BEST WEB HOSTS (2009)

FatCow

Features:

FatCow Plan
Fatcow makes a strong statement to embark on, by offering unlimited Disk Space, Bandwidth, Email Accounts, Databases and Add on/Sub/Parked Domains. Along with that they also provide a Website Builder which was quite impressive, a program to set up an online cartPowerplay and Shared SSL). They also allow the customer to (supporting major credit cards, renew their domains automatically (provided your credit card information is known to them forehand), point their domains and change the registrar. These features act as a chief plus point for FatCow over many other web hosts preset on the internet. They also take Server backups on a daily basis, which ensures the fact that your data with FatCow is secured. Fatcow also provides wordpress, Galley2, phpBB, Joomla and 2gb of Carbonite Online backup. The one downside here would be the fact that FatCow neither has cPanel nor Fantastico, meaning if you happen to be a novice, you will have to struggle through the tedious process of installing other scripts.
With this plan they also offer a free domain name.

MiniMoo Plan
FatCow has fundamentally offered this plan for those who haven’t yet begun with their Website and would like to show a custom “coming soon” or “For Sale”  page. It also offers some crucial features including Newsletter management, WebMail (1 account provided), a ‘coming soon’ page etc. This package is great for selling your domain etc. At only $5 per year its very afforadable!

Plans and Pricing
Currently FatCow.com offers 2 plans, the FatCow plan costing $66/year, and the mini moo plan costing $5/year. Considering FatCow regularly provides various discounts and offers, it would be advisable to keep a watch at their feature pages (Here). The prices at FatCow happen to be pretty low, but they come at a cost of lack of cPanel and Fantastico. Also you must register for 1 year at minimum, which also is one of their few drawbacks.

Customer Service & Reliability
This is where things loosen up a bit as fat as FatCow’s Professionalism goes. We contacted their Live Support 3 times, where we had to approximately wait for 2-3 minutes before we were connected to the Sales/Tech person. It took them roughly 2-3 minutes again, to reply to our queries, which many a times were not the answers we required, or were incomplete. This acts as a major drawback as far as FatCow’s steadfastness is concerned. One thing though, that we noticed was that there were relatively very few complaints from the customers with FatCow web hosting, as we have seen with other web hosting services.

Overview

Features: 4/5
Plans & Pricing: 3.5/5
Customer Service & Reliability :3/5
Overall Score: 3.5/5. [Recommended]

In one piece, FatCow provide some solid features along with decent pricing and extremely high reliability, but with the condition of registering for 1 year at least, devoid of cPanel, Fantastico and a high-quality customer care service.

BlueHost

Features:

Bluehost offers decent features, including cPanel and Fantastico. We had a good experience while using it, considering cPanel was fairly fast and Fantastico could effortlessly install Wordpress etc. They also provide unlimited diskspace, and unlimited bandwidth with each plan they offer, along with unlimited addon domains, sub domains and parked domains, which acts as a plus point over many other hosts. They also provide 100 databases each for MySQL and Postgre, 1000 FTP accounts and 2500 email accounts, which is in most cases much more than adequate. We were surprised to notice the fact that BlueHost did not offer unlimited ftp/email accounts as well, which would have acted as an advantage from a practical point of view.

Also, lately BlueHost has also been providing

• Free Domain Name

• Site Promotion Package

• Free eCommerce/Cart

• Free Blog, Forum, Board

• Top Notch 24/7 Support

• $25 Free Yahoo Credits

• $50 Free Google Credits

Although, with terms and conditions implicated.

They also had a nice website builder as an add on which is pretty good for any novice with a lack of sufficient coding skills.

Plans and Pricing

It was rather difficult to find their detailed pricing list, so we had to ask for it from the Support Staff. Upon inquiring about their latest pricing details, this is what we were provided:

Best Value: 36 Month Account $6.95 a month

* 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
* No set up fees [$30 Savings]
* Less than $0.23 (23 cents) a day!
* $250.20 Total due at sign-up; [36 month account x $6.95 mo.]

24 Month Account $7.95 a month

* 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
* No set up fees [$30 Savings]
* Less than $0.27 (27 cents) a day!
* $190.80 Total due at sign-up; [24 month account x $7.95 mo.]

12 Month Account: $8.95 a month

* 1 FREE Domain Registration good for the life of your hosting package.
* No set up fee [$30 Savings]
* Less than $0.30 (30 cents) a day!
* $107.40 Total due at sign-up; [12 month account x $8.95 mo.]

6 Month Account: $99.70

* $9.95 A Month
* [+] $30 One Time Set Up Fee
* [+] $10 Annual Domain Registration Fee
* $99.70 Total due at sign-up [6 mo. x $9.95 mo.($59.70) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration]

3 Month Account: $69.85

* $9.95 A Month
* [+] $30 One Time Set Up Fee
* [+] $10 Annual Domain Registration Fee
* $69.85 Total due at sign-up [3 mo. x $9.95 mo.($29.85) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration]

Optional Features After Sign Up

* Additional Domain Names = $10.00 each year
* Dedicated IP = $30.00 each year [$2.50 mo.]
* SSL Certificates = $45.00 each year
* Expired Account Reactivations = $30.00
* Postini Mail Filtering = $1.00/mo per e-mail address [prorated]

(Note: 3 and 6 month plans are not offered with the free Domain or setup)

Their prices seem extremely good as compared to the prices that are offered by other web hosts. But it comes with a string attached; you must pay upfront for at least 3 months. BlueHost accepts all major Credit Cards (visa, masterCard, americanexpress, discover), paypal, checks (U.S. Only) and money orders, so paying them should not be a trouble at all.

Customer Service

Bluehost until a few years back, had a very reputed Customer Service, but since 2007 or so it has seen a downfall. Many customers have come up with their questions being unanswered, not being notified about updates taking place and various other serious/non-serious things. Although as you might have already read, BlueHost does claim having a Top Notch Customer Service, yet due to the troubles that people have come up with, it acts as one of their weak points.

[excerpt]
Upon asking BlueHost about the complaints that users have had with their customer support, this was the reply we had:

chenderson [12:42:28 PM]: We are rated very high on customer service… We have been a a front runner in the hosting industry for over 10 years. We have set the industry standard for customer support and reliability. We offer 24/7 support via phones, live chat. or e-mail. Our support staff is well trained and very knowledgeable. The best thing is they are all in the US. They are also employed directly by us we do not contract out to call centers. When you call in you are speaking directly with a member of our highly trained staff. We are always upgrading our hosting package features. We started out offering 5gb of storage and we are now offering unlimited storage and file transfer. We own and operate our own data center. We are not a reseller like many of our competitors. We build all of our servers in house using only top quality parts. We have a staff of admins that monitor the servers 24/7 even on holidays. Our pricing for what we offer is the lowest in the industry.

This showed us that BlueHost has sound understanding of their products and services they proffer. Read further to find out whether they live up to their claims or not!

Overall

Features: 3.5/5
Plans and Pricing: 5/5
Customer Service: 2.5/5
Overall Score: 2.75/5. [Decent]

Having an overall look, Bluehost offers decent features at exceptional prices, but has a below-average customer care service and comes with a few awkward terms and conditions.

WebHostingPad Provides quality web hosting with professional service!
With a hosting plan to fit almost any webmasters or webstarters needs
With a state of the art data center with constant updates for the most secure up to date servers and software.Free Site builder software, Free easy back up solutions. and Award winning customer service and technical support

For as low as $2.99 per month cPanel
With unlimited features like disk/storage space bandwidth/transfer , Domains, data bases, email, subdomains,  See Package Details!

JustHost is just a great first class shared hosting provider with a 99.9% uptime and a anytime money back guarantee they make sure to keep you happy!
With the “Just Plan” you get unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and all the unlimited web hosting features you will need including the ability to host unlimited domains! and 1 FREE domain for life with the “Just Plan” or 3 FREE domains for life with the “Just Plan Premium” and  as a bonus you will also receive $75 in Advertising credits to promote your site(s)

All hosting accounts use the world famous cPanel
Just Host is committed to making web hosting simple and understandable for any and every one from the 1st time user to the seasoned expert!
With 24/7 human technical support
So if you looking to start your own blog, message board, or host a professional website for you business / company JustHost can make the job much easier for you !
Use this coupon code for 20% off your order JHSL20

inmotionHosting ★★★★★has been a industry leader since 2001
they offer many hosting options!
You can go all out and get your own dedicated server starting at $199. or
start with a virtual private servers better known as VPS starting at $39.95
immotionhosting also offers Business class hosting with exclusive speed zone technology for fast and stable web hosting starting at $6.95pm or you can start out with a personal plan starting at only $3 per month this is perfect for a new or smaller site and upgrade when needed!
With cPanel control panel option for a familiar more efficient web server management environment!
with options like unlimited disk space and bandwidth lots of tools like web site builders and on click installers of scripts like wordpress phpbb joomla and lots lots more withe the use a fantastico plus (offered on most cpanel host)

inmotionHosting.com is a cNet certified and approved by the Bureau of Better Business for added assurance!
Offering Free Who Is Privacy protection on all accounts and you even get to pick your data center location for faster server response time. and a 99.9% server up time guarantee! What more do you need!

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