Guru Web Hosting Reviews

HostGator LLC is the one of the largest shared web hosting companies in the world, with over 1% of all internet traffic being hosted on one of 7,000 HostGator servers from their Houston, Texas location. Started in 2002 HostGator was recently ranked as the 21^st fastest growing private company in America, and ranked as the fastest growing private company in Texas. With over 4,000,000 domains hosted on their servers, and with over 225,000 clients they are constantly hiring new employees. HostGator is now a certified green web hosting company, as they get all of the power for their business from wind energy.

Most my websites are actually hosted with HostGator, this particular website however is on my BlueHost server. My websites that require high speed or bandwidth I typically add to my HostGator account instead as it seems to have the best loading times of the servers that I use. HostGator makes WordPress hosting as simple as could be, just click on the cPanel icon that says “Fantastico De Luxe” or “QuickInstall” and select WordPress under blog hosting. Setting up a CMS (content management system) makes it much easier to manage your website, I would recommend using WordPress for blogging, phpBB for forums, and either Joomla or Drupal for everything else. Continue review... HostGator Review

BlueHost has been providing web hosting services since 1996. With a combined 20,000 square feet of data center space, diesel backup generators, UPS (uninterruptible power supply) power, and multiple 10 gigabyte fiber connections, BlueHost (http://www.BlueHost.com) has the power to supply millions of domains (including this one) with affordable high speed web hosting. They offer 24/7 customer support which is completely in-house in Utah; the hold times average 30 seconds or less and you will talk to somebody that can actually fix your problems and that you can understand.

BlueHost has consistently been one of the most popular web hosting companies, I was originally attracted to them because WordPress was just becoming popular for blogging and they were one of the only companies that would help with the setup process. Now BlueHost WordPress hosting is effortless, they have a feature called “Simple Scripts” which automatically installs management systems such as Joomla, WordPress (blogging), Drupal, phpBB (forums), etc. with a single click. Once I have my CMS up and running I typically only log into my actual control panel once a month at most. Continue review... BlueHost Review

FatCow hosting is a big up and comer in the industry, although it has been around since 1998 it has just recently started seeing huge growth. Their straight forward pricing and large list of features has caused a migration of webmasters to their service, from the data I am looking at on Alexa and Quantcast their traffic has more than doubled in the past two years.

The reason FatCow is appealing to more people recently is just that they provide as much bandwidth, storage space, and features as they can at a very reasonable rate. The FatCow coupon at the end of my review takes an additional 50% off the price of web hosting, bringing the overall cost down to $44/year. Just having a WordPress blog with some advertisements on it can easily cover the cost of the web hosting let alone if you decide to start an online business. I predict that ownership of websites will skyrocket as long as prices continue to decline, because there is essentially no barrier to entry.

When I first started writing web hosting reviews I didn’t pay any attention to the overall layout of the homepages of companies, but after doing it for a couple years I have seen a correlation between the design and the level of service received. The first thing that jumps out at you when you look at FatCow’s homepage (http://www.fatcow.com) is that they put a young, fresh face on web design instead of the typical conservative designs. They follow this up with a dedication to using wind energy for 100% of their energy needs, simple WordPress hosting, Facebook advertising credits, and other features that are aimed at a younger crowd. I have heard very few complaints from FatCow web hosting customers and it would be ridiculous to say this is due to their web design, but it does have everything to do with their corporate philosophy. Continue review... FatCow Review

CoreCommerce is an ecommerce solution that has operated by Sum Effect Software since 2008 from their Franklin, Tennessee offices. Over 13,000 stores worldwide use CoreCommerce as their shopping cart management software, the majority of which are small to medium sized businesses. Noteworthy clients include Clear Channel Radio, GE, Thomas Nelson Publishers, and Michigan State.

CoreCommerce was designed to be an all inclusive hosted software package, instead of simply giving you software to install on your server you are actually receiving web hosting service through web hosting industry leader Rackspace. This means that everything you need to start your ecommerce site can be done right through CoreCommerce, including a domain name, hosting, ability to accept credit cards, design your site, write content, etc.

This software is specifically designed to make it possible for entrepreneurs and small business owners to be able to start an ecommerce store without requiring a web design background. There is definitely a learning curve, it will probably at least take a week or two to get used to it, but overall it is very straightforward to use and it is one of those things that requires minimal effort once it is up and running. The real effort will come with finding ways to market your business and ensure that you are able to ship out products efficiently. Continue review... CoreCommerce Review

Gate.com is a web hosting company that has been around as long as the internet has, and they were pioneers in the use of clustering technology for web hosts. They focus on maintaining a high level of stability while keeping infrastructure costs down to make it affordable for a small business or individual to host their own web sites. They state on their website “We think of our data centers as the Fort Knox of Web hosting” in reference to their multiple levels of redundancy for data security.

Quickly fading into the background for shared web hosting services are Windows hosting plans as the free open source Linux is taking over the market. Gate.com does not charge extra between their basic shared hosting plans for Linux or Windows servers, allowing more flexibility for the needs of your business.

One major difference between Gate.com hosting and other web hosts out there is that they position themselves as an expert web hosting company for experienced web hosts, here is a quote from their site: “We are experienced Web professionals just like you and we understand just how critical the right Web host is to your business”.  If you are just starting out then you should keep in mind that they use a proprietary control panel rather than the cPanel control panel that many other web hosts use. Continue review... Gate.com Review