Best ISP for WordPress and eBusiness

 

by Philip King

 

In this article I’m simply going to state my methods and findings from when I was looking for an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to host this web site.

I will provide details of the best ISP’s I could find for those, like me, wanting their own WordPress web site and those wanting to start their own ebusiness. I started with no knowledge other than doing a little selling on eBay and no knowledge of Web CMS’s (Content Management System) at all. Prior to choosing WordPress I played with several other Web CMS’s such as Blogger, Joomla and Drupal before finally choosing WordPress because of its easy setup, good documentation and friendly user base. Strangely enough, I found the WordPress user base is one of the few groups not complaining about everything, they have a nice, friendly, positive attitude. Sorry, I’m wandering off topic (again).

 

The first task was to create a list of my requirements, so each of the ISPs had to satisfy the following criteria to be considered:

 

1. Web hosting affordable price, but not tacky.
2. Reliable service with at least 99% uptime.
3. Easy to implement and use.
4. Lots of help available online.
5. Good after sales and support service.
6. Easy setup for WordPress.
7. Easy setup for a shopping cart.
8. Simple and intuitive control panel.
9. Easy to use backup system.
10. Secure system.
11. Dedicated servers (would like – but not a requirement)
12. Reseller (would like – but not a requirement)

 

About Web Hosting

Whatever you do, don’t make the common mistake when looking for web site hosting is to simply select the cheapest or even FREE web hosting company. The prices charged by a good web hosting company is so low these days as to make the alternative unnecessary. You will only end up with a poor service, poor support and paying more in the long run. Make the right hosting choice for you. All the hosting companies in this review are low cost, most less than a $1 per week, but these are respected hosts with proven reliability and support. If you don’t believe me, search the web. All the web hosting companies listed here are constantly winning user awards.

 

WordPress Web Hosting Requirements

WordPress web hosting comes in two different flavours. WordPress offer a FREE blog hosting service at wordpress.com and a user-hosted platform at wordpress.org. As the wordpress.com platform is only suitable for blogging and not really suited to business usage (it’s against the rules to place paid advertising on a wordpress.com site) I will be concentrating on the wordpress.org platform as this is definitely suitable for business usage, advertising and of course blogging.

From WordPress – A Little History

"WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product. We hope by focusing on user experience and web standards we can create a tool different from anything else out there."

• At the time of writing, WordPress has 7,968 plugins, (69,873,370 downloads) and 1,108 themes (11,065,434 downloads), all FREE.

WordPress.org

If you don’t have WordPress already it can be downloaded and installed from wordpress.org FREE of charge.

• Signing up for WordPress.org is best done after ensuring that you have a host that runs PHP 5.0 or greater, MySQL 5.0 or greater and Apache. The WordPress specs. are far less stringent than this but this should really be your minimum requirement. All the ISPs I chosen here have better specs. than this anyway.

• The web hosting services (ISPs) recommended here will all allow you to register and install WordPress from their (your) own control panel with no need for a separate download from WordPress.

 

With 99.9% uptime, what’s the downtime?

With your business running 24/7 or 8766 hours per year a 0.1% downtime is equivalent to 8 hours 46 minutes. For those interested, the calculation is (24*365.25) * (100%-99.9%).

 

Which Control Panel vs ?

The two control panels used by most of the ISPs I’ve encountered are Plesk and cPanel. Both of the feature sets for these control panels are pretty much comparable, both are quite fast, secure, and reliable. The biggest difference between the two control panels as far as I can see is the user interface. The Plesk user interface is slightly harder to use and customise than cPanel’s and most users seem to prefer the cPanel user interface (me included).

As a general user (client) you can ignore what follows, but, from a techi point of view Plesk provides better support for automation with an XML-RPC interface allowing PHP or Perl scripts to call functions from a remote computer and has a large variety of plug-ins. cPanel on the other hand seems to have more software, such as billing software, available to integrate with it. For unlimited domain licenses, Plesk is generally cheaper to purchase than cPanel while cPanel is cheaper to rent per annum than Plesk.

 

 

My ISP Reviews and Opinions

The web hosting providers I finally short listed are the following:

• JustHost

• HostGator

• BlueHost

• HostMonster

• GoDaddy

 

 

JustHost

Overview

There’s an old saying, "If it’s too good to be true, then it’s too good to be true". I’m happy to say that JustHost is the exception to the rule. With JustHost you get an exceptional, professional web hosting solution.

JustHost are at the top of the world’s leading hosting providers and are recognized for their superb uptime and support. JustHost offers the perfect solution for your WordPress blog with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Europe, Singapore and serviceable in 195 countries worldwide. JustHost offers first class, 24/7 technical support via telephone, email and live chat support that really works.

JustHost offer 2 simple service plans, the most popular being the JustHost web hosting plan which includes 1 FREE domain registration and FREE setup.

Features

JustHost uses cPanel and offers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, unlimited MySql databases, unlimited domain hosting with unlimited add-on, parked domains and subdomains so usage restrictions are a thing of the past. They offer unlimited email accounts with email forwarding and email Autoresponder. JustHost also include a FREE Site Builder, lots of pre-installed scripts and some FREE Google, Yahoo and Miva Ad credits to help with web site marketing.

JustHost is one of the few companies giving a 99.9% network uptime guarantee, an anytime money back guarantee and a FREE domain name for life. Plus you can host unlimited domains from one account and receive FREE instant setup with no hidden fees.

With the WordPress and Joomla! one click FREE install setting up your web site/blog couldn’t be easier but JustHost also offers the #1 site builder for FREE, with lots of FREE templates and very easy to follow video tutorials and extensive Knowledge base, a FREE script library, a choice of FREE e-commerce shopping carts, OsCommerce and Agora, a FREE generated certificate and lots more.

Conclusion

From the business owner to the individual who desires full functionality on a small budget. If you are looking for a fast, reliable, easy-to-use web host then JustHost are the one to choose. They provide your complete web hosting solution. You would expect JustHost to demand a higher price for such an excellent service, but they are one of the cheapest hosts around.

They offer a great service at such a low price it’s hard to look elsewhere. KingSolutions web sites are hosted by JustHost. Hosting your web site with Just Host is the obvious choice.

 

 

 

HostGator

Overview

HostGator was founded by Brent Oxley, now President and CEO, whilst at Florida Atlantic University in 2002. The company is based in Houston, Texas, with more than 7,000 servers under management. HostGator has more than 225,000 customers and hosts over two million domains making up approximately 1% of the world’s Internet traffic in more than 170 countries.

In 2008, HostGator was recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in America. According to Inc. Magazine, HostGator is the 21st fastest growing private company in America, the second fastest growing private company in the "business services" sector, and the fastest growing private company in Texas.

Features

HostGator shared hosting offers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited MySQL Databases with phpMyAdmin Access, unlimited POP3 Email Accounts with SMTP, unlimited Autoresponders and FREE setup with easy 1 click software installs of WordPress. and FREE SiteBuilder and SiteStudio Website Building Tools. They have lots of FREE website templates and scripts plus Google Adwords Credits. The HostGator community forum has lots of video tutorials and help articles available.

The control panel included with HostGator is cPanel, always a winner with me. Fantastico, Instant Shopping Carts, Blogs, Portals, Forums, Counters, Formmail is also available.

HostGator gives a 45 Day Money Back Guarantee and a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee. Their customer support is 24/7 via phone and Ticket System email and always gives a high level of service. Their service includes automatic, weekly off-site data backups but personally I wouldn’t rely on this and would recommend you do your own backups daily.

Summary

HostGator are not the cheapest host around, you have to pay for your domain name which many hosts give for free but they are one of the world’s top good web hosting company in my opinion. They do have lots of mixed reviews on their uptime reliability, though do get this in perspective.

 

 

 

BlueHost

Overview

BlueHost started in 1996 and are one of the biggest web hosts in the industry, currently hosting just over 750000 web sites. Bluehost are well known as a good WordPress host and offer an easy WordPress install and cPanel which is a big plus point. Their technical knowledge is unbeatable and their customer service team responds ultra fast and are very helpful.

Features

BlueHost offer a full 30 day money back guarantee and their features and services easily match those of their competitors.They offer unlimited disk storage, unlimited monthly data transfer, unlimited domain hosting, a FREE domain name for as long as you host with Blue Host, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL databases, 2,500 email accounts, FREE control panel, FREE Fantastico, FREE SimpleScripts, 24/7 network monitoring with support by email, phone and an online live chat system, 99.9% uptime, mirrored storage backups and no hidden fees. BlueHost were voted best support in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Shopping carts included are ZenCart and CubeCart.

Conclusion

Bluehost are a solid web hosting provider. A good trusted host with an awesome service for the price you pay.

 

 

 

HostMonster

Overview

HostMonster was founded late 2003 in Provo, UT USA and has grown into one of the largest shared hosting platforms in the world. Currently HostMonster provides services for over 650,000 domains. Their target audience is small and home office business customers as well as web enthusiasts with a very large customer base that uses open source systems such as WordPress, phpBB forums, Magento shopping cart and RoundCube web mail.

Features

HostMonster offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, a FREE domain and FREE setup. They also include a FREE site builder, over 50 pre-installed scripts and some FREE Ad credits to help with web site marketing.

The control panel used by HostMonster is cPanel with a twist. They have enhanced the cPanel with instant search and user customisation via drag-and-drop design to allow user customisation. How useful this is in the long term I’m not sure, I find none transferable customisation’s tend to tie you into one system.

HostMonster has many online video tutorials, a getting started wizard, a very good Knowledge base and a friendly user forum for sharing problems and solutions with other users.

Reliability is excellent with HostMonster, they use the same support team as BlueHost their sister company (however the two are run as different organizations), with uptime in excess of 99.8%. They have very good customer support and have a reputation for answering telephone calls within a couple of minutes. Their email and open-ticket support is also excellent.

Conclusion

HostMonster are definitely a host worth considering with a great track record for support and features.

 

 

 

GoDaddy.com

Overview

Founded in 1997 by CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, GoDaddy is an independently owned and operated web services company which owns and operates its own services and equipment. GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar with over 6.5 million customers worldwide. It operates four physically dispersed data centres and a 24/7, 365 days/year, call centre.

Features

GoDaddy’s hosting plans feature unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited web sites, and 1,000 email accounts. Enjoy FREE Set-Up, no annual commitment, and FREE auto-install of over 50 applications including WordPress, with virtual and dedicated servers available.

Their hosting services are designed to cater for everyone from personal users with low requirements to high end users needing huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth. Customer support is via 24/7 phone support (not a toll-free number) and email (support ticket service). The customer support offered by GoDaddy is considered one of the best in the web hosting industry. GoDaddy have developed their own proprietary control panel which is not as easy to use as cPanel and takes some getting used to, It is far too complex for the general user.

Conclusion

GoDaddy is among the top performers but is particularly suited to professional and experienced webmasters as a good understanding of the internet and web hosting is required to make full use of this web hosting company. GoDaddy gives excellent professional support but prices can be high depending upon your requirements and GoDaddy’s control panel isn’t the easiest to use.

 

 

 

My Recommendation

JustHost is the web hosting service I would choose and as I believe in putting my money where my mouth is, this web site is hosted on JustHost.com.

To be fair all the web hosting services reviewed here are of comparable quality and all give a quality service so you won’t go wrong by choosing any of them. But, each service has qualities which may or may not be what you require so review each web hosting service and make your choice based on your requirements. I required a web site that could be up and running in less then a day with very little prior knowledge. There are web hosting services which are far beyond my capabilities and understanding so I have not even attempted to review such services. I needed something where the web hosting experts provided most of the background work so I could concentrate on my web site.

Also, the offers made by each ISP change weekly, so please check each ISP prior to making a commitment. Although each ISP has many offers which vary over time I have tried to be specific to the requirements above and ignored items such as FREE Photo Albums etc. as these can be added to most sites by downloading and installing the appropriate scripts.

If you have any comment, corrections or items you think should be added to the listings please do not hesitate to let me know.