Web Hosting

I am starting a small home business (daycare) in September and I am looking for a good company for hosting my website. I have already designed the website in Front Page but my internet provider does not provide hosting unless I switch to a business internet plan which is like twice the price.

I don't want any popups or any sleezy advertising anywhere near my website. I don't want the name of any company to appear on the website. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Matt's wife

Not sure if you can still get through as it supposedly expired on May 31, but this is a real hot deal:

http://www.netfirms.com/max

$10/yr.

Deal has been extended till July 31, 2006.. This is a great deal, but the only problem is when it comes up for renewal. $120 for the year (worth it, if you're going to be using that much space & bandwidth..For a simple site, not really worth it, IMO.)

I think that US$10.70 is worth it for the year. About a month or two prior to that, you can look for other hosting deals as you will have a pretty good idea of what you need or don't need. Just remember to back up all of your files onto your harddrive. Then you can set it up relatively easily with another host.

Do NOT get the FREE domain name through netfirms.com or anyone else offering a free domain with hosting. If you're serious about business, buy the domain name is such a way that you actually retain the rights to it - not at the mercy of others. OR...if there is a good deal like the one Yahoo Business had, you can register for 5 years -ample time to determine whether it's worth the investment to renew afterwards.

Daycare business needs a webpage? What would be cool is if you got parents to key in allergies, quirks, planned vacations etc for their child. If you're really good, you can offer a webcam for the parents to check up on their child from work but it is kinda creepy if someone else gets a hold of the password and lurks.

I personally never thought of going online to find daycare - but ya never know and for $10 - what the heck eh?

Originally Posted by aingaran

Deal has been extended till July 31, 2006.. This is a great deal, but the only problem is when it comes up for renewal. $120 for the year (worth it, if you're going to be using that much space & bandwidth..For a simple site, not really worth it, IMO.)

If you don't use that much space, it will be easy to transfer the data to a new host.

If you are using that much space, then $10/mo is still a hot deal.

In either event, you can't go wrong for $10 for the full year. Deal with next year when next year comes.

For a small, low-traffic, brochureware site, check out http://e-rice.net/.

I've heard great things about them and they've been around for a long time.

If you are paying for hosting you shouldn't have any ads, popups or any type of advertisements on your site, unless of course you place them there.

If you need fast support (within a few hours) then netfirms might not be for you, they can sometimes take up to 2 days before replying to you. I dealt with them when moving a client away from there. That was my experience yours could be completely different. Try emailing sales with questions which should help you judge their response time.

I would go with godaddy or an enom reseller for my domain registration. I have used yahoo for domains before and they are toatally useless when it comes to helping you out with problems. I have domains registered at godaddy and resell for enom and both are quick to reply and the answers are usually bang on.

Good luck on your search their are many choices out there.

I am going to ask a couple of questions that will probably be stupid but....

1. How do I know how much space I need and what transfer amount I need?
2. What is a brochureware site?
3. Can I use a website produced in Front Page anywhere?
4. Is it difficult to change your website frequently or is it just a simple upload?

Thank you everyone for all of your help, I really appreciate it

Those are very common questions, not stupid at all.

If it is a basic site with a few pictures and mostly text then a few MB of space would be enough for the site. From my experience most small business/personal sites take up about 10-20MBs of space and maybe a few GB of data transfer.

I'm going to guess what brochureware means, I assume it means a website that is basically like a companies brochure that you would send in the mail. Just another way of advertising your business.

A simple html site can be moved around to any web host you want, regardless of what you use to create it. You could use notepad if you wanted to.

Updating your website is very simple. Once you have made your changes just upload the file and overwrite the old one. Thats it.

I'm willing to bet that your site doesn't user more than 2 Megs of space (if that much...Assuming you have a bunch of images. If you only have 2-3 images, it'll be under 1MB for sure!) and less than 100-200 MB of bandwidth monthly (if you're lucky to get that many visitors.)

Hey all, does anyone have experience with 1and1.com

They are advertised all over my PC MAGAZINE and it looks like a good mass public host but I would like some opinions or experienced users from this hosting company.

Thanks.

I use 1and1 for a bunch of small sites under 1 developer account, and I've been impressed. There are better deals available at times (like the 777 Dreamhost deal) but 1and1 has provided 100% uptime, quick service, and reasonably competent people on the phone for me for about 2 years now.

Zeeblo offers free ad-less hosting. Performance and support is pretty good. Just register for a domain and you're set.

I have a couple of sites under 1and1.com and a couple with Netfirms. 1and1.com has far superior turnaround time to address problems or questions. Netfirms takes 24 hours to get back to you via email. If you call Netfirms customer service (416#), their support people are fantastic!

I used www.domainsatcost.ca to register my domain, great little place and cheap too!

and Site5.com to host it.

I share it with a bunch of other people (so the cost is very minimal for me...like 5 dollars a month) and I get 3000mb a month bandwidth.