Free Web Hosting Review

Free hosting service means zero cost to have website hosted. Normally the service is setup with some kinds of advertisement on client websites. Free hosting service is only good choice for beginner and should be only for testing or hobby site purpose since there're lots of restrictions or limitations. In this article we'll review free hosting side by side and list out some top free hosting providers.

Why There's Free Hosting Service?

it's mainly because of there're many requests for free services on the market. For users who just want to test out something or put up non-profitable website, free hosting is their first choice.

Generally speaking, a free hosting provider always comes with paid plans and will suggest you go with the paid service, the free hosting plan is mostly used for advertising purpose. This method is quite popular under reseller hosting. When they start a hosting business they always use free hosting to get customers and later force change to paid plan. Under such circumstance, when you search for a free hosting provider, you should read some reviews first and check the service quality side by side.

How Does Free Hosting Provider Profit?

Many people have asked simliar questions, so how does exactly the free hosting provider profit?

The answer is advertisement and paid service. Normally you got inserted some kind of advertisement on your website by the free hosting, as long as your website get more traffic, the more possibility the advertisement will be clicked; another point is the paid service, free hosting providers always have some kind of paid hosting plan and encourage people to upgrade to. If some day you find the free service not suitable anymore you will prabably use their paid hosting.

Best Free Hosting Providers

When you search from google you would found there're many free hosting providers with all kinds of features. Here we evaluated several top rated free providers based on hosting features and customer satisfaction. A good free hosting provider should come with the following features enabled:

1. Ease of use with support for popular scripting such as asp, php
2. Basic support for common databases such as mysql, ms access
3. Hosting control panel available
4. Upgrade option available for higher solutions

Top free PHP Mysql hosting

• www.000webhost.com
• www.byethost.com
• www.x10hosting.com
• www.host1free.com
• www.110mb.com

Top free asp.net hosting

• www.webhostforasp.net
• www.brinkster.com
• www.somee.com
• www.aspspider.com
• www.asphost4free.com

Do We Recommend Free Hosting Service?

Absolutely No. Unless you don't mind to keep the business in high risk, you should never put your business site on free hosting space. You have to bear with lots of ads on your pages plus lots of spam emails about various promotions to upgrade to paid service. As for web hosting business today, it's already very affordable from many providers like ipage, webhostinghub etc. With about $2/mo you have full access to hosting service with quality customer support. To save your efforts and time in using hosting service, we highly suggest paid service instead free ones.

AspDotNetStorefront Introduction

Storefront or AspDotNetStorefront has the longest history for asp.net e-commerce solution. The name Aspdotnetstorefront has been a leading brand since 1997. Storefront has been offerring all kinds of successful e-commerce solutions to personal, midium to large size business communities at a very aggresive pricing, storefront now used by over 5000 developers and 10000 global customers.

The software is extremely optimized for large visits and search engine friendly. The code design or general software structure is by skillful programmers based thousands of true user experience. The software provides easy customization of site layouts and settings to drive the most in revenue growth and conversion rates.

Best Storefront Hosting Provider

AspDotNetStorefront actually offers hosting service by themselves on their website which starts at $39.95/mo for shared hosting service. It's absolutely not acceptable for most people. Since the software system requirements are pretty standard like many other applications, lots of asp.net hosting plans be able to host it. The best aspdotnetstorefront hosting provider with our experience goes to Arvixe & Hostgator.

Both Arvixe & Hostgator windows hosting plans are fully storefront compatible with lots of leading offers like unlimited ms sql database and free domain registration as well as remote iis manager support etc. You can manage asp.net applications easily via their leading hosting control panels. Just get the software from aspdotnetstorefront site and have it hosted with the leading platforms!

Go to www.Arvixe.com for storefront hosting plans!
Visit www.hostgator.com for plan details

Why they're the best aspdotnetstorefront hosting service?

We supported lots of storefront users before. From our server end monitory, the storefront applications will easily crash IIS application pools under a shared hosting. Once such problem occurs, we'll have to restart IIS or assign the app to a dedicated app pools. Hosting aspdotnetstorefront site via dedicated pool is the best choice. We highly recommend above web hosts for storefront hosting simply because they're fully .net compatible service with leading platforms that comes with dedicated application pool support. Besides all popular offers from other hosting provider, you get remote iis manager to manage your site directly. You won't find better solution from other place.

AspDotNetStorefront Advantages

Since storefront has the longest history and experience in asp.net e-commerce solution, definitely security is the most outstanding feature comparing to other e-commerce packages. Since it's a paid product, you will get side by side technical support from storefront company. Storefront main features come with the following:

• Ability to design store skins (interface) in Dreamweaver or FrontPage
• Excel or Xml product import
• Support for most popular gateways such as Authorize.net, linkpoint and paypal
• Complete support for robust Search Engine crawling
• support for an HTML pages (we call these topic pages)
• Supports categories and departments, which can be nested up to 10 levels deep

• Auto E-Mailing of receipts, Receipt Customization

• Multiple ship-to /bill-to addresses (with address book)

• Many payment methods: Credit Card, PayPal, E-Check, C.O.D., Request Quote, PayPal Express, Micropay/Purse, Check by Mail, C.O.D. Net 30, and others.

• RealTime FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS, and Canada Post Shipping Rates already integrated.

Requirements to use Storefront

• asp.net framework 3.5
• Windows NT Server 2003 or 2008, Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Home Premium, or Windows 7
• IIS 6 or IIS 7
• Databases Supported:
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Express (for small sites)
• Internet Merchant Account
• SSL
• Optional: Visual Studio.net or other asp.net development tool if you want to change source code

Storefront Resources

• AspDotNetStorefront Official site
• AspDotNetStorefront Wiki
• AspDotNetStorefront Support Forums
• AspDotNetStorefront Templates

Storefront vs Nopcommerce vs Dashcommerce

Storefront, nopcommerce and dashcommerce are all based on asp.net technologies but not all are suitable for your e-commerce solution since there're many difference.

First, storefront is not free product, you have to buy from aspdotnetstorefront.com site and they will provide you license, there does have a free trial version but it's indeed just for trial which can't be used for live production. Storefront is highly recommend if you highly wish tech support and don't have a developer available. As for nopcommerce, it's popularized in recent years for open source, definnitely is a perfect solution for free e-commerce software. It's powered by lots of support professionals everywhere in the world. As for dashcommerce, I think only few people will continue with it these days for its dead development.

Dashcommerce Introduction

DashCommerce is an asp.net Open Source e-Commerce Application. Built using some of the latest technologies, dashCommerce is focused on providing a robust e-commercce application that is stable and highly usable. In addition, the dashCommerce community is one of the most active communities in the open source / .NET space. DashCommerce has been available since early 2008 and has been used in countless online stores and is wildly successful.

Dashcommerce Hosting Requirements

• Windows XP Pro or Higher
• Internet Information Service (IIS)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (Minimum)
• ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 3.0

Dashcommerce core features

• Order Notification System (email)
• Configurable Tax Rates and Shipping rates
• Drop-In Themes / Skinning
• Drop-In Configurable Shipping providers
• Configurable Content Management System (unlimited pages)
• Compatible with multiple Payment gateways

Best Dashcommerce Hosting provider

Arvixe.com is awarded the best dashcommerce hosting for both tech compatibility and server uptime. Arvixe is also one of the best Asp.net hosting provider with fully support over lots of popular asp.net projects like Nopcommerce, Dotnetnuke, Asp.net staterkits etc. With Arvixe Asp.net hosting plan you get unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Sql Server database. Their hosting is backend by a professional team that has years experience in Asp.net development.

Read Arvixe reviews
Visit www.arvixe.com

Dashcommerce related articles and resources

• Dashcommerce Official site
• Dashcommerce Forum
• Dashcommerce Blog
• Dashcommerce free skin
• Dashcommerce Hosting

Dashcommerce vs Nopcommerce

Both Dashcommerce and Nopcommerce are top rated .net e-commerce packages and there's always comparison between them, so which package is better?

• Code project – Open source feature is for both projects, but definitely nopcommerce update more frequently while dashcommerce almost stopped updating these days
• Structures – If you have compared the package structure on your website, you will found dashcommerce is much easier and clean, dashcommerce is ideal choice for start user and nopcommerce is definitely better for a large and professional ecommerce solution
• Support – Although both official sites setup a discussion forum but definitely nopcommerce doing better and much more famous to people. Since dashcommerce almost stopped the update, there's less and less support available.

Dashcommerce team almost stopped the software further development and support. If you check their official site you should have found there's no newer version update since from the first release. On the other hand, nopcommerce is supported by a huge community and updated frequently for bug fix and new features development. Powered by lots of modules/templates, you can create any kind store site using this platform. From web hosting side, many providers even highlight their service by supporting nopcommerce.

Conclusion, if you're going to setup a large e-commerce store and wish to get fast and professional support, nopcommerce is your better choice. Read Nopcommerce review.

Budget Hosting Brief View

Budget hosting is abut price consideration that a hosting service offered at low cost and applicable by tight budget, Budget web hosting is designed specially for starter websites that're not yet ready for a higher hosting solutions. Normally a budget hosting plan provides limited support to some crucial features such as number of websites, database and disk space etc.

Best Budget Web Hosting Providers

There're lots of budget hosting plans on internet in many areas. Upon evaluation on price, plan features, server speed and customer support service, we picked up the best over 20+ popular brands. Check out following then select the best one that fulfill your needs!

Best Budget Hosting – Arvixe

Brand: Arvixe Price: $2.80/mo Rating: A+

Arvixe is awarded the best budget hosting provider for great technical features and fast web servers. Only $4.0/mo and you get unlimited space /bandwidth plus a free domain registration as well as unlimited mysql database. If singup two years upfront, we get 30% discount using coupon code "clue30", final deal is reduced to $2.80/mo!

Differ all other cheap hosting providers, arvixe setup their hosting server with newest hardware production and host in world class datacenters to generate the best performance. You also get free website migration opportunity in case you're worried about data loss when transfering from another service. Further more, the arvixe support is all over the country to accept your support request.

Visit www.Arvixe.com for budget web hosting plans!

Best Budget Hosting – iPage

Brand: iPage Price: $1.99/mo Rating: A+

iPage is awarded the best budget hosting service with the lowest price. Their people are current offering promotional price $1.99/mo with free domain name, unlimited emails and mysql database plus over $400 free bonus including search engine credits and site building service.

iPage serves over 1000000 world wide websites and thousands of new websites are being hosted with their service. Instead of optimizing on single side service, ipage cares about the overal reliability and keep system health. With their Vdeck hosting control panel, you're able to manage billing, domain registration, database, website and all stuff under the same management GUI.

Visit www.iPage.com for budget hosting details!

Best Budget Hosting – Justhost

Brand: Justhost Price: $2.25/mo Rating: A

Justhost is a featured budget hosting provider for their professional tech support and service management. Justhost people deeply revised the cpanel software to make it a central software for all service management including customer profiles, domain registration, billing, website and email. You can even customize the categories by your preference. Need more? follow this justhost coupon to get up to 50% discount!

Justhost budget plan core features:

• unlimited space and bandwidth
• unlimited domain hosting
• Cpanel hosting with 24 x 7 support
• Unlimited email and database support

Visit www.Justhost.com to check the plan details

How do we rate the best budget hosting service?

To rate the best hosting provider is not so easy, especially when referring to something cheap. In order to select the best budget hosting service, following check points are strictly followed

1. Pricing – Price is absolutely the first view or else it's something beyond the topic. The budget host service should be under $4/mo at least with all necessary offers like domain registration, database support and friendly hosting control panel etc.
2. Server Uptime – Quality is actually most important consideration for hosting service. When you purchase something you always want to get expected service and support. The server uptime should be guaranteed for 99% at least and support should be available via multiple channels for instant communication.
3. Reputation – Check if the company offers problematic service. Regardless the cheap, if you can't get a decent service but have to deal with lots of issues such as down time or technical issues etc, you should change to another service.

There're more to cheak around. Generally speaking, you can't really expect too much because of the little paying. In case you run into any problem, check first if you have really outgrowed the service.

Advantages with a budget hosting

Absolutely, you will save a certain money with a budget hosting solution. It's an ideal choice if you're not ready for a higher level plan. For those who just wish to launch a simple website without too much traffic, budget hosting plan is the primary choice.

Secondly, for a start user who is not quite familiar with hosting stuff, budget hosting plan is the perfect way to go, you don't have to spend too much in order to learn hosting stuff and worry about further hosting problems. If you're just use hosting for practicing, a budget hosting plan is necessary.

Disadvantage with budget hosting

The major disadvantage is the reliability and service quality. Generally, you get many limits under a budget hosting plan such as space, traffic and cpu limit etc, when your website is growing more and more popular, budget hosting is definitely not suitable any more. If you like to put up a heavy traffic website such as ecommerce solution then you should not choose budget hosting plan.

Cloud hosting introduction

What exactly cloud hosting is? Cloud hosting is based on cloud computing technologies that allow unlimited number of machines to act as one system. Traditional hosting solutions (shared or dedicated) are configured on a single server only while cloud hosting service is powered by server farms from multiple network and even from multiple locations on the planet. The cloud server resources can be unlimited such as space or RAM etc to power any size web app.

Theoretically speaking, the website on cloud hosting platform is 100% uptime guaranteed unlike the traditional hosting which is based single server setup.

Best Cloud Hosting Provider

After reviewed a plenty of cloud web hosting providers based price, scalability, performance and editorial live experience, bluehost is awarded the best cloud hosting provider from side by side comparison.

Bluehost cloud hosting uses a highly advanced virtualization system which guarantees dedicated server resources for each website on the cloud. This means even smaller websites would benefit from dedicated server-like services at a very affordable price. Bluehost offers pre-defined cloud hosting packs, which are designed to accommodate any type of web project.

Bluehost actually provides cloud hosting service from each class plans including shared, VPS and dedicated server. For affordable and best price value, the bluehost cloud VPS is the best choice based following advantages

• Openstack & KVM technologies
• Latest versions of CentOS, Apache, PHP, MySQL
• Dynamic server resources upgrade
• Instant provisioning
• Gigabit uplink with a guaranteed 20mbit connection
• Fully redundant network with no single point of failure
• Improved cpanel and cloud control panel
• Mobile system control

Visit www.Bluehost.com for cloud hosting plans!

Bluehost setup their own data center facilities to have full control on every side. Either the data center hardware or software setup or hosting server setup are based newest program. Each cloud account resources scalable dynamically upon requests.

What really makes bluehost cloud outstanding is their management system. Besides regular WHM and cpanel, people get a cloud panel for server management. RAM/CPU/DISK/IO usage etc are all displayed by graphic view. Customer can handle server upgrade directly without support required. The most important part is about data protection. Even the server is down for some reason, we still have access to its data remotely. The management center is 100% mobile compatible so customer can access to it anywhere with internet access.

Further more, blue host people provides friendly and knowlegeable tech support whenever you call in. In this way, you don't have to deal with a single problem by yourself, you're powered by a great team behind. If you're considering going cloud, bluehost is just the perfect start.

Advantage of Cloud Hosting

The cloud computing technology is highly scalable and extensible. With traditional single server hosting, everything is limited like cpu, memory and disk space etc and you have to deal with all stuff step by step which is very time consuming like migration, upgrading. But you can avoid all of these from a cloud hosting environment, the downtime can be minimumed to zero. Uptime is the major advantage with a cloud hosting. Check below for a featured list view

• Highest performance guaranteed
• Guaranteed server resources (CPU, RAM)
• Redundant data storage
• No single point of failure
• Website growth flexibility

Cloud technology allows to manage and increase available system resources on the cloud automatically, and this sets cloud hosting apart from traditional hosting providers who are confined to the physical limitations of a server. There're always various limitations on traditional hosting servers such as 10% CPU usage or 50000 inodes limitation etc. In case your website reached the limit, you'll be suspended or warned.

The story is different from cloud web hosting environment because additional resources can be added automatically to deal with high loads. You don't have to worry about service suspension or any kind warning from service provider.

Weakness of cloud hosting

Absolutely, everything has some weakness from the start. The major weakness of cloud hosting is security. Because the data is delivered to the entire network not a single hard drive, it's hard to have full control for its safety. When its backed up on some nodes and the device with weak protection, hackers can easily crack it. Another thing is when transfer to another service provider, the data is still kept on old network which is bad. For further reading on this topic you can refer to this article.