The Cheap Hosting Catch

Cheap Web Hosting May Not Be As Cheap As You Thought

Mar 29, 2010 Web Hosting

Have you ever looked for a cheap web host? It may be for cost reasons, a personal website or a test website that we want separate from our main sites. Whatever the reason, the allure of unlimited hosting for $5.95 or even $3.95 per month can be hard to resist. The problem is that cheap web hosting may not be as cheap as it appears on the surface.

To get that low price, you almost always have to sign up for 2 years or more. That means you pay for those years up front. So instead of spending, let’s say, $3.95 per month, you actually have to pay $142.20 for the 3 year plan right at the beginning.

If you want to go for 2 years, you end up paying $4.95 per month. That’s $118.80 up front. Going down to 1 year, that’s $71.40 up front at $5.95 per year. To have your hosting billed monthly, the price goes up to $7.95 per month plus an initial setup fee of up to $35.

So, our cheap web hosting at $3.95 turned out to be $7.95 per month plus a setup fee. Additionally, some hosts don’t even offer monthly billing anymore. Their minimum signup is 3 months or even 1 year. If cost will be a deciding factor in the host you pick, try to find one that has no setup fee if you pay monthly.

Most hosts have a money back guarantee. So if you leave, they should refund the balance. However, if that hosting came with a free domain, they could deduct up to $35 if you leave. They may also raise your rate to that of a shorter term if you leave early. So, if you left your 3 year contract after 1 year, you may be charged the 1 year rate and refunded less. Not to mention the hassle of getting a refund in general.

Remember, all of this information has to be in their terms of service. Always read it before you sign up!

The long-term low price can be a great deal if you are certain you will stay with that host. However, it can be tough paying in full at the beginning. Laying out the cash at the beginning is also a risk since you have not tried their service.

If you are new to the web or won’t need hosting for that long, this is no deal at all. Also, especially for business (ecommerce and internet marketing), what happens if you leave because you need to upgrade? Hopefully your business will grow steadily over time and you will need higher capacity hosting sooner than 2 years from when you start. Locking into a 3 year plan may make that transition more troublesome than it should be.

It’s my feeling that for those starting out on the web, with business or personal websites, it’s better to pay month to month. Once you are established, know your business’s direction and have a host you know is good, then sign up for a longer term.

So, have you signed up for a cheap hosting account and found out they weren’t as cheap as they advertised (or as good)?

Tags: Cheap Hosting, Web Hosting

Do You Own Your Name?

If Someone Else Owns Your Name, Your Reputation May Be At Risk

Mar 22, 2010 Domains, Ecommerce, Internet Marketing

How can someone else own your name? Well first off, we aren’t talking about any of your domain names – we’re talking about your name. It may be obvious, but your name identifies who you are. It’s on your checks, your mail and anything else that identifies you in the physical world.

In the digital world, your name is part of your online identity as well. You may put it under your blog and forum posts, in your email signature and on your website. We work hard to build a positive personal identity online, especially if it relates to our business. In today’s web 2.0 environment of Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other social and even viral networking, maintaining your good reputation is vital to your business.

That’s why it’s so important to own your name as a domain name. If your name is John Smith, and someone registered your name as johnsmith.com, they can put up whatever site they want. This could be another real person that has the same name as you, John Smith. They simply got to the domain before you and put up a personal website. In this case, there is less reason for concern. The other Mr. Smith is just doing his thing on the web and it’s clear he’s not you.

On the other hand, what if johnsmith.com is used for illegal music, video or software sharing, porn, or spamming? That could be a problem. Which do you think is the worst of that list? Many of you may say porn, but for someone with an internet marketing or ecommerce business, it’s really spamming. It could involve email spamming, comment spamming on forums or blogs, search engine abuse or another violation of a company’s terms of service.

If you wrongfully become associated with this activity, it can cause you a lot of headaches. It can take months to build a good online reputation and a good rapport with your customers. It can take only days to destroy it. Someone trying to make a quick buck piggybacking on your reputation can kill your business. This is not just with your customers, but potentially with companies that provide you services as well.

To be clear, we’re not talking about identity theft here. This is far easier. This is someone either masquerading as you to steal some of your business or someone just using the domain for their questionable dealings. While a simple WHOIS search will show anyone this site’s true owner, not many people know to look there.

So what can you do about this? The answer is actually quite simple. Buy your name as at least a ‘.com’ domain name. Even if you never use it, that is the only way to really protect it. Grab your name as a domain name today. Visit NameCheap to do it

[they have the best prices 🙂 ].

Have you had any experiences with someone trying to ride your coattails or unintentionally (or intentionally) damage your online reputation? Post and share your experience… you may just help another reader prevent disaster.

Tags: Domain Names, Domain Registrar, Ecommerce, Internet Marketing

GreenGeeks is Now the Official “Drupal For Dummies” Web Host

GreenGeeks is Now the Go-To Company for Drupal Hosting

Mar 15, 2010 Web Hosting

Drupal is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) website building platforms. Drupal For Dummies is one of the latest in the series of For Dummies books by Wiley Publishing Inc.

The release of the Drupal For Dummies help book by Lynn Beighley is expected to help thousands of people learn how to use the widely popular Drupal content management system to build out their sites. GreenGeeks, now the official web hosting company for the Drupal for Dummies book, will be there to help make it even easier.

GreenGeeks servers are perfectly configured for the current version of Drupal (Version 6) and for the next version (version 7). Their commitment to Drupal hosting customers extends to custom video tutorials as well as where to go to learn Drupal Site Building, Site Structure and Administration Guides. They have even created a GreenGeeks Drupal Quick Starter Guide.

“I chose GreenGeeks.com to be the home of my Drupal For Dummies Web site because of their great customer support and excellent control panel. The hardest part of creating a Drupal site is getting Drupal installed. As a GreenGeeks customer, you can have your first Drupal site running in less than five minutes!” said Lynn Beighley, author of Drupal For Dummies.

GreenGeeks hosts the DrupalForDummies.com web site and is featured in the Drupal For Dummies help guide.
“We are very excited to have worked with Lynn as she wrote the book and we are excited to be a part of the Drupal community” says Trey Gardner CEO of GreenGeeks “Drupal is an ever growing part of our customer base as more and more people learn the merits of the Drupal program. We expect Lynn’s book to become a huge success in enabling many thousands of people learn Drupal and create terrific CMS driven web sites.”

So what makes GreenGeeks a top Drupal webhost?

For $6.95 per month, their EcoSite plan gives you:

• Unlimited Web Space
• Unlimited Data Transfer (bandwidth)
• FREE AUTO Drupal Script Installer
• FREE Domain for Life
• Unlimited Hosted Domains on 1 Account
• Own PHP.INI for customized PHP settings
• 300% Green Hosting – Wind Powered
• Maximum performance RAID-10 MySQL Servers
• 24/7 Live Support
• 99.97% uptime (independently verified).

Visit GreenGeeks to learn more about their outstanding Drupal hosting.

Do you use GreenGeeks hosting? How about GreenGeeks Hosting for Drupal?
Post a comment and share your experience.

Tags: cPanel, Drupal, Fantastico, Green Hosting, GreenGeeks, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unlimited Hosting, Web Hosting

Who Owns Your Web Hosting?

Seemingly different web hosts may actually be the same company.

Mar 8, 2010 Web Hosting

When you are searching for a web host, the first thing you might do is look at the features of different webhosts. Then, you might read reviews about those hosts. Overall, that’s a pretty good plan. However, you might be surprised to find out how many different web hosting services are actually owned by the same parent company.

Potentially all of the servers for each of those “different” web hosts are housed in the same data center. They are more than likely managed by the same IT staff. Customer support may also be handled by the same call center for each one of the hosts belonging to the parent company.

So is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. If the hosting providers have good reputations, then the parent company’s efforts to diversify their client base are working. The problem arises when the hosting providers don’t do a good job and have gained bad reputations.

Let’s say you read a review about Webhost X. The review just dumps all over them and how horrible their hosting service is. It goes on to recommend Webhost Y as an alternative that looks good. I think you see where I’m going with this. If Webhost X has a bad reputation and Webhost Y is relatively unknown (or not widely reviewed), but they are owned by the same company, you would be getting into the same mess with either choice.

The bottom line is that it’s always necessary to look into the hosting service you are considering, especially if the account will be for a business website. If you are looking for a good webhost that has been thoroughly evaluated, take a look at our webhost reviews. You can also try our HostSelector™ tool – it helps you find a good host that meets your specific needs.

In the interest of making this even easier for you, I have tracked down groups of webhosts that are owned by the same parent companies. Here is the list.

Companies: FastDomain, Bluehost, Inc., HostMonster, Inc.
Address: 1958 South 950 East, Provo, UT 84606
URLs: http://www.hostmonster.com/
http://www.bluehost.com/
http://hosting.fastdomain.com/
Contact Phone: Bluehost & Hostmonster – Sales Support: 866-573-4678
FastDomain Sales Support: 888-210-3278
BBB: These businesses are not registered with the BBB

This is the big one:

yourwebhosting.com and accountsupport.com are generic reseller hosting platforms. yourwebhosting.com is built on the same hosting infrastructure as easycgi and accountsupport.com is built on the same hosting infrastructure as hostcentric (they’re both the same). Within these platforms there are no references back to easycgi or hostcentric, which allows completely anonymous reselling.

Welcome to the MyMultiHost Blog!

Mar 1, 2010 MyMultiHost.com News

I’ve had the main site up for a while now, so I figured it was time to start a blog. There is only so much I can do with a static website. Now, I can post all sorts of web hosting, internet marketing and web design tips, recommendations, reviews and tutorials. The best part is… now I get to hear from you!

Feel free to comment, ask questions, make suggestions and share posts with your friends and social networks.

My goal is for this blog to help you and to foster informative discussions. Enjoy!