Review of different hosting companies & services side by side with our continous testing/monitoring over website performance, customer feed backs and overall industry reputation. We host sample website and do necessary testing on some crucial features to ensure our recommendation is perfect.

Best Plesk Hosting

best plesk hosting

Plesk Introduction

Plesk Hosting control panel is production of parallels LLC. (Known as SWsoft in the past). Plesk has plenty of components to help administrator and end user configure hosting services fastly, the user friendly interface is easily to operate and will minimize the server downtime for migration. The professional and powerful design is by far the number 1 popular control panel software.

Best Plesk Hosting

Hosting come with Plesk control panel are plenty, but you should always consider the top reliable ones, dealing with the right hosting will save you a lot  of time by all means. Here're some good plesk hosting companies verified by webmasters.

The best plesk hosting award goes to Hostgator for editor's choice 2013. If you're looking for reliable, affordble and best value plesk hosting service, hostgator is absolutely the best choice today!

hostgator php mysql hosting One of the largest Web hosting provider in the world, also a golden partner of Parallels group. Although the hostgator windows hosting service only started in 2011, it's configured with all leading technologies and server products. Their service is now powering more than 8 million domains for 400,000 customers in over 200 countries. With over 10 network backbones, hostgator offers 99.9% uptime guarantee plus an RSS feed for service status updates.

hostgator plesk hosting features

Visit www.Hostgator.com for plesk hosting plan details!

What's included with Plesk?

Plesk is perfect solution for server automation, it has simplified the administration for Hosting, website and email admin. no matter if you like to use plesk for hosting business or install on your dedicated server, plesk is the primary choice. Plesk main features are following this:

  • Compatible for Windows and Linux, no matter if you're running microsoft IIS or Apache or Tomcat web server, plesk will handle it perfectly.
  • Compatible with various FTP and DNS software.
  • Compatible with Mysql, Ms Access and SQL Server.
  • Compatible with the most popular Email software such as Merak, Smartermail.
  • Built to enable Web hosting
  • Has integrated billing system
  • Built in Plesk SiteBuilder wizard
  • Sell antivirus/antispam with panel
  • Single-click app installation
  • IPv6 Support
  • SNI Support

As we see, with plesk, we almost get everything to launch web hosting service since all required tools are provided as default such as billing, hosting automation, email and database etc are all included. It's hard to find another control panel software that managed doing so.

Plesk vs cpanel

To follow up the industry standards, almost 99% web hosting providers are basaed the two control panel solutions. For top hosting providers, it's hard to find an exception that's using another hosting control panel.

Features – Cpanel is undoubtedly perfect for most users as we discussed on Cpanel review page, however cpanel is by far only available for linux server while plesk works great on both OS. The windows version cpanel enkompass already offered free but still hard to compete with plesk because it works with active directory only.

Price – Plesk has a long history in the industry since the release, it's little more expensive than Cpanel and plesk has many commercial add-ons which will charge a fee as well. Since cpanel is working with the open source linux, you can find many good free softwares.

Should I use plesk or cpanel?

I have to say it depends your experience. Plesk works with both windows and linux servers but works the best under windows and considered the standard hosting control panel for windows hosting. Before Plesk 10, plesk was alwasy reported issues over linux. The cpanel is definitely best choice for linux server and probably only choice for best user experience. It's powerful and user friendly solution that brings lots of great features to save your server managing tasks.

The basic conclusion is: if you're running a windows server and need a hosting control panel, you can choose plesk or websitepanel. If it's linux, go with cpanel with no doubts.

Best Vdeck Hosting

Best vdeck hosting

Vdeck introduction

VDeck is a completely revamped hosting control panel that puts you in control, with a completely redesigned, easy-to-use interface, featuring tabbed, drop-down navigation and one-click support.

vDeck tabbed interface eliminates the clutter by utilizing a well-organized, drop-down navigation and gives you greater flexibility for managing your hosting account and provides you with a wider selection of web hosting applications.

Best Vdeck hosting Provider

Vdeck is developed by EIG company for all in one hosting solution. It's offered solely to eig hosting brands such as Ipage, Fatcow, Ipower, Webhost4life etc. The company also have vdeck reseller plan for people who want to use this software.

The best vdeck hosting awards goes to www.iPage.com for best price and service reliability. The ipage platform has been powering over 1000000 worldwide websites for personal to medium size business. While the software is setup for advanced hosting purpose, we can make full use of it by only two bucks per month.

iPage vdeck hosting is offered at $1.99/mo promotional price. This price comes with unlimited disk space /bandwdith plus over $400 search engine credits for website marketing. iPage hosting technical supports are available around the clock via phone, email and live chat, therefore you can get assistance at any time without any delay. The comapny is also certified green hosting provider with renewable wind engery.

ipage vdeck hosting

iPage vdeck hosting main features include:

  • Free domain for life
  • Free site builder and ecommerce builder
  • Any time money back guarantee
  • Over $400 search engine credits

More about Vdeck control panel

Vdeck is developed by the world's third largest hosting provider EIG who managed over 100 hosting brands. The company provides full IT solutions to small to medium size business. Because they manage a huge business service, they decide to use their own management system to have everything under control thus their tech team developped vdeck control panel and use it for most hosting brands. Being an inhouse developed control panel, vdeck is not buyable on the market.

Not every hosting group be able to develop their own control panel software, especially when they're managing such big business on the globe. The vdeck has multiple major updates since from the first release before its current stable version 4.0, further improvements are still under going.

What's good of Vdeck hosting control panel? Unlike all other popular hosting control panel solutions, Vdeck works with both linux and windows server with central management over domain name, databasae and website and all hosting services. Means you don't have to go out the GUI for any configuration and everything can be managed under the same interface.

Vdeck vs cpanel vs plesk

At the first glance, you might just think it's cpanel with another skin. Bingo! that means Vdeck is almost another version of Cpanel.

Since Vdeck has a solid team to develop and it's dedicated to EIG company, everything is well planed and as long as there's a new release, it will be available for all EIG customers, but cpanel has to be managed independently by cpanel.net company and there's always a fee to have things reconfigured.

For end user opinion, If I have a choice to choose from cpanel and Vdeck, I'm really not sure which to go. cPanel probably got more experience by webmasters because we can have full access to both admin and user panels for any configuration. But no much people have managed a Vdeck as it's not licensed for sale. But from the overall comparison, it should be no much difference to cpanel.

Vdeck vs Plesk. both are compatible with Windows and Linux server, the difference is vdeck has many custom add-ons by their development team and little more complex than plesk. Plesk is almost the standard of windows hosting control panel. It's already a matured software that's used for many years. Vdeck is some part new and still being improved. But it doesn't affect it's popularity at all in hosting industry. More and more users have submitted positive reviews to this software.

Best DirectAdmin Hosting

directadmin hosting

DirectAdmin Introduction

Directadmin(DA) is Linux based hosting control panel software which is designed by the JMBC LLC., – a Canada software corporation. With Directadmin, you can easily and professionally manage system services and configure all hosting products such as Email, DNS, FTP, database and all other services.

Fantastic features in DirectAdmin

A. Directadmin(DA) is by far the most simple & clear hosting control panel on the internet. It's simple but extremely powerful to manage all system tasks by just few clicks away. No special technical skill required to use this panel and no programming knowledge needed. No matter if you use it for personal server or for web hosting control panel solution, directadmin will be perfect choice.

B. Compatible with ALL Linux platform. Directadmin can be easily installed on the most popular linux OS such as Redhat, CentOS, Suse, Debian. If you have any problem with the deployment, DA support will be always with you. There's plenty of user manual to work with and problem fixing FAQs to follow up.

C. Portable with other hosting control panel. This would be the most outstanding feature of DA. For example, if you use DirectAdmin and Cpanel on different servers and like to merge them together, you don't have to move everything manually and take the risk of data loss, Directadmin fully support the transfer to cpanel, It's simply an export and import. that easy!

D. Light weight but pretty stable. DirectAdmin comes small size and avoids downtime by automatically recovering from crashes.

Best Directadmin Hosting?

Unfortunately, the control panel is not poularly offered by reputable hosting providers. Since the Hosting market are mainly occupied by Plesk and Cpanel, Directadmin is only in the process of gaining popularity, it's currently perfect for reseller hosting and personal use on VPS or dedicated server. The web hosts offerring DA are all small or free hosting such as 123-web-host.com, esobtel.com etc..

Directadmin is mostly used on VPS & dedicated servers. Since its a stand alone software, mostly we have to install it by ourselves by following official documentation.

Why should you use Directadmin? why not? Directadmin is highly recommended hosting control panel for its easy and clear face. Especially for start user, you don't have to deal with the complex server stuff, what you need to do is click your mouse step by step.

Directadmin vs cPanel vs Plesk

Many people have difficulty by choosing one of the above control panels. Here're some points you can follow.

1. are you familiar with system management? If yes, all above should be suitable for you.

2. are you going to use for personal or hosting business? Although all the three products are popularly used, There're big difference between the End user groups. Directadmin is perfect choice for personal use purpose since you don't have to deal with a lot of configuration for live service management.

Cpanel is powerful but there're many other stuff needs to be configured seperatly such as third party script library, firewall, antivirus etc. Cpanel is perfect for Medium to large Hosting business.

As for Plesk, the main reason you should use it is because it's compatible with both Linux and Windows, if you're running a windows server, you have to use plesk while the other two are not supported.

3. Price comparison: Directadmin < Cpanel < Plesk

In today's hosting market, cPanel is almost standard choice by most providers for its popularity and powerful capacity. We always have the option to have it pre-configured for any server plan, but we don't always have the option over another two softwares.

Best Forum Hosting Unveiled

best forum hosting

Forum Brief Introduction

Forum or BBS(Bulletin Board System) is online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. The forum administrator can create as many categories as required and each category can hold unlimited topics by forum users. A forum can be differed from chat room to plain message board. Most forums have administrators, moderators and regular users with different rights.

Why use forum?

Forum gives user opportunity to share ideas with other people on internet, it's also quite popular solution for customer support system where seller and buyer can communicate directly for product questions or after sales support. Forum is almost used by all communities worldwide such as Microsoft, Dell, Ebay, AOL and many other commercial groups. There're thousands of forums on every topic, forum websites are also generating the most traffic on internet.

Best PHP Forum Hosting

The Best php forum hosting awards goes to Inmotion Hosting for 100% PHP compatibility and full support over leading forum software solutions. With Inmotion you can easily run a Community Forum using a bulletin board tool. You can also take advantage of inmotion professional customer support & leading server platforms, high quality & great features and multiple free extras! Inmotion PHP forum hosting comes with following advantages

  • Free domain registration
  • Unlimited disk space /data transfer
  • Free installer for forum scripts
  • 99% server uptime guaranteed
  • 90 days full money back guaranteed
  • 100% satisfication guaranteed

Visit www.Inmotionhosting.com for php forum hosting plans!

The outstanding difference with inmotion service is their enterprise grade service. They setup the service via blading fast servers and data centers. Their people configured max speed zone for guaranteed speed from different locations on the planet. The suphp server ensures the max level security of your forum codes and no single issue will bring your site down.

Best asp.net Forum Hosting

Best Asp.net Forum hosting awards goes to Arvixe for leading asp.net technologies and server platform. Their windows servers are setup using latest server 2012 with full trust support! Their people have optimized hosting server purposely for those leading .net forum softwares and provide resourceful tutorials on how to use it. No matter if you just want to start with a small forum website or large community site, there're multiple hosting solutions to meet your different requirements.

  • Low cost .net hosting plans
  • Windows 2012 server platforms
  • Automatic forum install
  • Free domain name opportunity
  • Approved 99% uptime guarantee
  • 24×7 live tech support

Visit www.Arvixe.com for asp.net forum hosting plan details

Best Forum Softwares

phpbbphpbb is free and open source php mysql based forum Application. it is firstly developed by James Atkinson and now has a large community of individuals who contribute greatly to the overall project. phpbb is the most popular used software by individuals.

phpbb official site: http://www.phpbb.com/


vbulletinVbulletin is the most powerful and secure php mysql based forum software, Since vbulletin is not free, you have to purchase it from the vendor and they will handle the security patch and all support on the product.

Vbulletin official site: http://www.vbulletin.com/


simple machine forumSMF full name is Simple Machines Forum. SMF is a free, professional grade forum software which is written in PHP and Mysql database. SMF is quite user friendly, it allows you to setup a powerful community site in few minutes and easy to customizable.

SMF official site: http://www.simplemachines.org/


yet another forumYAFYet Another Forum, is the most famous Asp.net forum application. If you're asp.net fans and want to launch a community site, YAF is your first choice.

YAF official site: http://yetanotherforum.net/


How to choose forum Hosting?

It's quite important to choose the correct forum hosting, Forum will require much more disk space and bandwidth then other websites for the large quatity of information. For users who's not familiar with coding or any other technical stuff, the forum hostig provider should offer user friendly hosting control panel and auto installer to forum scripts. More important is you can find support instantly whenever you met any problem.

There're lots of people are looking for free forum hosting service. No matter what the purpose is, we never recommend such service because you'll get endless problems either expected or unexpected. Choosing the correct forum hosting plan will keep your visitors in safe place.

Best IIS Web Hosting Revealed

Best IIS Hosting

IIS Brief Introduction

Internet Information Services (IIS) – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server developped by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. It is also the second mostly used web server behind Apache. Till present, it serves 24.47% of all internet websites according to Netcraft statistics. The protocols supported in IIS 8.5 include: FTP, FTPS, SMTP, NNTP, and HTTP/HTTPS.

IIS has been developped since IIS4.0, IIS5.0, IIS6.0, IIS7.0 and IIS8.5 is the latest version. What interesting is the Microsoft official website is hosted on IIS6.0

Best IIS Web Hosting

IIS is standard web server for all windows hosting service. Thus we have a wide range choice among different providers. Our professional team has been working with IIS since version 5.1 from different hosters. A lot of popular names were disappeared for various reason. Based our continous working experience and evaluation, we highly recommend the following for guaranteed service.

Arvixe IIS Web HostingAdvanced IIS hosting provider with rich feature hosting plans. Arvixe provides advanced server technologies and super friendly customer support. All IIS hosting plans come with unlimited Disk Space, dedicated application pool, ASP.NET MVC, MS SQL Server & Mysql support with up to 60 Days full Money Back Guarantee!

Check out www.Arvixe.com for IIS hosting plan details


Winhost IIS Web HostingTrusted by over 200000 websites for dedicated windows technologies support. Winhost is 100% windows based hosting with latest .net technologies support. We have choice of IIS7/8 according to project requirements. Every hosting plan provides available tech features on IIS manager and remote connection is supported!

Check out IIS hositng plans at www.Winhost.com


Why are They Best IIS Hosting providers?

Both arvixe and winhost are leading choice for IIS hosting service. They're microsoft certified hosting providers with development support in the community. Their iis hosting plans are setup with leading features for high customer satisfication. Their low cost iis hosting plans come with side by side support for IIS features including asp.net management, iis remote manager and all development facilities. You can deploy a site to their service in any available way in quick time.

  • Dedicated Application Pool support
  • IIS Manager for Remote Admin support
  • Full accessibility to IIS
  • ASP .NET 2.0 ~ 4.5 compatible
  • Windows Server 2008 & 2012 Hosting
  • 99.9% uptime 100% satisfication

What really matters is their no stop improvement. During the past years, they have been optimizing the service on many sides. Either for server performance or customer service, their people are trying to be the most competitive provider in this business. You don't have to learn extra in order to be familiar with their hosting service because everything is pretty streight and you can use IIS manager to control most website stuff.

IIS Outstanding Features

Newest IIS 8 can be deployed on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, it is built on a modular architecture. Modules, also called extensions, can be added or removed individually thus you can easily decide what modules to be installed in order to make use of the server most efficiently. By removing unnecessary modules, you will reduce the server’s attack surface and memory footprint. You also eliminate the need to manage features that are unnecessary for your sites and applications.

IIS 8.0 is popularly offered via server 2012 for it's leading performance and security enhancement. Actually, all leading hosting providers have switched to this platform to meet with the development requirements.

What makes up a good IIS Hosting?

1. Server Specification – As for hosting platform, it must be windows server 2008 at least instead of other windows versions. By configuring server 2008, you should have the following features added:

  • IIS 7 and IIS 8.0 support
  • ASP.NET 2.0 ~ 4.5 support
  • ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET routing engine
  • WCF, Silverlight and LINQ

2. Powerful Control panel -The control panel should be able to accomplish all the common tasks such as IIS hostheader, script map, custom error page etc. Good control panel is followed by Dotnetpanel, Plesk.

3. Customer support – 24 x 7 live customer support is absolutely required for a good IIS hosting provider.

4. Uptime guarantee – At least 99% uptime guarantee should be offered to ensure your business is always online. Only if your website is online, you can make further business and be profitable.

Since there're hundreds of iis web hosting providers with various offer, it's not an easy task to determine the best one. Our initial start is actually from windows server and learnt the exact server end setup & service configuration via one of the most reputable windows hosting providers. We understand the business trick and how to evaluate a service in quick time. Our recommendations on this page is rated through our live experience over 8 years with worry free.

Best Nopcommerce Hosting Unveiled

Best nopcommerce hosting

NopCommerce Brief Introduction

NopCommerce is leading .net e-commerce solution which can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills. nopCommerce is a secure, scalable and extendable e-commerce platform. It provides user friendly administration tools to manage your storefront, customers, wish lists, discounts, and coupons.

It also has flexible tax support, multi-lingual support and hundreds of other features. nopCommerce is compatible with most popular gateways like Authorize.net, PayPal, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, and more. nopCommerce also runs in Medium Trust.

Best Nopcommerce Hosting

NopCommerce is compatible with almost every windows hosting providers. Knowing how to select a hosting company is an important and challenging task. In order to support Nopcommerce application, Your hosting must support asp.net 4.0 and SQL server 2005 and above. We have reviewed side by side over multiple reputable nopcommerce hosting services and concluded the following based windows server features, nopcommerce compatibility and support, performance and ease of use.

Arvixe NopCommerce Hosting nopCommerce official recommendation with 100% satisfaction guarantee. Arvixe supports nopcommerce side by side by rich feature nopcommerce hosting plans! Unlimited web space and free domain for each class hosting with development support. Only $5/mo to start with multiple upgrade solutions to make sure your business grows with worry free.

Check out arvixe nopCommerce hosting offer on www.Arvixe.com


Winhost nopcommerce hostingAnother recommendation by nopCommerce team. Winhost provides business level support for nopcommerce site by super fast hosting server and sql server database. Winhost windows server is configurated by latest .net technologies with more than enough capabilities to support your nopcommerce site.

Visit www.Winhost.com for nopcommerce hosting plan details!


Why they're the best nopcommerce hosting provider?

Besides nopcommerce official recommendation, Arvixe and winhost are simply leading the asp.net hosting service. Especially when referring to business website hosting and customer support. Their service is configured with automatic nopcommerce installation and side by side tech support. When referring to hosting features, they provide newest .net technologies with full support over multiple frameworks. What they offered already over passed the basic nopcommerce hosting requirements. General features offered by Arvixe & winhost include

  • Windows server 2008 /2012
  • SQL Server 2008 /2012
  • Report viewer ans lightswitch support
  • Free domain name registration
  • nopCommerce development support
  • IIS manager & remote delegation support

For each new nopcommerce release, the server requirement is more and more high. For hosting service end, a regular shared hosting is not suggested for successful business site. Instead, we should look for enterprise grade hosting service like the business hosting with vps performance. In this way, server resource & performance will be assured and no server management skill required.

nopcommerce hosting features

More about NopCommerce

Nopcommerce is by far the most powerful open source shopping cart solution on windows platform. There're thousands of developers worldwide to improve it every day with frequent updates. Either for website structure or security or support resources, nopcommerce is on top position. The project is also sponsored by lots of windows hosting providers so they can test the software performance under different environments. When you need a hosting service for this software, you have to confirm with your web hosting support to check whether they can meet the minimum nopCommerce installation system requirements first:

  • Windows Server 2008 or 2012
  • MS SQL server 2008 or 2012
  • ASP.NET 4.0 or 4.5
  • Can be run in medium trust

Nopcommerce resources

What makes up a good Nopcommerce Hosting?

1. Friendly control panel – Control panel must be Asp.net compatible and easy to navigate. It should also be setup for automatic nopcommerce installation and easy management over application pool and trust level.

2. Remote management – This includes IIS remote manager and remote deploy support. Because nopcommerce is open sourced and developers can do local development by visual studio or other tools, local management of IIS/deploy is crucial support so we can make the process easy.

3. Uptime and customer support – Since it's an ecommerce solution, at least 99% uptime should be guaranteed and 24 * 7 live support is required if you seek for help at middle night.

Besdides all above check points, You should always check if you can get independent Application Pool which could improve your website loading performance. This is because, only if your site is available for users to access all the time, it will be able to earn more profit.