Lunarpages Hosting Plans

Ever thought of running your own website online?

Thanks to open source software, free web services, and cheap computer hardware; hosting websites online nowadays are much cheaper and easier. Look around yourself, there are so many bloggers and webmasters around – almost everyone are publishing content online or trying to develop their own cash machines online – why not you?

Although it’s cheap and easy, there are few consideration points that must be taken seriously. Web hosting, for example, is something that can make or break your website. In fact, picking up the right hosting service is the most crucial factor when comes to starting a new website.

5 Quick Tips in Web Hosting Shopping

What I’m going to show you today in this article is about web hosting shopping – a list of 5 tips for web hosting shoppers.

1. Getting the right hosting company

A good hosting company assure smooth and easy web operations. Reading hosting reviews at forums and blogs, checking complaints on Better Business Bureau or other organization, reviewing hosting features and pricing, as well as reading customers feedback are always the must-do steps to filter out the right web hosting firm.

Getting in touch with the customer support of your candidates might be a good suggestion as the quality of customer supports reveal (more or less) the quality of the management. Also, it’s wise to choose a hosting service that runs their own data centers (server centers). This is to ensure that your web host is not one of those small hosting resellers.

2. Dedicated or shared hosting

A shared hosting is cheap and affordable; while your website works safer and faster (theoretically) with dedicated hosting, it cost a lot more. For newbies or mom-n-pop webmaster, shared hosting is often the wiser choice.

In case you’re in dilemma, read further at: When you should take up a dedicated server?

3. Hosting operating system: Windows or Linux?

Web server operating system (OS) is another major consideration point.

Most shared server nowadays are running on Linux operating system due to the fact that Linux is more reliable and cheaper. Windows hosting on the other hand requires extra maintenance work and is much expensive. Windows hosting are normally selected when certain web applications (Microsoft ASP.net for example) are needed.

A point worth noting is that not all hosting firms come with dual OS hosting service. For example both Bluehost and Hostmonster offer only Linux hosting. For readers who wish to setup their website on a Windows hosting, kindly check Lunarpages Windows Hosting offers – they are one of the best in industry.

4. Web Hosting Features

Different hosting firms offer different web hosting package. Before making decision, you must understand what you need for your website.

Answer questions like: How much storage capacity do you need for your hosting server? What are the necessary hosting features – do you need shopping cart? Private SSL? How much bandwidth do you need? Do you plan to host addon domains on the same hosting account? How many MySQL databases are allowed? Does the web host support cgi-bin access? Is web stats report available?

5. Pricing

It’s no secret that there are full of scams and crooks in the hosting industry. Don’t be ripped off by lousy third-class reseller web hosts! Check and compare hosting prices before you hand out your credit card info. Also, a check on the hosting company refund policy is always necessary. Reliable hosting companies normally offer long trial period. Go with these web hosts as you can simply quick and refund if the the hosting company doesn’t suit your needs.

Sidenote: Lunarpages for example, offer a 30 days trial period for all their customers.

Conclusion: Get the right hosting service!

Finding the right hosting service is the first and most important step in building your website. All features that you need for your website should be carefully checked and studied before you make the decision. This is important so that you time spent for all these can be a long term benefit. In conclusion, we should not fall for lousy hosting plan and regret later. Instead, we should invest more time in the beginning to search and study everything that is out there to see which is suitable for us and select depending on our need.

With that, we will be able to build ourselves a good website.

There are tons of presell questions asked at Lunarpages Forum but many of them are not answered properly. Most prospects are just given a link or two as answers and I believe those questions deserve more attention.

For your convenience, I had copied a few frequent asked questions and prepared my answer here.

1. What is Lunarpages maximum bandwidth limit?

At the time of writing, Lunarpages offer unlimited bandwidth transfer on top of unlimited disk storage and domain name hosting. This simply means you can host unlimited websites on a single Lunarpages hosting account.

2. Does Lunarpages allow multi-lingual websites?

Lunarpages has no issue at all with multi-lingual websites. There are over 250,000 domains hosted with Lunarpages and trust me, there’re a good number of websites are non English and they work just fine.

3. Can I host more than one website with your account? Any extra charges?

Yes. In fact, host as many websites as you want with Lunarpages with zero extra charges. Many are still unsure about Lunarpages atest upgrades, where users get to host unlimited addon domain for free in a single hosting account.

4. Does Lunarpage accept International Domains (ex: .in, .us, .fr, .asia)?

Yes, you can host International domains with Lunarpages. However the hosting company does not have the right to register such domain names for you. You have to first register your domain names with the local domain registrant and switch the DNS to your Lunarpages host when it’s done.

5. Does Lunarpages support web browsing via mobile phones? Will it cost me extra if my web users are using mobile phone?

NO! Of course you won’t be charged extra for users using mobile phone on your website. Lunarpages is a hosting company, not an ISP!

6. What is a dedicated IP? Does it cost extra to have a dedicated IP at Lunarpages?

A dedicated IP is an unique Internet address dedicated exclusively to a single hosting account (hosting single or multiple websites).

A dedicated IP address for your hosting account enables you to:

• View your website via its unique IP address.
• Access your accounts by FTP or the Web when the domain name is otherwise inaccessible, such as during domain name propagation periods.
• Fast website response even during periods of high traffic load.
• Setup private SSL protection on your Web site.

A dedicated IP cost an extra $2.95/mo on your Lunarpages hosting account. Summing up with monthly hosting cost ($4.95/mo), the total price for a shard hosting with dedicated IP will be $7.9/mo.

7. What is different between a shared SSL and a private SSL?

At Lunarpages, a shared SSL will only works on static webpages html and htm; the shared secured page looks something like this: In fact, the shared SSL certificate is included in Lunarpages shared hosting account standard features. https://secure.server.lunarpages.com/~username/ with the server name replaced by the particular server you’re hosting on.

A private SSL, on the other hand, works well with PHP, ASP, JSP and it comes with a personal certificate (instead of a shared SSL). Your webpage (with private SSL) will appears in “https://yourdomain.com” form. For more technical details, read my previous post on Secured Sockets Layer (SSL).

“Overselling” is always a huge concerns for web hosting shoppers. Overselling allows web hosting companies to operate more efficiently. When done properly, overselling is in fact benefiting the customers with lower hosting costs and extra hosting features.

Nevertheless, overselling can be the pain in the butt when irresponsible hosting companies play it bad. Heavy downtime, extremely slow server response time, lost of data – these are all the terrible consequences of overselling.

To learn more about overselling, I suggest No OverSelling Hosts (www.noshosts.com). Learn everything about overselling – from how to catch an oversold web hosts to shop for no-oversell-certified hosting companies… there are golds in the website and it’s a pretty good learning place especially for newbies.