Host Excellence has been in business for several years and with their own data center and customer support office, Host Excellence has been constantly improving the performance of its services and quality of its support. Having recently updated their web site with more aggressive hosting plans and prices, Host Excellence has really started putting the heat on the competition. Their generous selection of hosting plans, coupled with superb service and network reliability, have resulted in fast loading web sites and high customer retention.
Price 4/5
Reliability 5/5
Customer Service 5/5
Technical Support 5/5
Features 5/5
Storage Space 4/5
Bandwidth 5/5
Tech Response Time 5/5
Easy-of-Use 4/5
TOTAL : 96.2%
Reliability
Host Excellence has an impressive track record when it comes to the stability and dependability of their services. Acknowledging that reliability is in the interests of everyone involved, they have gone to great lengths to ensure that problems are few and far between. Their private data center is a testament to this principle. Backup power facilities, fault-tolerant systems and 24/7 on-site administrative staff make Host Excellence a good choice for anyone.
Price Value
If you’re looking for a great deal on web hosting services, look no further. Being a customer-oriented business, Host Excellence puts a lot of effort into offering their customers as much bang for the buck as you can get in shared hosting, providing a great selection of services and payment options, not to mention a noteworthy level of customer support, the value of which is something that cannot be easily expressed. They provide you with the tools needed to build your website, setup an ecommerce store, manage your databases and a great deal more, all at a wonderful price.
Control Panel
Host Excellence has developed a unique control panel for their customers. Frankly, I would say that their control panel software is one of the best on the market, IF it were on the market. They employ a highly modified and expanded version of HSphere (www.hsphere.com) as their hosting control panel, provided for both Linux and Windows based accounts. Throughout our testing, their control panel has been very snappy and reliable. It is much more user-friendly than most of the control panels out there and easy to operate. Included is an extensive customer guide which can quickly assist even the most reluctant novice.
Customer Support
The support they provide can easily be rated as excellent, especially their phone support. Host Excellence makes sure that their customers are never left on their own if problems arise, offering 24/7 phone support, LiveChat, and helpdesk support avenues, all free, and all staffed by skilled and friendly people who resolve issues quickly and are easy to work with. We commend them for their prompt and reliable support!
Summary
Host Excellence is clearly a premier player in the shared hosting market. While our experiences with them were not perfect enough to garner the #1 spot on our chart, they are definitely a good choice, and we don’t hesitate in recommending them.
Monday, December 10, 2007
IX Web Hosting
IX Web Hosting has made a remarkable name for itself since its inception in 1999. Boasting their own data center, a highly professional website and very attractive hosting plans, they have managed to be added to the short list of companies that Best Host Reviews is reviewing. Over the course of our review of IX Web Hosting, a period of many months, they continuously improved their performance, reliability and customer service, resulting in extremely quick loading websites and high customer satisfaction. All of this has contributed to their #1 rating by our review team.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Vyatta Community Expands with VC3
November 30, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The recent release of version 3 of its Community Edition, open source routing solutions company Vyatta (vyatta.com) brought new features to the free version of the products with which it is working to take on networking giants like Cisco and Juniper.
The "community edition" of the Vyatta networking platform, known as VC3, is the freely available version of the company's open source networking platform, which includes routing, firewall and VPN functions. Patches for the community edition are released every six months, while customers of the paid-for subscription versions of the product (a professional edition starting at $647 and enterprise edition at $897) have access to support via means escalating according to price.
The version 3 update brings the community edition up to speed features-wise with the subscription versions, adding, according to the official announcement, an IPSec VPN, multi-link PPP and BGP scaling and security enhancements.
According to Dave Roberts, vice president of marketing and strategy, that community is a large part of Vyatta's appeal. The product has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its launch, and the company operates alongside an active community of users. That milestone, and the new software version, are helping to bring attention to a product Roberts feels has the potential to take on major proprietary products from Cisco and Juniper in the networking space.
The real selling point for the Vyatta platform, however, is price. Designed to operate within the x86 ecosystem, the vyatta platform can be deployed on standard-issue computing hardware. Roberts says this obviously makes an enormous price difference in comparison to proprietary hardware.
The example he uses is a fast Ethernet port for a midrange router. Cisco charges a list price of about $1,400. You can find one for about $1,000. A fast Ethernet port in the x86 environment is about $20.
"It's the easiest elevator pitch I've ever had," says Roberts.
The product itself is a platform for combining some existing open-source networking tools, for instance the openSWAN VPN, and providing a consistent management interface and documentation, with support.
"We are more like the Red Hat model," says Roberts, "than the MySQL model; we are pulling together components from other places, but we're also doing a lot of our own work to integrate those components. It's our belief that to penetrate the typical networking market, we need to present a user interface and a layer of integration that's much more consistent with what people would expect from a proprietary cisco or juniper. A lot of the value-add that vyatta has done - and we do write a lot of code - is in pulling those things together and really providing that nice integration."
In addition to the software package, Vyatta distributes the platform pre-installed on Dell hardware for customers who don't want to handle the setup themselves.
For service providers, much of the appeal in the Vyatta platform lies in the product's potential to be virtualized.
"A lot of our value proposition for the hosting market," says Roberts, "was being able to provision a virtual machine inside a single physical hardware system that was allocated or dedicated to a particular customer. So in the same way that we have a VPS market in the hosting world, the idea is you have a kind of virtual private firewall or virtual private router. And Vyatta plus Zen or VMware really makes that possible on standard hardware, which is really exciting."
Finally, he says, Vyatta relies on its potential to be whatever customers want.
"Because we are running on Linux," he says, "it gives people the ability to customize or add stuff. You've got a developer base that understands how to develop for Linux, so you can actually add something custom to the box - maybe it's management, maybe it's monitoring. That's something you can't do with Juniper or Cisco. You get the features and functions that they want you to have and that's it."
The "community edition" of the Vyatta networking platform, known as VC3, is the freely available version of the company's open source networking platform, which includes routing, firewall and VPN functions. Patches for the community edition are released every six months, while customers of the paid-for subscription versions of the product (a professional edition starting at $647 and enterprise edition at $897) have access to support via means escalating according to price.
The version 3 update brings the community edition up to speed features-wise with the subscription versions, adding, according to the official announcement, an IPSec VPN, multi-link PPP and BGP scaling and security enhancements.
According to Dave Roberts, vice president of marketing and strategy, that community is a large part of Vyatta's appeal. The product has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its launch, and the company operates alongside an active community of users. That milestone, and the new software version, are helping to bring attention to a product Roberts feels has the potential to take on major proprietary products from Cisco and Juniper in the networking space.
The real selling point for the Vyatta platform, however, is price. Designed to operate within the x86 ecosystem, the vyatta platform can be deployed on standard-issue computing hardware. Roberts says this obviously makes an enormous price difference in comparison to proprietary hardware.
The example he uses is a fast Ethernet port for a midrange router. Cisco charges a list price of about $1,400. You can find one for about $1,000. A fast Ethernet port in the x86 environment is about $20.
"It's the easiest elevator pitch I've ever had," says Roberts.
The product itself is a platform for combining some existing open-source networking tools, for instance the openSWAN VPN, and providing a consistent management interface and documentation, with support.
"We are more like the Red Hat model," says Roberts, "than the MySQL model; we are pulling together components from other places, but we're also doing a lot of our own work to integrate those components. It's our belief that to penetrate the typical networking market, we need to present a user interface and a layer of integration that's much more consistent with what people would expect from a proprietary cisco or juniper. A lot of the value-add that vyatta has done - and we do write a lot of code - is in pulling those things together and really providing that nice integration."
In addition to the software package, Vyatta distributes the platform pre-installed on Dell hardware for customers who don't want to handle the setup themselves.
For service providers, much of the appeal in the Vyatta platform lies in the product's potential to be virtualized.
"A lot of our value proposition for the hosting market," says Roberts, "was being able to provision a virtual machine inside a single physical hardware system that was allocated or dedicated to a particular customer. So in the same way that we have a VPS market in the hosting world, the idea is you have a kind of virtual private firewall or virtual private router. And Vyatta plus Zen or VMware really makes that possible on standard hardware, which is really exciting."
Finally, he says, Vyatta relies on its potential to be whatever customers want.
"Because we are running on Linux," he says, "it gives people the ability to customize or add stuff. You've got a developer base that understands how to develop for Linux, so you can actually add something custom to the box - maybe it's management, maybe it's monitoring. That's something you can't do with Juniper or Cisco. You get the features and functions that they want you to have and that's it."
The Web Host Industry Week in Review
December 7, 2007 -- (WEB HOST IDNUSTRY REVIEW) -- It's not quite that this week's Web hosting news was bereft of real stories. There were quite a few important announcements, in fact. But it is certainly a sign of the times that this week's news was dominated, volume-wise, by hosting providers announcing their holiday specials.
Probably more significantly, however, this week also saw UK Web hosting provider Fasthosts offering some explanation for last week's decision to change login passwords for some of its customers. The decision, a reaction to a previously reported security breach, had some customers puzzled and some upset. In its announcement, the company stood by the decision, saying it had to take care of the problem. Fasthosts also said it intends to reset the email passwords next week of customers who haven't done so.
But the great common thread in this week's was certainly the revealing of holiday offerings, with quite a few Web hosts seeming determined to position their products as possible gifts.
On Monday, Netfirms announced it is offering a holiday promotion for new customers. Through December 27, new customers that sign up for its Business Plan will receive $60 off a yearly subscription. The plan includes 300GB disk space and 3,000GB of bandwidth, 1,000 email accounts, five domain names and the ability to host unlimited websites on one account.
On Wednesday, hosting provider SuperbHosting announced it, too, had launched a holiday promotion. Customers who sign up for a hosting package between December 1 and 21 will be eligible to win a Nintendo Wii game system, which the company says was the must-have gift for 2006 and one of the most sought after gadgets in 2007.
In its own effort to create a holiday offering, SiteGround announced that it would again distribute gift certificates to customers, a promotion the company says was quite successful last year. Each gift certificate is worth a $20 discount on the company's hosting services. While some customers are giving the certificates to friends, says the company, others are giving them away on their Web sites.
On Thursday, HostMySite announced that it would offer a similar holiday promotion, giving customers who purchase an annual hosting plan a gift card from a popular online retailer, ranging in value from $10 to $25, depending on the plan. The company says it also extended its ?Double Your Processing Power? promotion from November.
And on Thursday again, FastNext announced that it is running a holiday promotion for new and existing customers until January 7. The company is giving away six months of free hosting to any customer who signs up for a shared hosting plan and one month free hosting for anyone who signs up for its reseller package. The company is providing existing customers and resellers with new software.
While it's never been 100 percent clear that there exists a strong base of people who consider Web hosting an excellent Christmas gift, it's certainly an acceptable excuse for many hosting companies to run promotions. And the volume of companies that do so would seem to suggest that it's at least somewhat successful.
Probably more significantly, however, this week also saw UK Web hosting provider Fasthosts offering some explanation for last week's decision to change login passwords for some of its customers. The decision, a reaction to a previously reported security breach, had some customers puzzled and some upset. In its announcement, the company stood by the decision, saying it had to take care of the problem. Fasthosts also said it intends to reset the email passwords next week of customers who haven't done so.
But the great common thread in this week's was certainly the revealing of holiday offerings, with quite a few Web hosts seeming determined to position their products as possible gifts.
On Monday, Netfirms announced it is offering a holiday promotion for new customers. Through December 27, new customers that sign up for its Business Plan will receive $60 off a yearly subscription. The plan includes 300GB disk space and 3,000GB of bandwidth, 1,000 email accounts, five domain names and the ability to host unlimited websites on one account.
On Wednesday, hosting provider SuperbHosting announced it, too, had launched a holiday promotion. Customers who sign up for a hosting package between December 1 and 21 will be eligible to win a Nintendo Wii game system, which the company says was the must-have gift for 2006 and one of the most sought after gadgets in 2007.
In its own effort to create a holiday offering, SiteGround announced that it would again distribute gift certificates to customers, a promotion the company says was quite successful last year. Each gift certificate is worth a $20 discount on the company's hosting services. While some customers are giving the certificates to friends, says the company, others are giving them away on their Web sites.
On Thursday, HostMySite announced that it would offer a similar holiday promotion, giving customers who purchase an annual hosting plan a gift card from a popular online retailer, ranging in value from $10 to $25, depending on the plan. The company says it also extended its ?Double Your Processing Power? promotion from November.
And on Thursday again, FastNext announced that it is running a holiday promotion for new and existing customers until January 7. The company is giving away six months of free hosting to any customer who signs up for a shared hosting plan and one month free hosting for anyone who signs up for its reseller package. The company is providing existing customers and resellers with new software.
While it's never been 100 percent clear that there exists a strong base of people who consider Web hosting an excellent Christmas gift, it's certainly an acceptable excuse for many hosting companies to run promotions. And the volume of companies that do so would seem to suggest that it's at least somewhat successful.
Friday, December 7, 2007
ANHosting discount for Thanksgiving
Here's another crazy discount offer direct from ANHosting:
"Coming off the heels of one of our most successful promotions ever we're excited to announce that we've GONE PLUMB OUT OF OUR MINDS this November and have thrown the rules OUT THE WINDOW!
We're proudly introducing the AN Hosting "One Size Fits All" hosting plan!
Continue reading "ANHosting discount for Thanksgiving" »
"Coming off the heels of one of our most successful promotions ever we're excited to announce that we've GONE PLUMB OUT OF OUR MINDS this November and have thrown the rules OUT THE WINDOW!
We're proudly introducing the AN Hosting "One Size Fits All" hosting plan!
Continue reading "ANHosting discount for Thanksgiving" »
Web Hosting Coupons
Try Hostgator for just one penny! Hostgator have become one of the most popular hosting providers on the planet due to their superior service and support. Click here and enter the coupon wordpress to save $9.94 off your first payment. This means you can try the popular Baby plan with unlimited domain hosting for a whole month and pay just one cent. Grab this deal while it lasts!
Continue reading "Web Hosting Coupons" »
Continue reading "Web Hosting Coupons" »
Monday, December 3, 2007
iWeb Group Closes 3.3m Shares
The offering was made through an organization of underwriters led by GMP Securities, and included Cormark Securities and National Bank Financial. The company will use the net proceeds of the offering to implement and finalize phase three and advance phase four of installing its second data center.
Founded in 1996, iWeb offers a range of advanced IP hosting services available through shared hosting, dedicated servers and colocation in three data centers.
iWeb announced last month it filed a final short form prospectus in each of Canada's provinces.
Founded in 1996, iWeb offers a range of advanced IP hosting services available through shared hosting, dedicated servers and colocation in three data centers.
iWeb announced last month it filed a final short form prospectus in each of Canada's provinces.
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