probably the only choice for windows hosting control panel solution if you don't have your own. But which is better considerring both friendly and powerful? Plesk is actually the best before websitepanel goes free. Being the earliest control panel solution, plesk is almost standard choice for all windows hosting providers. However, it' doesn't mean websitepanel is bad software. Instead, after going open source, it's supported by more and more communities and received huge improvement comparing to the old paid version. The newlest release is actually looking better than plesk panel.

Their real difference is on product support. Plesk is licensed software and supported by a dedicated support team. We can get quality customer service if we got into problems in using it, because we paid it! On the other hand, websitepanel can be supported by everybody in the community. We can also get fast response over problems but it requires us be knowlegeable over asp.net and programming. It means who uses this software must be tech powerful.

Best Plesk Hosting

best plesk hosting

Plesk Introduction

Plesk Hosting control panel is production of parallels LLC. (Known as SWsoft in the past). Plesk has plenty of components to help administrator and end user configure hosting services fastly, the user friendly interface is easily to operate and will minimize the server downtime for migration. The professional and powerful design is by far the number 1 popular control panel software.

Best Plesk Hosting

Hosting come with Plesk control panel are plenty, but you should always consider the top reliable ones, dealing with the right hosting will save you a lot  of time by all means. Here're some good plesk hosting companies verified by webmasters.

The best plesk hosting award goes to Hostgator for editor's choice 2013. If you're looking for reliable, affordble and best value plesk hosting service, hostgator is absolutely the best choice today!

hostgator php mysql hosting One of the largest Web hosting provider in the world, also a golden partner of Parallels group. Although the hostgator windows hosting service only started in 2011, it's configured with all leading technologies and server products. Their service is now powering more than 8 million domains for 400,000 customers in over 200 countries. With over 10 network backbones, hostgator offers 99.9% uptime guarantee plus an RSS feed for service status updates.

hostgator plesk hosting features

Visit www.Hostgator.com for plesk hosting plan details!

What's included with Plesk?

Plesk is perfect solution for server automation, it has simplified the administration for Hosting, website and email admin. no matter if you like to use plesk for hosting business or install on your dedicated server, plesk is the primary choice. Plesk main features are following this:

  • Compatible for Windows and Linux, no matter if you're running microsoft IIS or Apache or Tomcat web server, plesk will handle it perfectly.
  • Compatible with various FTP and DNS software.
  • Compatible with Mysql, Ms Access and SQL Server.
  • Compatible with the most popular Email software such as Merak, Smartermail.
  • Built to enable Web hosting
  • Has integrated billing system
  • Built in Plesk SiteBuilder wizard
  • Sell antivirus/antispam with panel
  • Single-click app installation
  • IPv6 Support
  • SNI Support

As we see, with plesk, we almost get everything to launch web hosting service since all required tools are provided as default such as billing, hosting automation, email and database etc are all included. It's hard to find another control panel software that managed doing so.

Plesk vs cpanel

To follow up the industry standards, almost 99% web hosting providers are basaed the two control panel solutions. For top hosting providers, it's hard to find an exception that's using another hosting control panel.

Features – Cpanel is undoubtedly perfect for most users as we discussed on Cpanel review page, however cpanel is by far only available for linux server while plesk works great on both OS. The windows version cpanel enkompass already offered free but still hard to compete with plesk because it works with active directory only.

Price – Plesk has a long history in the industry since the release, it's little more expensive than Cpanel and plesk has many commercial add-ons which will charge a fee as well. Since cpanel is working with the open source linux, you can find many good free softwares.

Should I use plesk or cpanel?

I have to say it depends your experience. Plesk works with both windows and linux servers but works the best under windows and considered the standard hosting control panel for windows hosting. Before Plesk 10, plesk was alwasy reported issues over linux. The cpanel is definitely best choice for linux server and probably only choice for best user experience. It's powerful and user friendly solution that brings lots of great features to save your server managing tasks.

The basic conclusion is: if you're running a windows server and need a hosting control panel, you can choose plesk or websitepanel. If it's linux, go with cpanel with no doubts.