I want to host my personal site. Which Web Host Should I Choose To Host My Personal Site?

Usually personal web hosting ranges anywhere from free to $10-$25.00 per month. You might be asking yourself why you would consider paying $25.00 per month versus free. You can’t go wrong with free, can you? Well, that depends whether free is TRUELY free. Most hosting companies or services that offer free hosting will plaster ads on your own personal web site, some of which can be quite aggravating (blinking and moving across your screen come to mind). Also free hosting generally entails many very restrictive policies on how much you can upload to your site (if you have a lot of family photos or any video clips this could be a problem). Free hosting also almost always comes with very low bandwidth allocations which if you have a large family that likes to visit your web site, or a lot of recruiters visiting your online resume, your site may be shut down if it exceeds bandwidth restrictions.

As with most things in life, hosting is no different, you get what you pay for. That is why it is my recommendation to find a cheap/budget hosting company that will allow you the freedom of running your own web site without nasty little ads everywhere, or tons of restrictions which hinder you from building the kind of site you want. Your best bet when searching for this kind of hosting is to check out our Budget/Cheap category: http://www.cpwebhosting.net/web_hosting/

Some of the particulars you will want to note are as follows:

1. What are the bandwidth restrictions on traffic going to your site
2. What are the FTP restrictions (ie how much can you upload to your site)
3. Can you pay month to month or do you need to enter into a contract
4. How long have they been in business
5. How does technical support work (do you get to call someone or is the only technical support they offer available online or via email)

If the hosting company you are considering offers a money back guarantee or at a minimum does not force you into a contract, if you are unhappy with their services you can always find another host. Moving your site is pretty easy, simply download everything to your computer and upload it to your new hosting company.

what is the difference between a static and a shared IP Address?

An IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each of the four numbers can be from 0 to 255, an example would be 192.168.0.5 . The IP address identifies a sender or receiver of information across the Internet. When you request an HTML page or send e-mail the Internet Protocol part of TCP/IP includes your IP address in the message (actually, in each of the packets if more than one is required) and sends it to the IP address of the server to which you wish to communicate. The recipient can see the IP address of the Web page requestor or the e-mail sender and can respond by sending another message using the IP address it received. Each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique IP Address for the purposes of communication.

Based on this definition, we can establish that an IP Address is analogous to one’s home address. If someone is to send you mail, they put your address on the front of the envelope, and the mailman delivers it right to your door. IP Addresses work precisely the same way.

There are typically two types of IP Address that can be used in web hosting, Shared or Static. While there is no difference in the IP Address itself, there are some configuration changes on the servers they rest on.

A static IP Address is when a website has their very own IP Address. This means that whether you type in your URL or the IP address of your website, both will bring you to the same page.

A shared IP Address is when multiple websites all share the same IP Address. In this case, the web server does a little bit of extra work when it receives your web request, and passes you to the correct website. Typing in the IP Address will not bring you to your desired website, under most conditions. Why do we need this? I’m sure you noticed that, based on the above definition of an IP Address, that there is a finite number of IP Addresses available before we run out completely. If every single website on the internet had it’s own IP Address, there would be no room for any new ones.

Back to our home address analogy, you might consider a static IP Address to be a stand-alone home. There is only one house who gets mail at that address. You might then consider a shared IP Address to be an apartment building. Many different households get their mail at the same location, and in turn it is distributed to the correct location.

How does this affect you? In most cases, it wont. A static IP Address may be required if you need to have some sort of special access to your website, like SSL or Anonymous FTP. If you have no special requirements, then a shared IP will work under most conditions.

I don’t have a dedicated server now. When should I make the decision to switch over to one?

You may want to move up to a dedicated server if your needs match or surpass the following:

• Programs require access by system administrator
• A backup server is required
• Multiple IP addresses are needed
• Daily data transfer becomes excessive
• Storage capacity becomes excessive
• Third party software needs to be run on your site

Thanx starsearch

What should be my main concerns when searching for a dedicated hosting provider?

First, you need to determine whether or not your website is large enough to justify the cost of such an endeavor. That aside, the most common concerns are:

• The cost
• Security of Data and equipment
• Bandwidth Availability
• The knowledge and integrity of the web-hosting provider
• Technical support from the web-hosting provider
• Uptime
• Hardware maintenance

How many have you signed up with a hosting company just because they had a phone number available for sales or support? How important is phone support for you?

No, phone support is not my 1 priority

In my opinion phone support should be the last option for technical support. However customers still feel more comfortable when they see a toll free number available

Being able to talk to some one in the company before signing up puts more confidence in a customer I guess.

Most definitely. I think a hosting company would do much better at sales if there was direct phone to company management. A lot more customers would be impressed with the fact they can call and speak with the VP or the owner of a company and see what state the company is in. Certainly not for support issues, but its a great way to connect with customers.

I think that phone support and telephone sales are very important for any hosting companies.

I can’t say that phone support is very important for me. Definitely not. I prefer ticket system, live chat and e-mail.

many times the customer may feel neglected by the phone support as opening a ticket will be the right way and sometimes they fail to understand that but when the question comes on the smaller issues which can be solved in an instant by the phone support and which doesn’t need a ticket to be opened; that time phone support is quite useful and quick in making the customer satisfied with their service.

I think that phone support is the bes deal to ask pre-salles questions.

There are a couple of reasons why I both don’t require phone support nor do I offer it:

1. Logging. – This is the number one thing for me. I like to have records of communication both as a client and as a host in everything I do. Nine times out of ten, I prefer email and/or helpdesk. On the company side of things, I am able to log communications so when we’re blamed for something, I can look back and prove that we did our part or can see where we made a mistake.

2. Perception of instant support. – As stated above, some think that one phone call should resolve the issue. I’d rather not have someone yelling in our ear why we simultaneously try and resolve the problem or setup the appropriate measures that need to be taken.

3. Cost. – True phone support costs money and it’s not really worth it until a company has a substantial client base, IMHO.

My experience pretty much agrees with the poll, though it is a small number right now (the poll). Most people don’t require phone support. There are those that do, and that’s fine. Good email/helpdesk support does the job.

phone support can be a cool thing to have but it can be more annoying than help. there may be the possibility that the person doesn’t understand, then gets frustrated. I would rather choose a host that has 24/7 tech support with or without the toll free number

Still there some people who are offering unlimited diskspace, bandwidth ? When it’s impossible why do they claim this?

Probably because they are new to the industry and havn’t done their research. Or maybe because they still think it’s a valid marketing technique. There could be any number of reasons why.

The average website doesn’t really get very many visitors and doesn’t take up much space. Most of my websites are good with about 5-20 megs of space and less than 1Gig of transfer.

They say it because not only is it a marketing ploy but it works to get people to signup. Even though people are becoming more and more educated about these types of issues, if hosts are still offering it it’s because it is still working. I’m not sure there will ever be a day when nobody will claim to offer such a thing. Of course you won’t see those offers here — or at least not for long.

Which is more important when choosing a host, price or reliability?

reliability over price

price is meaningless if detached from reliability.

When building any commercial website it, is always a good idea to spend a couple more dollars a month if it means better support and reliability.

Its depend on your hosting needs, is it a mission critical or eCommerce web site? If it isn’t then I’ll go for price over reliability.

reliability should definately come before price.

From a company perspective, I would hope that “reliability” would be vitally important. It is hard for us to compete on price with Joe Blow who runs his hosting business out of his bedroom in his underwear. We do compete very well when service is a factor as we have a proven track record.

You need to define first what is important for you. If you can afford a downtime from time to time then go with cheap host. But you can not expect to have a service with good uptime and realiable support for a dollar a month.

Hi,
I m looking for a web hosting account with SugarCRM software. Is there is any web host which provide it?

Yes, cpwebhosting.net provides SugarCRM software with their web hosting account.

Can u tell me What is SugarCRM?

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes.

There are three version of SugarCRM –

1. Sugar Enterprise
2. Sugar Professional
3. Sugar Open Source

Thanx but what are the difference between them.

Sugar Enterprise offers all features available in the open source version plus additional functionality.

Sugar Professional offers a mid-range solution between Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Open Source. Sugar Professional includes all the functionality in Sugar Open Source plus:

* Team Management
* Cross-Module Reporting
* Campaign Reporting
* Quotes and Catalog Module
* Forecasting
* Wireless Access
* Microsoft Outlook Integration

Sugar Enterprise offers all features available in the open source version plus additional functionality.

Product Functionality:

* Team Management
* Cross-Module Reporting
* Campaign Reporting
* Quotes Module
* Catalog Module
* Forecasting
* Wireless Access
* Microsoft Outlook Integration
* Offline Client Synchronization
* Oracle 10g Support
* Oracle 91 Support
* Advanced Reporting with SQL Reports

Support

* Unlimited online and email support
* Receive automatic upgrades and maintenance of Sugar Enterprise for the term of your contract
* Gain access to the premium knowledge base support and Sugar developer forums
* Access to additional, optional services such as: Extended Support, Developer Support and Professional Consulting Services

Hi,
cpwebhosting.net provides SugarCRM software with their web hosting account.What SugarCRM editions are available and What are the deployment options are available?

Hi,

I would like to know what people are mostly searching for?

1. Huge Space and BW in Cheap Prices?
OR
2. Small Packages with great support and uptime

Number 2 for sure. All the space and bandwidth in the world means nothing if your site is down.

Combo of bandwidth and uptime.
Don’t care about space or support.

No. 1 is Always the better option.

Whats the difference between Unlimited and Unmetered Bandwidth?

Unlimitied is not real.
Unmeterd is not watched.

Unmetered means there’s a limit, but you can use up to your limit as fast as you’d like (versus metered, which might give you 30 GB in a month, and allow you to only use 1 GB per day).

Unlimited would be where you can use as much bandwidth as you want, at any time. Clearly, this is impossible.

Unlimited is not possible to do. The only way Unmetered is possible is when the hosting company has a ton of servers whether managed or other wise, and they do NOT have to worry about going over their space.

Unlimited doesn’t exist, because there are limits to nearly everything in life.

Unmetered is basically saying, “We won’t monitor how much you use…” The trick with that is, if you use enough to cause yourself to become noticed, you get the axe.

Unlimited, the term used to describe an account that has no limitations. If you wish to hold a 500GB file, then go ahead and try. The catch in the cog of unlimited is that it is impossible. Bandwidth will always be limited by the power of the communications hardware in the datacenter, and space will be limited as drives have a set limit, the current largest single hard drive being a 1TB Hitachi. But at 400$ a pop, hosts can’t afford to stick those hard drive in for one 9.95$ a month user can they .

Unmetered is a slightly complex setup. In unmetered, your use isn’t monitored. However there is a limit. Unmetered connections are always shared with other servers, so if you buy a dedicated server on a 100mbs unmetered conenction, you’re probably sharing it with 6 other people. Many times, however, there is a set speed, such as 20mbs. So what does that all equate too? Well it means that while your server is connected to a 100mbs line, you server will only see 20mbs if the line is at peak usage. But when the line is fairly free, you’ll share the leftovers. So say with 6 servers on the line, only 1 other is actually pulling any load on the line. Well then you may see 45mbs on your server. And with unmetered, there are no caps on monthly transfers. So if your host sets the minimum speed to 20mbs, then you will see at least 6TB every month of bandwidth. But you could also see more.