I had not heard of DotEasy.com Hosting services before, but came across this review of their Free hosting service.  It would appear that they provide banner free(ergo they do not advertise on your website) hosting service to people and businesses.  The primary drawback of their service per the review is their uptime reliability.

They do offer a paid version as well, which comparatively speaking, looks like last years rates. 

The Free hosting plan is definitely the better buy!  (Go figure  )

Here is what they come with in their service offerings:

Doteasy is providing Linux and Windows web hosting services, has been founded in 1999 and now it’s eigth years in business.

Comes with:
100MB disk storage
1000MB monthly traffic
10 email accounts, with domain registration

Web Hosting Review – Doteasy at Online Business Resources

More information on DotEasy Hosting. 

The free service is supposed to be for business as wells as people.  There is a fee however if you donot register your domain through DotEasy.  If you have your own domain registered already, they charge $35 as a domain transfer fee (I suppose that is for repointing or something, which a typical person can do themselves for free.) 

Domain transfer fee can be waived if you refer 2 people.

So as I see it, if you already own a domain, this is probably not the service for you if you can not find hosting that costs less than $35 per year.  ($50 is about the average so this may be a good deal regardless for simple websites).

If you do not have a domain name yet, then this can be a good buy.

New Domain Registrations cost $18/year, which is about 3 times what I pay to register a domain through iPower ($6.50).  But iPower does not provide free hosting either.

So the important thing here is to look at the total package.  I suspect that this is a great deal for people looking to build websites that are just a landing page or maybe 5-6 page sites covering simple products or services like say plasma lift accessories for TV’s, or affiliate specials or something. 

Its probably also good for people that are looking to create a simple site, say for the kids soccer team, or a teacher creating a simple class page or something, but this probably would not be terribly great for running a dynamic site or a site with lots of images (of course images can be hosted through flikr or something for free.)

In our last article we talked about how to fight sites that steal your content. That article was directed at fighting spam by contacting the hosting company that powers the website behind the spam.  Now in that article we were talking about splogs in particular that steal content and not talking about SPAM that comes in the email variety (unwanted emails sent to your inbox promoting peculiar behaviors or hoodia diet supplements or something even more bizarre.)

The Marketing Blog however offers up a bad hosting review account of an experience with DreamHost, a hosting company that we cover somewhat regularly. 

Most of the reviews and recommendations we have received about DreamHost have been positive, but we simply present here the bad in addition to the good.  You be the judge as you make your own hosting decisions.

Now this particular website owner apparently had a website hosted on Dreamhost.  Someone brought a complaint to Dreamhost about their website claiming that it had sent a spammy email.  However the website owner did not use the dreamhost website domain for sending email, instead they used a different provider that enabled them to comply with the canned spam act. 

It sounds like they knew what they were doing in sending emails and also seems unlikely that they would send spam based on their knowledge.

So long story short, the original party that complained never was able to provide evidence in the form of the offending email.  However Dreamhost canceled the website anyway, without any evidence.

So The Marketing Blog owner is now working to use their blogging voice to spread the word about their experience, a practice that is very common amongst bloggers that feel they have been wronged.

Fitness for the Occasion wrote a nice article discussing how to fight Spam Blogs through their hosts when they steal your own content.  In this article, Web Hosting: Allowing Spam Blogs, Dan (Fitness) talks about his efforts to fight spam blogs through HostGator and GoDaddy.

He seems to have found more success with GoDaddy as compared to HostGator, which is probably not terribly surprising given the size of GoDaddy.

Dan mentions his efforts to fight off blogspot splogs which were not successful. 

I personally have found that it is possible to report Blogspot splogs directly to Google, but Google does seem to work at their own speed and sense of urgency.  On a lighting website that I worked as a copywriter, I found that several of my articles were getting splogged all the time.  One article that covered Seagull lighting of all topics, seemed to get picked up and spread around about 23 different sites.  Now, initially, I didn’t mind as the site owner was looking to spread the word about their products, but soon the splogs started to get the facts completely mixed up, backwards and false and so we ended up going after the batch of them with mixed results.

The normal path for people to address these issues is through the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) at http://www.copyright.gov/.

I ran across this a discussion on a forum where a poster was trying to figure out what to do when their Hosting company appeared to fail to deliver the guaranteed 99% uptime promised in their reseller package.

I have recently brought a reseller account and part of the deal was hosting guarenteed uptime was 99% however, the site is down a lot of the time so i was wondering how i go about making a formal complaint, stop them from doing this to other people and getting my money back.
The hosting company just refuse to help saying its not there problem.
Surely if my sites down, then its there problem?

Web Hosting Complaint – Help! – Web Hosting – My Site

Your website is useless if your host is down and your site is offline and so this is a very important question for many people. 

What is a Reseller?

A hosting reseller is a person that purchase up a block of hosting space and then resells that space to other sites.  They can typically get a slightly better deal as they are leasing hosting space in bulk.  However, the real advantage in being a reseller normally comes into play for webmasters that are managing multiple website accounts that they either own themselves or that they manage for their web clients.  The reseller level usually gives them more control over the accounts and easier access to provide a tech support interface.

What can you do to keep your Hosting Company up for as much of the time as they promised?

1. Always pay for your plan with a visa or mastercard.  An actual credit card, not a debit card or a paypal card.  If your provider fails to deliver, you can charge them back.  This should be a last resort as it will likely lead to a disruption in your web service and might force a move of your websites to a new host.
2. If things are that bad, move to a different host.  Do not reward bad service with continued business.
3. Keep good records of the situations where the hosting service goes down, and the amount of time that it is down during those situations even if you have to use a pocket watch ~ I recommend a screen recorder program if the host is down for less than 15 minutes at a time typically.  Make sure you note these records and the statistics to your host when you talk with them.
4. Before charging your host back, try getting them to improve their uptime.  Seek promises in writing, keep copies of emails and chat sessions.
5. Ask for discounts on your hosting plan to compensate for downtime.  It doesn’t fix the problem but places a financial impact on the host and alleviates your costs slightly.  That said, a discount probably is not worth as much as keeping your site(s) up and running and making you or your customers money.
6. Ask for an account upgrade at no additional cost.
7. Review your plan.  Maybe your plan is just not meeting your needs and you need to consider upgrading yourself.  That said, if your host can not deliver on its promises with the level of plan that you have now, then they may not do any better when you pay them more for a bigger plan.

This evening I came across a very in depth review of Site5 Web Hosting at a site called Flixya.  The review caught my attention as the review detailed very well what a multi-site account was and how it worked.  This is something that I myself have been considering a migration towards (under a different host) but had not found a good description until this review.

One feature I like about site5 hosting is the multisite accounts. It is basically a full featured control panel for each domain. Unlike other shared web hosting companies which uses domain pointers, a multisite accounts exists on its own with its own subdomains, domain pointer, ftp, mysql etc. This help me to organize my websites better especially if you have a lot of domains. You can set the diskspace and bandwidth from the main pool of your web hosting account.

 

Two other aspects about this review that stood out was the mention of the flashback service provided by Site5 enabling a person running a multi-site plan to flip their domain back to an earlier time.

I would agree with the reviewer that at $149 for a 2 year multi-site plan Site5’s rates sound affordable, about the price of a decent pair of golf shoes.

I also agree that their lack of Multiple IP address options and inability to provide upgrade transfer options to existing customers could stand some improvement.

I’d like to take a minute to mention a friend of mine and fellow blogger, Andrew Ian Dodge.  He is hosted on VerveHosting, whom I’d like to call on to provide Andrew with free hosting as he goes through a battle with cancer.

Andrew Ian Dodge is preparing to write a new book.  Andrew has recently battled colon cancer and he is preparing to write a book about his experiences being recently diagnosed, undergoing surgery and soon he will travel through the process of chemotherapy.

I look forward to his book and perspective and wish him the best and a successful survival against cancer.

Through all of this, Andrew has maintained his sense of humor.  He has a long way to go not only with his effort to survive the cancer but also in dealing with the challenges of life with chemotherapy and the very very large medical bills that come with the entire process.  When you undergo these types of procedures, it is rare for a person to be allowed the luxury to sit back and focus entirely on getting better.  They often times have to find a new life balance between their personal life, their work requirements, and their new medical needs.  Andrew may not be purchasing horse riding apparel anytime soon, but he is getting back in the saddle as a writer and seizing the day.

Dodgeblogium » Blog Archive » Writing the cancer…

Reading about the accomplishment of a relatively new host, Webhostingpad.com, 

Web Hosting Provider Webhostingpad.com Reaches 75,000 Domains , we decided to start covering this relatively new hosting company here at Top 5 Hosting.  The company has been around since about 2005.  Growing to a level of 75,000 domains is not necessarily a good thing from a customer service perspective.  However, it does increase the likelihood that the company will remain a growing concern. 

As we have seen in our reviews of other hosting companies, many companies work to marginally offset their costs by growing quickly and this is often measured by the number of domains.  Domain numbers can seem inflated when you factor in parked domains or made for adsense domains focusing on mesothelioma lawyer advertising.

Show me the stats on bandwidth or up time percentages and how they relate to customer satisfaction survey results or call center metrics and that would mean a lot more to me.

Domainers that purchase a large number of domain names or even web masters or web designers that register a large number of domains, might consider setting themselves up as a registrar or domain reseller.

Tucows is an online company that can enable you to do this.  Its a little more involved than regular affiliate sales, but it can be worthwhile in both savings as well as in possible margin earnings (a buck or two).  Regardless, it is something to consider and might make for a good addition to your business line up.  If nothing else, it can remove a middle man from the picture when it comes to domain transfers and managing your domain name through Icann.

For non domainer types, I’d offer an example of another perspective.   I worked with a client a while back on a site focusing on bodybuilding supplements.  Working with domains directly, it can save your budget a little money that might be used to register additional domains to prevent your hard work and effort from being picked up by domain squatters. 

Hey this week we are adding coverage for a hosting service called HostPapa.

If you register your domain with HostPapa, you get free registration for life (Life of your hosting plan including renewals).  There hosting fees are coming in at what has become the new pricing norm of about $5.95 per month.

I’ll let you know more about HostPapa as we explore it and learn more here.  If you have HostPapa hosting stories or hosting reviews to offer as always leave us a comment or drop us an email at info@top-5-hosting.com and we’ll be more than happy to list your review and provide full credit to your website. 

(Be sure to include your first name, last initial, website name and website url)

Keep in mind that we are not performing in depth analysis on these reviews.  We offer up casual anecdotes about real experiences those situational stories that can make or break a good experience.  We are not looking for the hard core metrics like you would find in a corporate performance management report. 

The Human Element in Hosting Company Reviews

We look for the reviews and anecdotes of the one off situations, and how the hosting company handled the situation.  These are typically the opportunities for hosting companies to present the human element and in an industry that has a price that is rapidly becoming a commodity the big differentiation for a hosting company is the human element.

iPower is offering a special Christmas special.  You can sign up for one of their 1 or 2 year hosting plans at the Pro level for only $4.95 per month.

That is very cheap for the package that you get.  This is probably better tailored towards bloggers or people running their own websites for a business or something as opposed to web masters(for which IPower has a reseller option when running many sites and domains).

This price is probably comparable to DreamHost’s rates, but theoretically you will receive many more benefits and perks with an iPower Pro plan.

iPower Offer Only Available through Top 5 Hosting

The price on this offer normally runs $7.95 and the options that come with it look like this:

You can order this for 1 year or 2 years, but at the end of that term, the rate defaults back to whatever the normal rate happens to be then.  (It’s currently $7.95 per month.)

Last night I was forced to take a night off and watch the season finale of Heroes by my nemesis, At&t. 

AT&T is my nemesis because they slammed me into a higher calling plan in 2000 and charged me over $1000 for calls on a regular phone line at a rate of $2.50 per minute.  I vowed never to do business with them again, but recently they purchased Bellsouth where I get DSL and I am still working to unwind that relationship and replace it with Time Warner cable service.

I was busy working on a website last night when the problems started at around 6:30 p.m. Eastern time.  All of a sudden I couldn’t access most of the websites I was visiting, and I can receive e-mail but I couldn’t send e-mail.  Shortly after that, my wife’s computer was not able to access websites either with the exception of Google but not Google News.

I rebooted my modem and wireless router a couple of times, but nothing seemed to work.  I rebooted my computer and my wife’s computer and that didn’t help either.  Since I didn’t have access to the Internet, I couldn’t verify that there was a problem and I didn’t really feel like dealing with AT&T in their customer support because AT&T customer support is an oxymoron.

So I just sat back and watched TV for a couple hours and waited for the DSL to get fixed.

Illustrative of a Need for Redundant Backups

the problem turned out to be an issue with AT&T’s DSL hardware.  My first guess was that my neighbor who was doing some construction on their house had managed to slip into some fiber optic cables or something.  It wasn’t my neighbor.  It was AT&T.  Of course their equipment getting a little old and it’s not up to par and DSL was a stopgap measure to use the telephone equipment that the phone companies already had.  It wasn’t really designed for heavy broadband use, just broadband use.

So AT&T failed because they don’t have a redundant system to back up their equipment when it went down.  As a small business, that illustrated my own need to have a redundant to access the Internet.  Now I have a mobile phone and I can access the Internet through my Treo.  But I think this illustrates my need for a wireless air card or a secondary service for the Internet.  I’m getting close to the point where I might even consider a T1 line and a service plan that guarantees minimal downtime in the event something happens.  That might even be something that I buy myself for Christmas from a company that is. 

Sources and Inspirations -DSL outage hits AT&T in Southeast – CNN.com

There are many ways to kick off your site and build it up to gain more traffic.  Most of those ways involve time and link building in addition to designing a great website with good content or functionality.

Some of these tools include Directory Submission tools.  Some of these you can pay for and some of these you can do yourself.

My advice is that if you are building up a blog, you should use this list of over 125 blog related directories.  It takes some times, but can definitely benefit your blog.

If you are building up a website, especially a business website, then you should consider having your business site submitted to the primary directories the right way.  For this I suggest PrioritySubmit.com.  Let them do the work, cross the T’s and dot the i’s and insure that you get into those major web directories in the way that you want to be listed.  You can attempt it yourself, but odds are you will have to submit and resubmit multiple times if you don’t follow the red tape just the right way.

	Priority Submissions
	48 Hour Inclusion to all major search engines and web directories with PrioritySubmit.com!

If you are blogging about football or the Super Bowl, that is one thing and the right avenue is to get listed in directories that target blogs and the people that are looking for information on those blogs.

If you are running a site that sells Superbowl tickets, then a blog directory listing isn’t going to fit well (unless you have a related blog to promote too).  In this case you will want to insure that your site is listed in DMOZ and Yahoo and Ask to name a few.