What is a domain name and why do I need one?

Domain name is the name of a web site, or the address of a website. Let’s illustrate that you are buying a house, you will need an address so that visitors can manage to locate your house. Same thing to your website, when you host your website, you will need an address (domain name) so that it is reachable by visitors.

But why is it necessary to get a domain name while I just want to buy a web hosting?

Logical thinking, whoever is buying a web hosting wants to host a website, and every website needs a domain name. So sooner or later, you will need a domain name. Therefore, web hosting providers have gone 1 step further to provide extra service to you, by helping you to register the domain name. And because of every domain name is unique, web hosting providers use domain name to organize their customer database.

This explains why you need to have a domain name when you are subscribing a web hosting plan, be it a new, or a transferred domain.

How do I choose a domain name?

The next question is how to choose a good domain name? What are the differences among .org, .com, .biz, .us or .net domains? Which is the best?

As mentioned above, domain name is the name of your website and it is the very first name presented to public. Thus a good one is very important. Generally, a good domain name should give people a clear vision on what your website is all about yet it is easy to remember. It is a 2-3 words phrase which explains everything, like webhostingdeals.org. You know that this website is about web hosting by its look at the domain, don’t you? But if you are building a super brand, then you need to think of something special, short yet powerful, like digg.com.

.org or .com? It is absolutely up to you. There are no restrictions at all on what you can do on a .com, .org, .net, .info or .biz domain. Just pick one that you feel right of it. Of cause, there are people out there are expecting a particular type of site for a given extensions, like .com is for commercial; .net is for internet, hosting, designing related; .org is for organization; .biz is for business and .info is for, well what do you expect?

Bottom line, choose a domain name that explains best about your website and pick an extension that you feel right on it, and you are done.

Whenever you want to visit a website; you type the address (URL) into the internet browser; you search it through search engine; or you click on a hyperlink from your homepage. No matter how you do it, your request to visit the website is noticed and what follows is the response of the server hosting of that particular website to serve the website files into your browser.

Server hosting is like your computer, except for it has stronger computing power. And web hosting is exactly like the hard disk inside your computer. It’s a storage space to keep all folders and files, except for the folders and files that are kept in web hosting are all website related.

Why you should care about web hosting?

In order to host anything online, you need web hosting. Be it a blog or a business idea, you need to host your content online so that the world can access it. Therefore you need to know what a web hosting is and what it can do. Can it host WordPress? Can it run shopping cart? Is there any storage constrain?

What are the types of web hosting?

There are many types of web hosting in the market, for example shared hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller hosting, collocation hosting and etc. 90% of the websites are hosted on shared hosting and based on the statistic, 10 out of 10 people who read this article need only shared hosting, because the 10% has already acquired enough technical knowledge that they do not need another article like this one to explain what a web hosting is.

Who are web host providers?

Due to the technical knowledge and high cost involved, it’s almost impossible for us to host website by our own. So people with web hosting knowledge come out with this business idea where they provide the service to host our websites. In return we pay a certain amount of fee. They are called web hosting providers. iPage, FatCow, Hostgator, InMotion and JustHost are some big brands of web host providers.

What else you need to know about web hosting?

There is in fact not much technical stuff you need to know about web hosting. Web hosting providers are experts, thus we should leave the technical work to them. Perhaps the most important thing to do on our side is to pick the best expert of all, by learning what they are providing and how good they are doing their job. Other than that, we should concentrate on what we want to do online.

You know what? You are screwed!

“What?! Why? I’m just utilizing my unlimited storage!”

We see web host offering unlimited storage here and there. We get excited and thought we will not worry anymore for the resources. But often time how many people do really think how big is unlimited and how much resources we are getting?

Unlimited Storage = Overselling

Unlimited disk space is never possible! You heard me right. It is impossible! Just try to imagine your HDD (Hard Disk Drive) within your laptop or desktop, is it possible for the storage drive to store unlimited stuff? No way can that be done, not without new drives keep being added.

Unlimited resource is in fact a marketing gimmick that is meant to draw your attention! After all, size does matter in the hosting industry. The bigger the available storage, the better the value it seems. And because of this, the gimmick blinds us.

Remember, whenever a host promises you unlimited, they oversell by promising you things that are impossible!

Consequences of Having Unlimited Hosting

So what are the actual drawbacks of this unlimited gimmick? In fact, none!

None?!

Yes none. Whenever a host promises you unlimited, the webhost will really try to satisfy your hosting needs. As far as I know, all oversell providers put effort in providing near to unlimited resources. As long as you use their hosting service normally according to their Term of Service (ToS) (no storing your television series is not a hosting normal use), unlimited is in fact a plus point rather than a drawback to your websites.

So What Is The Real Limit?

If you insist on the real size, the limit varies from host to host. The answer lies inside the ToS document of each host provider.

For example Hostgator, they set the limit by counting Inodes. Inodes is a data structure of a file and each inodes represents a file. Hostgator subscribers can store up to 250,000 files regardless of size before possible suspensions.

Another example WebHostingPad, they have not stated clearly on what is the limit. 10GB of storage will be assigned to your account at first and along the time extra storage 20GB, 40GB will be assigned upon request.

What Should You Do After Learning The Truth?

Nothing.

I said so because unlimited storage is though limited, the available size is really more than enough to build anything decent online, unless you are building another YouTube or Amazon. Just an illustration, my Hostgator account is hosting 4 middle sized websites and yet it is just consuming 5,300 Inodes. I am just using 2.12% of the Inodes.

Long words short, unlimited storage and bandwidth is an advantage to web host subscribers like us. We pay less but get more. Some people oppose overselling strongly but I think it is fine. I thought it is more important to look at the host’s support quality and uptime performance. Nevertheless one should aware of this overselling issue so that he or she can better manage the resources.

Sometimes the offers on the advertisement are so attractive that you sign up straight. You could not wait to receive their free gift or their free software. Unfortunately, what turns out is disappointment. You never get what you thought you are getting. You feel cheated. Promotions still remain as promotions but the truth seems to be well covered up by the sales talk.

I consider that marketing tricks.

Here are 6 popular tricks used by web host providers that you should beware of. In fact they are not cheating. They are just presenting their products in such a way that we will not want to find out what is behind the promotions. Therefore it is our responsibility to find out ourselves.

Trick 1: Oversell

Overselling means the web host promises something they can never deliver. By offering unlimited storage and bandwidth, a web host oversells. I bet you have been seeing this offer everywhere haven’t you? Web host tends to offer unlimited storage and bandwidth in their hosting package. The usual response from the consumer is – Wow, I can store as much files as I want now! That’s cool! For you information, unlimited storage and bandwidth are IMPOSSIBLE! Web hosting is just like the hard disk in your desktop. Your hard disk has a storage limit, so does web hosting. So when a web host offers unlimited, they indeed mean unlimited BUT subjected to their term and conditions. The next question is what are the terms?

Trick 2: Cheap Pricing

With the fierce competition in the industry, pricing war has already begun. Always the price is printed BIG on the banners. $2.99/month, $1.99/month, $0.99/month. What the hell! Web hosting is so cheap nowadays! BEWARE! This is one of the tricks. Did you see the asterisk mark beside? Look carefully and you will notice the cheap price come with a long contract period. Albeit it remains cheap, but are you prepared to commit?

Trick 3: 24/7 Customer Support

Customer support is always our concern in picking a web host because they are the people we turn to whenever something goes wrong with our website. Thus 24/7 support is important. Apparently web host providers are aware of this too, thus 24/7 support is a must-have feature in their promotions banners. 24/7 means 24 hours, 7 days a week but have you ever thought that the support might not be 24/7? Who knows? Since most of us do not call them in the midnight. We will only find out the truth when we need them in the late night. Imagine the pain you are going to have that time.

In another hand, some hosting providers are so unethical that they provide fake contact information. From their website their support seems to be very comprehensive with telephone support, email support, live chat and etc. However when you give them a call, you realize that the number is not in service at all! But that is too late as you have stuck with them already.

Trick 4: Fake Testimonial

Besides, fake testimonials are possible. You will see there are many positive reviews in their website praising their service. Do not get your head in easily with the testimonials. It is possible that they are from their staff or friends or even worse, the web host makes it up. However, testimonials can remain true. The point is how you justify the trustworthiness.

Trick 5: Free Marketing/Advertisement Credit

$25 Google Adwords Credit, $25 Yahoo Credit, $50 MIVA Credit and other online advertising credits look like a bargain for your website because with the credit you can promote your website for free. The free credit does sound like free money doesn’t it? For your information you need to sign up a new account in order to claim the free credit. The credit is not applicable on existing account like mine! I was a victim then when I was deciding which host to go with between 2; 1 with the free credit and the other one without. Of cause I chose the first one and found out later the credit was useless. I seriously felt cheated. Although I understand what I paid is for the hosting service, not the free credit but somehow the free credit has involved in my decision making that makes me pi**ed off later on.

Who am I to blame? Myself, for not checking clearly.

Trick 6: 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

In order to boost the confidence of potential customers, web host providers tend to guarantee their uptime. They guarantee their hosting to be up for at least 99.9%.of the time. Well, there are total 2 catches here.

First, what is a 99.9% uptime? From a consumer point of view, that means my website will be up for 99.9% of the time right? Wrong! In fact the 99.9% uptime means the web host will be up for 99.9% only, not your website. I hope you can see the difference there. In order for the world to access our website, the server that stores the website must be up; the internet connections connected to the server must be up; your website is tuned correctly and is operating normally and etc. A web host only does their job by providing reliable hosting server. They will not hold responsible on your downtime due to internet connections or other factors.

Second, what does it mean by guarantee? Is it a verbal guarantee or a black and white guarantee? Some web host shout to have 99.9% uptime guarantee. Are they for real or for show? For your information, if a web host guarantees their uptime for show, they will only “promise” this and that but do not dare to put it in black and white. Get rid of this kind of web host! They lie! While those who really keep their words will state this guarantee in their Term of Service document clearly together with the compensations if they fail to meet it. That, I call guarantee.

These are some of the popular marketing tricks used by web host providers. Surprised to learn about them? In fact I do not really think a web host is that wrong (except for the fake contact information) for the above mentioned tricks. Because some hosts are really working hard to provide good service. The tricks are meant to attract attention and meant no harm to users. Furthermore they are not really hiding the truth and you can actually learn about it if you take a more careful look at the Term of Service document. However, these are the marketing tricks you should beware of! The marketing words sound promising but the truth might be otherwise. Therefore if we really fall into the tricks and are angry to find out later, we have only ourselves to blame.

Please do not lose confident on web hosting providers if you feel uneasy after reading this article. There are still many good and ethical web hosts who show their honesty and integrity in serving us. Check out my hosting reviews for the great name in the industry. They are all manually filtered and posses good reputation in the web host industry.

Therefore it is always important to do researches on web hosting providers. Don’t worry if you are not computer or IT savvy. Web hosting is not rocket science and researching a hosting requires only your common sense. As long you focus on the right things then you are not far from the best deal.

So what you should focus on?

There are 4 things I look into in judging a web hosting. And you will learn about them thorough this article. For your information I have written them based on my personal experience. I consider them true from my heart and I hope they will help you in getting your best web hosting.

• Web Hosting Features
• Web Hosting Performance
• Customer Support
• Pricing

Web Hosting Features

Web hosting features are basically the physical things you are paying for. Physical things include the storage space you get; the data transfer allowed; the add-on domains allowed; the software included and other features you can get once you subscribe to them.

To research a web hosting you need to look into their hosting features. This information usually is listed nicely in a table under the hosting plan details. Read through the table and understand what features you are expecting.

Is Unlimited For Real?

Nowadays unlimited storage and data transfer are commonly offered by most of the web hosting providers. With unlimited it seems that you can store unlimited things. But beware! It is impossible for any hosting provider to give unlimited storage. What they actually mean by unlimited storage is you can have as much storage as possible subjected to their terms and conditions. So what are their terms? Be smart to check out their Terms of Service (TOS) document to get solid information about this. From my experience this is not an issue if you are not hosting something extremely big. I host 10 medium-sized websites in one unlimited storage account and face no problems. However TOS differs among providers, thus read their TOS.

For your information, you will need a domain name as your primary domain when you purchase a web hosting plan. So do remember to check whether that domain comes free or you need to pay extra for it. Check also is there any freebies come along with your subscriptions. Some providers give free advertisement credit up to $100 and free website templates.

These basically sum up the things you get with the plan.

Web Hosting Performance

After knowing the hosting features, it is then their performance coming into the picture. How is the hosting performing? Web hosting is meant to host your website 24/7/365 without fail. With the ever-growing technology, good performance is no longer enough. What we want is perfect performance. However the perfect 100% uptime is never possible, so if someone offers you a 100% uptime hosting, it is confirm that he or she is lying to you. While 100% is impossible but 99.9% is reachable. Let’s see how the 99.9% uptime breakdown looks like.

There are 365 days a year, which translates into 365*24*60 = 525,600 minutes and 0.01% of it equals to 52.56 minutes. If a hosting claims to have 99.9% uptime, means their hosting will be down for around 1 hour annually. This is acceptable. What if 90% uptime? The number looks great but it means the hosting will be down for 10 hours annually. Well that is not acceptable.

The question is how do we check on a hosting performance?

It is easy. There are many hosting monitor services around like uptimeauditor and you can sign up a free account with them to track the hosting. However that consumes time. The easier way is to take advantage from the hosting review site. Most of the review sites have hosting monitoring service where the webmaster shows the performance graph of the hosting. You can then easily know their performance. Is that all? No! You should also check the graph source. Who provides the performance graph? Is the report from a reputable hosting monitoring party? Check the reliability of the report.

99.9% uptime is a must! Do not compromise anything lesser than that.

Customer support

Customer support is a very important element in a hosting deal! Without good support, a hosting will be lousy no matter how good the features are. This is because customer support is the people who work behind the servers all day all night to maintain and monitor the hosting performance. They are also the front line people whom we address our problems to. A quality support will basically give you the sense of reliability. Imagine your problems are solved within seconds. Don’t you feel secured to host with them? Therefore a quality support is necessary to complete the best deal.

Having that said, we have to choose the hosting with the best customer support.

Here come the difficulties. Customers support is in fact a very subjective thing due to its servicing nature. How do you define a support a quality one? You have your definition but others have theirs too and all definitions are unlikely the same. Consider this: you said their support is lousy by your experience but he met a responsible staff who solves his issue fast; You said they are slow in responding but he gets reply in minutes and etc. All the adjectives used to rate a support is subjective. Your slow can be his fast; your lousy can be his excellent. Can you see the difficulties now? That is why you can hardly take people’s word easily regarding the quality of customer support (nevertheless others words serve as good reference).

Believe in your instinct!

By my experience, in order to get the best hosting deal (perhaps the more correct word to use is “your best hosting deal” since it is kind of personal), you really need to talk to the support yourself. If you have good feeling with them, it should work for you. Only you can tell.

However here is a few recommended elements you should check on the support;-

• Do they respond fast?
• Are they knowledgeable all the time?
• Are they able to handle issue independently?
• Are they helpful? Do they sound like willing to help?
• How about their politeness? Friendly?

Basically, you need to make sure they know their stuff well and are helpful when there is an emergency issue.

Pricing

I am not sure whether you experienced this before. I got a shock when I was to complete my order during my online shopping. I realize the charges are different from what I expected. That really irritated me. However when I look closer into the pricing, I see the truth. Beware of the pricing of web hosting! The number printed big on the banner does make the hosting looks cheap but it usually comes with a longer contract term. So what I usually do is to run a virtual ordering. Through the virtual order I learn the final price of my hosting.

A reference for you, at the time of writing, $5 per month could get you a quality shared hosting easily. Be smart to compare price among the hosting providers.

With researching these 4 elements, it will lead you to the best web hosting. It sounds easy doesn’t it? Guess you can now choose a good hosting by your own without feeling doubtful with the suspicious hosting review around. I wish you all the best and I hope this guide does help you in choosing your hosting plan. If you still need hosting recommendations, you could read my web hosting reviews to grab some big names.