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About Kenny

Kenny is owner of webhostpark and has been working in hosting industry since 2006. We provide unbiased hosting reviews and release the latest promo news. Follow me on Google plus

Best Enterprise Email Solutions

best enterprise email solution

Email is considered key feature of online business. Especially for those big groups with heavy daily email traffic, a reliable enterprise email solution is highly required. But what email platform to work with? We have carried out a list of leading email services to help people determine the best choice based their coperate needs.

Coperate email requirement is quite different from personal service. It's not just for simple email sending/receiving, coperate email always involve business that bring profits to the company as well as better management over company affairs such as group meeting, calendar, reliable security protection etc. Such features are not available from most common email service. For modern technologies development, most business communication is handled through mobile device. Thus mobile compatibility is an essential requirement to coperate email. Today we'll introduce two leading enterprise email solutions – Microsoft exchange and Smartermail.

Microsoft Exchange

Also known as exchange server, is one of the most popular enterprise software solutions by microsoft. Basically, it has side by side support for all email features. Till present, there's not another product could replace it completely for reliable and powerful email solutions. The microsoft exchange is more than email service but a great platform for many other services development like workflow, content management, web system and other messaging systems. It's an all in one intranet workstation.

Microsoft exchange server support all email protocols besides the common smtp/pop, these include IMAP4, LDAP and NNTP protocols. Exchange server is fully web access compatible from both computer and mobile devices.

The only disadvantage of exchange is the high price. There're several thousands dollars included in purchasing the software. That's how it being used by enterprise groups only. However, the latest exchange server is released in two ways where people can choose to install a full version exchange server or purchase the service directly along with office 365. We can puchase amount of user accounts based our needs, additional user accounts can be also purchased in case there's requirement in future.

email hosting

Smartermail

SmarterMail(smartertools.com) delivers Exchange-level email server software and instant messaging for a fraction of the cost. It's just a light weight windows installer with very low hardware requirements. Regardless its small size, smartermail provides superior stability and powerful features. It is recognized the best-in-class Microsoft Exchange alternative for businesses and hosting companies. Being an enterprise email solution, smartermail provides following unbeatable features:

  • Anywhere Access. Smartermail service can be accessed anywhere by standard web browser and outlook. Your email, calendars, contacts, tasks, chats can be always connected online. That means you will never loose a single email incase there's any.
  • Collaboration and synchronization. All your smartermail data will be synchronized to ensure you can get complete data view no matter when and how you logged into your email account.
  • Instant communication. The most leading feature from smartermail is you can send instant message to co-workers as web chat. You can also start group meeting by this chat feature.
  • comprehensive API. Smartermail provides very powerful web management APIs so you can customize the way in using the product such as user creation, bandwidth monitoring etc. Basically you can program to each feature of the product.
  • Leading antispam and antivirus protection. SmarterMail includes a variety of intrusion detection methods to prevent the mail server from being compromised. 97% spam protection upon setup and installation.
  • Easy migration. You can migrate to smartermail system from any service/platform. The system provides a powerful and friendly migration tool to complete the task in quick time.

Exchange or Smartermail?

Gnerally speaking, the microsoft exchange server is more professional but more complex for setup comparing to smartermail. You might need an IT professional to maintain the server frequently. Smartermail is light weight but already very similar to exchange and could just perform the same. The most important is it will help reduce the investment a lot. You can try out the product for free and pay with your real needs.

Based all the smartermail advantages, more and more hosting groups and enterprises have migrated their email service to this platform. You can easily pick up a smartermail hosting provider or simply install the software on your company server directly to launch the service

Hosting Server DISK RAID Comparison

hosting server disk raid

What type disk raid is best for hosting server? I recently got such question from one client because he cares about server performance a lot. Different hosting providers advertise different server configurations. Some tells the exact server structures and some just blow off by vague words. In this article let's check out the most popular server disk setup then find which type is best to power a business site.

RAID Introduction

Short of redundant array of independent disks, is a type of server disk setup solution to increase single volum storage size and improve performance. The most popular name SAN is completely created from RAID disk. Generally, there're Raid 0~10 and Raid 50 available. For hosting servers it's normally setup on Raid 5 or Raid 10. Some hosting providers also offer Raid 50. We'll compare Raid0, Raid 1, Raid5 and Raid 10 that have been used by hosting servers.

raid0RAID 0. Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance

The most basic and simple RAID setup that only requires two hard drives. RAID 0 implements a striped disk array, the data is broken down into blocks and each block is written to a separate disk drive. The most advantage of RAID 0 is I/O performance is greatly improved by spreading the I/O load across many channels and drives.

Disadvantages: Because its not fault-tolerant, the failure of just one drive will result in all data loss in RAID 0 array. For servers that require high performance as well as high availability, RAID 0 should never be used.

raid 1RAID 1. Mirroring and Duplexing

More advanced setup than RAID 0. Besides all advantages from RAID 0, RAID 1 is 100% redundancy setup to make sure all data safety. In case of a disk failure, it will make a copy to the replacement disk for fast recovery. From production testing, RAID 1 read speed is twice of single disk so performance is greatly improved.

The big disadvantage of RAID 1 is the cost. Because it will copy data from one drive to another thus the overal storage is not increased at all. Also, RAID 1 is mainly done by system softwares thus it adds more loading of server CPU/RAM etc and the server overall performance is affected.

raid 5RAID 5: Independent Data disks with distributed parity blocks

An advanced and one of the most popular RAID solution. It's widely used for high performance and data redundancy. This RAID level provides the highest read data transaction rate and low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data disks. RAID 5 transfer rate and efficiency is the best comparing to any previous RAID solution.

Although there're lots of unbeatable advantages for RAID 5 system, it has the most complex controller design which makes it difficult to rebuild in the event of a disk failure (as compared toRAID level 1). Individual block data transfer rate is the same as single disk.

raid 10RAID 10. Stripe of Mirrors/Mirror of Stripes

A RAID subsystem that increases safety by writing the same data on two drives (mirroring), while increasing speed by interleaving data across two or more mirrored "virtual" drives (striping). RAID 10 provides the most security and speed but uses more drives. RAID 10 can be understood in two ways: RAID 1+0 and RAID 0+1. That means the setup is combination of Raid 0 and Raid 1. That's how max speed and security produced.

There's another RAID solution gaining more popularity called RAID 50(Combination of Raid 5 and Raid 0). There's hot discussion about which is better. Actually, both are good solutions but you must evaluate carefully about what kind of files you store on server. There's a good article about RAID 10 and RAID 50 comparison. The following chart clearly shows the main difference.

raid 10 vs raid 50

As we see, RAID 10 provides better security and performance with regarding to web hosting service. The only negative in using RAID 10 is only 50% drives capacity is usable due to mirroring. But there's no such limitation from RAID 50.

Conclusion

RAID 10 is better choice if we're looking for high performance hosting service. It's also configured by most leading server hosting providers like Inmotion and Arvixe. It's highly suggested brands for business hosting purpose. Their standard management system and high performance service simply made half your business success!

Go to arvixe official and check server details http://www.arvixe.com

The Worst Thing About Working at Google

Google is recognized the career heaven by most IT workers. The company is also frequently ranked top 3 best employers in the world. But how do the google workers comment about the company? There's a hot topic from Quora that followed by lots of google employees. They revealed some of the worst things working at google. We have quoted from Quora comments and check what makes up the worst thing working from google.

NO.1 Everyone is awesome, so they can hire the very best people to do even the most mundane jobs

The worst part of working at Google, for many people, is that they're overqualified for their job. Google has a very high hiring bar due to the strength of the brand name, the pay & perks, and the very positive work culture. As a result, they have their pick of bright candidates, even for the most low-level roles.

There are students from top 10 colleges who are providing tech support for Google's ads products, or manually taking down flagged content from YouTube, or writing basic code to A|B test the color of a button on a site.

google appleNO.2 Google is not a startup any more. It's a big, big corporation

Google was not a start-up environment by the time I left. The same office politics. It was easy to get promoted if you worked on the right projects and projected your work in the right way.

NO.3 Many of the engineers are arrogant

Unfortunately, in spite of the common belief, I think the average level of Google engineers is mediocre. With a lot of arrogance, too. Everybody believes he (males dominate) is better than his neighbor. So it is really hard to discuss any issue unless it is your friend you are talking to. Objective discussions are pretty rare, since everybody's territorial, and not interested in opinions of other people unless those people are Important Gods.

NO.4 Google is so big you can't have any impact on it

I worked at Google for 3 years and it was very difficult to leave but there was one major factor that helped me make the decision – the impact I could ever have on the business as an individual was minimal. As noted in many answers below, Google is an incredible machine that prints money thanks to AdWords. Unless you are an amazingly talented engineer who gets to create something new, chances are you're simply a guy/girl with an oil can greasing the cogs of that machine.

NO.5 Middle management is mediocre

They don't want to rock the boat, they don't know how to inspire their workforce, and they rely far too much on the Google name and reputation to do that for them.

NO.6 Google may understand engineering, but not design

There is not enough focus on product and visual design.  This has led to many aborted/semi-successful products, like Wave, Google Video, Buzz, Dodgeball, Orkut, Knol, and Friend Connect.  There is probably too much focus on pure engineering.

NO.7 Your office space can be too small

If you have to work in one of the four main campus buildings, you will most likely be extremely cramped. It's not uncommon to see 3-4 employees in a single cube, or several managers sharing an office. With all the open areas for food, games, TV, tech talks, etc, it can be surprisingly hard to find a quiet, private place to think.

NO.8 Get things in writing

If you are in the process of gaining employment with Google, negotiate hard, be demanding, and make sure to get EVERYTHING in writing. Google makes lots of vague promises, and seems to not deliver.

NO.9 Googlers can get caught up in trivia

In Zurich there is a quiet room where people go to relax, or take a nap. There are very nice looking fish tanks there and you can waste as much of your work time there, watching the fish do fishy things. There was a 100+ emails thread about removing the massage chairs from that room because some people allegedly were being kept from sleeping because the massage chairs were too noisy.

NO.10 The culture is immature

It's like never-never land – people never grow up.  They drink at all hours, socialize constantly, play games, and do little to no work.

NO.11 You can't work remotely

But the killer to me was the inability to work remotely, which I have been doing successfully for the past 5-6 years.

NO.12 Googlers treat temps with disrespect

As someone who has worked for a temp job working for Google, the worst part is the smug attitude of those who work for the REAL Google. They seem to think that anyone who isn't working for the actual Google like they are is somehow mentally and morally inferior.

Original posted on http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2013-11

Bluehost vs Inmotion Hosting

bluehost vs inmotion hosting

This article compares bluehost and inmotion hosting based their features, server performance, scalability and industry reputation. The both companies serve huge amount clients with high rate satisfication. The purpose of this comparison is to help find right hosting solution between two of the most reputable providers.

Overall Rating – Both win

Both bluehost and inmotion hosting provide affordable and rich feature hosting plans at good price. Over the past 10 years, there're several millions websites hosted with their service. Especially for bluehost, there're very few competitors from the industry. From most professionals' point of view, bluehost is unbeatable and always considered the biggest competitor by other leading brands like hostgator.

Bluehost

Started in 2002, bluehost is one of the very first hosting groups who can provide unlimited web hosting plans. While most services are limited or even not offered from other hosting companies, bluehost proudly to launch their competitive unlimit cpanel hosting plan. Their tactics not only help gain business success but also followed by many other competitors. But no matter how other companies improve, bluehost is still considered the standard choice of unlimited hosting. The brand bluehost as well as its founder Matt Heaton are respected names from hosting industry.

Inmotion Hosting

The company was founded in 2001 by a group of IT genius. Since from the very beginning, inmotion has been focused on business/enterprise hosting solutions. For very a long time, the inmotion hosting service is recognized high reliable but expensive. Indeed, there're lots of budget hosting plans for 2 or 3 bucks per month but we have to pay twice for inmotion hosting and limited features provided. Things changed after 2006 when inmotion team decided to provide personal website hosting solutions. There're multiple plans created for high performance simple website purpose. However, in 2013, the company deleted those plans and re-focus on business solutions and put all personal hosting solutions on webhostinghub.

Bluehost vs Inmotion Hosting on Price – Bluehost wins

Bluehost provides much better price than inmotion. The bluehost default price is configured at $4.95/mo for yearly registration. But if you click through our promotional link, you can get another one dollar discount per month so final price is decreased to $3.95/mo.

Click this bluehost promotional link for best price http://www.bluehost.com

Inmotion hosting is different than most existing service. They focus on business website solutions at reasonable price but not to compete by low cost plan. Their starter Launch plan costs us $5.99/mo which is quite high comparing to other hosting plans. Their group does not issue any promo code either which is popular tactics to attract eye-balls. But if we subscribe yearly or two years upfront, we can get $12 or $24 discounts accordingly.

View inmotion hosting promo at http://www.inmotionhosting.com

inmotion hosting advantages

Hosting Feature – Bluehost wins

Bluehost wins for its all in one single hosting solution. With a single shared plan, bluehost configured all available server features for all clients. Every customer get standard cpanel management panel, unlimited space size and websites support. Basically, you get all needed service and tools to launch multiple websites with bluehost service. The company also leaded the "simplescripts" program which is installed by more and more hosting service.

Bluehost also provides state of the art VPS and dedicated server service. Unlike any other traditional server service, the bluehost servers are cloud based for instant provisioning. Means your server is ready once payment is processed.

From inmotion hosting company, there're also various leading server features but they're provided through different plans. For example the launch plan just provide very limited domain and database support, if we want to take all available advantages, we have to sign up Pro plan which is twice more payment.

VPS and dedicated server features are much the same as bluehost plan. However, we get more RAM and disk storage for the same price at bluehost site. Inmotion hosting vps servers are RAID 10 SAN disk based while bluehost server is 100% created from cloud environment. Technically speaking, higher reliability is expected from cloud service.

bluehost advantages

Server performance – Inmotion Hosting wins

Inmotion is probably offering the best performance hosting server because of their business ideas. They configured all servers via 100% DELL production and each server comes with 32GB RAM on RAID 10 disk. Linux system is optimized cloudlinux with live monitoring. The most important thing is they never oversell to be more profitable. They focus on server performance to ensure your business site is always online and responsive. In order to archieve this goal, they applied lots of server technologies and configured max speed zone from east and west coast data centers. Their system will auto detect your visitor location then pull out data from nearby data center connection.

Bluehost is also great, however their budget hosting plan already told everything. We get most server features for several bucks per month. The result is we can't always get expected loading. Especially at peak hours, slowness or even not responding on site can not be avoided. If you're hosting a big ecommerce site, it's absolutely not acceptable.

Support comparison – Both win

Both bluehost and Inmotion hosting support are responsive and professional. Their tech team prepared resourceful knoledge base and FAQ to help understand and fix most common problems. Both bluehost and inmotion hosting have study area by video tutorials. Especially on inmotion hosting site, it's almost the standard place of hosting knowledge base. Their people provided faq for every single service/tool. No matter if you use their service or not, you can always find solutions on their website.

Who do we recommend?

Actually they both are highly recommended, but it will depends your requirement if to use bluehost or inmotion. Bluehost is great if you need to put up a small to medium size blog or enterprise site. Their resourceful tools and support will simply save your time and money. But if you need high performance server for your business site, especially during peak hours in the day, inmotion hosting will serve you better. Their no overselling policy and data center layouts are powerful backbones of your business success.

Visit Inmotion for hosting plans http://www.inmotionhosting.com

iPage vs WebhostingHub

ipage vs webhostinghub

Comparison of ipage and webhostinghub is based their server features, performance, support and overall industry reputation. The sole purpose of this article is to help readers to determine the right web hosting plan between ipage and webhostinghub among tons of user reviews.

Overall Rating – Both win

iPage and webhostinghub are both leading cheap web hosting providers with rich feature hosting solutions. Their affordable hosting service is trusted by multi millions global clients. Either from hosting plan structures or support features, there're no much difference between the two companies.

iPage

One of the earliest web hosting providers who has been rated on top for over 10 years. iPage provides a variety of hosting features to support a successful website. The biggest advantage with ipage is you don't have to be professional in web development, their starter guidance will guide your step by step on how to bring up a professional website. For very a long time, the company is featured with a single unlimited shared hosting plan. From this summer, ipage released VPS and dedicated server packages at very competitive price.

WebhostingHub

Sister company of inmotion hosting which is recognized business website hosting choice. The webhostinghub service focus on personal to medium size site with rich feature and affordable price. Their service is also featured for safe and fast based their server hardware and data center layouts. After offering a single high performance shared plan, webhostinghub provides upgrade opportunity to its Nitro plan which provides more dedicated resource to support your site.

iPage vs WebhostingHub on Price – iPage wins

iPage definitely provides better price. Especially if you have limited budget and would like to save money as much as possible today, ipage provides $1.89/mo special price which is absolutely leading among all hosting providers. Webhostinghub service is also pretty affordable but it's still provided at $3.99/mo after one dollar discount by our promotional link.

  • iPage: $1.89/mo by 24 months subscription.
  • WebhostingHub: $3.99/mo by 36 months subscription.

As we see, price is about half from ipage with shorter contract periods. iPage also provide very good price for upgrade to VPS or dedicated server service if you have the need.

ipage special offer

Hosting Feature – Both win

Both ipage and webhostinghub provide great hosting features to support your web requirements side by side. Being reputable unlimited hosting providers, they both support unlimited websites per single account. Other essential offers like file storage, mysql database and email accounts are all provided without limitation. All users can also get a free domain for the first year.

Webhostinghub provides standard cpanel hosting and highlight their service by leading performance and security protection. They configured su-php for all hosting servers to protect php websites on code level. It's a rare offer from all other hosting groups for performance issue. The company also provides an easy drag and drop sitebuilder wizard with more than 400 built in templates.

iPage is a little different than webhostinghub. Their hosting servers are configured on Debian linux while webhostinghub is 100% cloudlinux with cpanel support. iPage uses their inhouse developped control panel software Vdeck that has every service integrated. Users can manage billing, website hosting and marketing under the same panel. The spotlight with this control panel solution is you can activate their $100 google credits directly in account center then promote your website directly. You don't have to log into other sites separately.

Server performance – WebhostingHub wins

They both built up powerful hosting servers, but webhostinghub wins on performance based their selling policy and network advantages. Webhostinghub strictly follows their no overselling policies to ensure all clients websites can always get the same performance. They proudly advertise this and it's confirmed by most existing clients. Besides the selling policy, webhostinghub wins on data center layouts. Their group setup data center space on both east and west coasts with max speed zone enabled. Their system will smartly detect where your website users come from then deliver the contents from the most nearby network nodes.

It doesn't mean ipage bad, the weakness is they only got one data center setup in Massachusetts. Users from United States might feel no difference for powerful local network facilities, however, it matters a lot for international users. For example people from Asia and Europe will get different loading speed.

Regardless their difference, ipage is actually rated pretty high from webhostinghub official comparison

webhostinghub comparison

Support comparison – WebhostingHub wins

Support from webhostinghub company is truely the best comparing to most hosting service. Like their official announcement "we support by heart". Your question/concern will be carefully addressed whenever you call in. In order to simplify the support process, they provide multiple support groups to connect such as billing, sales, tech support. You can get problem solved professionally in short time.

Support from ipage front line is mainly for sales as we explained from previous articles. Their group outsource sales support to another company so if you try to fix a tech problem, mostly it will be ended to create a ticket. For urgent support, we highly suggest to submit high priority ticket then call their phone support directly.

Who is better choice?

Based all above explanation, it's all about your web hosting needs to use webhostinghub or ipage service. They both provide leading hosting features and performance. But if you don't want to invest a lot for decent hosting service, ipage will save your money. If you requires high performance server with instant and helpful support, webhostinghub is definitely better choice.

Visit Webhostinghub for hosting plan features http://www.webhostinghub.com

Justhost vs Arvixe

justhost vs arvixe

The following comparison between justhost and arvixe is based 3 years of editorial experience and real user feedbacks. This comparison focus on some essential points like price, support, upgrade opportunity and features. Since both hosting provide affordable and reliable server plans, people sometimes may find it hard to decide which to subscribe. Thus, we have done an in-depth comparison between the two web hosts based their service features and top user concerns.

Overall Rating – Both win

Both justhost and arvixe provide affordable and rich feature hosting plans. They both receive high rate customer satisfication and have built up good reputation from hosting industry. Their hosting plans are supporting multi millions global websites as reported in their official announcements.

Justhost

Part of endurance international group since 2010. The brand "justhost" was just setup in 2008 with unbeatable fast growing rate. With only 2 years development, justhost was ranked to various top 10 lists which is highly recommended by professionals. Justhost provided very standard unlimited cpanel hosting with very competitive price at the beginning. Based their leading server features and performance, justhost won huge business success in short period. Starting from this summer, justhost provides cloud VPS and dedicated server plans from the same data center space of bluehost.

Arvixe

One of the most reputable web hosting providers since 2003. The arvixe leading hosting offers and free work style makes their service unique from any side comparison. This company is also one of the very few reputable windows hosting provider with up to date tech supports. Arvixe provides standard cpanel and websitepanel service via multiple hosting plans including shared class, business class, vps and dedicated server class. Clients even get the opportunity to use different web servers under shared server for additional costs. Being a developer friendly hosting provider, arvixe be able to meet your programming requirements side by side.

arvixe hosting features

Justhost vs Arvixe on Price – Arvixe wins

Hosting plans from both justhost and arvixe are already pretty affordable. But arvixe definitely provides better price by the same condition.

  • Arvixe: $2.8/mo by 24 months subscription using coupon "Clue30".
  • Justhost: $2.95/mo by 36 months subscription.

For upgrade hosting plans such as VPS, arvixe also provides better price for the same server configuration. The better advantage with justhost is people get the opportunity to try out the server with half price for the first month.

Feature comparison – Both win

Both arvixe and justhost provides standard cpanel support for linux hosting plans. Every service is provided as it is with unlimited feature. Some popular offer like disk storage, monthly data transfer, number of email accounts and databases are all provided unlimit. All their servers are configured on DELL with RAID 10 on cloudlinux platform.

For justhost vps, they're created on cloud platforms with 100% uptime guarantee based their leading monitoring system. Justhost also provides instant provisioning for all vps servers which means you can get your server once payment processed. On arvixe end, you even get SSD support with small extra fee.

justhost features

While justhost provides 100% pure linux hosting solutions, users get windows option from arvixe. The arvixe windows server hosting is provided on each class with very competitive price. The windows server configuration is simply the best. Windows server 2012 with unlimited sql server 2012 support plus all available windows server features. Arvixe always stay with the latest updates with microsoft to deliver newest tech support to clients. If you are microsoft developer, arvixe shouldn't be ignored.

Performance comparison – Both win

Before 2013, justhost servers were powered from a single data center where there's always network outage. After merged into Endurance group, the tech team moved all their service to bluehost data centers in Utah. Their data centers are setup to meet the next 30 years' requirement with all available modern technologies. Even after migrated all EIG cpanel servers there, there's still 1/4 free space left. This gives great scalability to their business growth.

The arvixe servers are powered by softlayer data centers in Dallas and Huston. Besides guaranteed performance, their data centers are well known for ddos attack protection. Arvixe is also partnered with lots of reputable security groups like 6scan to ensure your server and website is clean.

Support comparison – Arvixe wins

Arvixe provides the best hosting support by our experience till present. Although their people have free work style, they indeed focus on their jobs seriously. No matter if they work from office or home, they always keep connected for fast response. Unlike most hosting companies who set level one or just sales representative from hot lines, customer can get in touch with different level supports easily in case there's need. Their CEO Arvand even provide personal support directly if you're not satisfied anywhere. He's also very active in social media sites and forums.

Justhost front line support is mainly set on level one. Unlike most other hosting providers, the justhost support is outsourced to third party provider. They can only handle basic tech support and mainly work as sales role. For real tech support, you need to submit ticket to senior technicians.

Who do we recommend?

As suggested above, both justhost and arvixe are leading hosting providers who can provide various hosting solutions to support your web requirements. But if you need better support and more server platforms, arvixe is better choice based all above explanation.

Visit arvixe official site for hosting plan features http://www.arvixe.com