An assessment of Free Hostia
We, at steerexpert.com, have picked ‘Free Hostia’ to be our present domain name and web hosting vendor. Hence we presume that this brief evaluation of ‘Free Hostia’ is maybe going to be quite useful for other individuals from all over the Globe who need domain name and web hosting solutions. We say individuals from all around the Globe, because the mere fact is that ‘Free Hostia’ presently supplies domain and hosting services in multiple datacenter locations: in the United States of America (Chicago, IL), in the United Kingdom (Maidenhead, 20 miles outside London), in Scandinavia (Stockholm) and in Australia (Sydney). Thereby, encompassing virtually the entire World. At least from the point of view of the Internet. So, here is what you could expect from ‘Free Hostia’ in brief:
Shared Web Space Hosting Solutions
The first detail we, at steerexpert.com, have observed is the low prices of the shared web hosting accounts offered by ‘Free Hostia’. Shared doesn’t sound very well, does it? Well, that’s what it is referred to as: shared web hosting. The good news here is that the web site hosting plans supplied by ‘Free Hostia’ are driven by an in-house designed, innovative cloud web hosting platform (each hosting service, like electronic mail, databases, Control Panel, disk space, DNS, stats, etc., is being tackled by an autonomous group of web hosting servers in a cluster). This is a circumstance EVERY cPanel web hosting company on the Earth will have great predicaments with, because cPanel is a one single server based web site hosting platform (each hosting service, such as mail, databases, web page hosting CP, web space, DNS, stats, and so on, is being run on one and the same web server), cPanel is not open source (therefore the cPanel web page hosting firms cannot add new functionality and manipulate it the way they want it) and there is no open source file system (they have to devise their own file system), which is the premise of any cloud web hosting service. Let’s go back to the shared webspace hosting packages, which are powered by a genuine clustered web page hosting solution. With a shared web site hosting package, each customer pays solely for his/her plan, thus preserving the web hosting price very low (since multiple customers utilize the same server). To cut a long story short, a shared hosting package, which is being served by a cloud web page hosting solution, permits you to pay solely for the reserves that you indeed need, avoiding a scenario where you pay for a powerful website hosting account that you cannot actually utilize, or for a tiny web page hosting plan that cannot accommodate your web page. The option to upgrade your account from one plan to another with just two clicks of the mouse gives you the flexibility to commence with a tiny package and upgrade as your Internet presence expands. That way, you economize funds that you can invest in promoting the web site while it is still new. Each webspace hosting package provided by ‘Free Hostia’ sports an online website building tool and more than 40 widely used script software applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Zen Cart and Moodle that will economize you 100s of dollars for web page design services. ‘Free Hostia’ supplies shared web space hosting solutions in a number of different countries across the Globe. There is one datacenter facility in Chicago encompassing the United States of America and Canada; two European datacenters – in Britain and in Scandinavia; and another one in Australia, which covers the Asia Pacific region. In this way, virtually the whole Earth is covered to supply you and your web page’s visitors with a steady and dependable website hosting service at a nearby place. Altogether, the shared hosting plans provided ‘Free Hostia’ are quite well stocked and are available at a very cheap price (starting from $0.00 for the Chocolate package).
Virtual Private Web Hosting Servers
As your site becomes more popular, more people will drop in on it at the same time, thus bringing about higher web server load. Shared website hosting plans have some limitations so that all the customers on the web hosting server have their part of the system reserves. Therefore, for more well known sites, a VPS web hosting server (VPS) would be a better decision. A VPS server offers the optimal ratio between productivity and cost. It mimics a dedicated web server and with ‘Free Hostia’ all Virtual Private Servers that are being offered include root-level access and a bunch of OSs (CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian) and hosting Control Panel user interfaces (Hepsia, cPanel, DirectAdmin) to select from. Please pay particular attention to the Hepsia web space hosting Control Panel. In contrast with cPanel (which costs $10.00 a month atop the chosen virtual hosting server plan’s cost), Hepsia is provided at no further monthly cost (it’s free with all virtual hosting server plans and operates with all Linux Operating Systems: CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, while cPanel functions exclusively with CentOS) and offers a fabulous Domain Manager through which you can register, transfer, renew and manage Top-Level Domains (cPanel does not have such a GUI at all)! The more advanced customers can administer the VPS through a Secure Shell client program, but greenhorns can also administer it effortlessly through a Parallels Virtuozzo or OpenVZ virtualization console, installing server-side software, rebooting given services or the whole virtual private hosting server. Pay attention to this fact: the major advantage of the private virtual web server accounts is that if the web hosting server load exceeds the account’s quota, extra resources can be allocated to this very virtual private hosting server for a given stretch of time as long as they are available on the physical web server. Altogether, a virtual private web server hugely exceeds the capabilities of any shared site hosting package and the extra resources provide an even more steady and dependable service. With ‘Free Hostia’, the prices for the virtual private web hosting server plans begin at only $19.95 for the Fiber package. All VPS web hosting server accounts are available in Chicago, London and Sydney, providing optimal performance for your web sites.
Semi-dedicated Web Servers
To clients with little to no practice, a virtual web hosting server may seem tough to administer. That’s probably why ‘Free Hostia’ also offers semi-dedicated web hosting servers in its principal American data center facility in Chicago. Managing these accounts is similar to managing a conventional shared web page hosting plan through a web space hosting Control Panel interface. They have all the specs of a shared web space hosting account such as a fee-free website builder and a script installer, but the amount of system resources offered by a semi-dedicated hosting server account is many times larger than that of a shared web site hosting plan. For instance, the CPU power that can be used is about FIVE times as much as compared with the shared web site hosting plans. When compared with a shared website hosting plan, the number of database queries added within the semi-dedicated hosting packages is immense: 90 000 / hour. An unlimited hosted domain name allowance is a pattern too. The semi-dedicated server hosting packages do not come with full root-level access (we, at steerexpert.com, deem this a small minus), but the benefit is that they are managed via the same hosting Control Panel user interface as the shared web page hosting packages. This implies that a well-known graphical interface is available to all users who do not have enough confidence to administer a VPS web hosting server, but at the same time demand more power and resources than a private virtual web server can supply them with. This is so due to the fact that the semi-dedicated servers share the reserves of the very same powerful hyper-advanced servers as the ones which host the virtual web server hosting packages, still, the number of the semi-dedicated web servers is quite small (somewhere between twenty to 30 per server), while the VPS web hosting servers can reach a much greater number (eighty to 120 per physical machine). Having that information in mind, the semi-dedicated servers provided by ‘Free Hostia’ can be classified as being very cheap (as far as price is concerned), commencing from $29.95 for the Boabab plan.
Dedicated Servers
According to steerexpert.com, enormous web sites such as social networks, community and corporate portals or famous online stores with 1000s of clients request a much more powerful website hosting solution. It appears that the guys from ‘Free Hostia’ have come to the same conclusion as well. To answer its customers’ demands, ‘Free Hostia’ supplies a collection of dedicated hosting servers that can cope with millions of daily visits. That assessment stands on the hardware specifications the web hosting servers ship with: multi-core processors, up to 4 gigabytes of RAM, 2000 gigabytes of disk space and Gigabit NICs will doubtlessly guarantee the quick and steady performance of any sort of web site. According to ‘Free Hostia’, the primary hardware specs can be upgraded for more resource-demanding websites. We, from steerexpert.com, deem that all dedicated server specifications provided by ‘Free Hostia’ are also appropriate for kickstarting a hosting reseller business as each and every dedicated web hosting server provides free-of-cost invoicing transaction software and a free domain reseller account. Sadly, the dedicated servers provided by ‘Free Hostia’ are all unmanaged. We, at steerpexpert.com, think that this is a small inconvenience, which can be amended by paying a monthly tax which amounts to $32.00 USD. So, if you require aid, the Managed Services upgrade includes an array of extra services such as a routine backup, software installation, dedicated web server monitoring and troubleshooting procedures. A number of web page hosting CP (CP) interfaces are offered with each of the dedicated web hosting servers – Hepsia, cPanel and DirectAdmin. Our (steerexpert.com’s) forecast is that the excellent drag-and-drop File Manager available in the Hepsia web hosting CP will probably make the use of any FTP client useless. Our (steerexpert.com’s) inference is that the dedicated servers provided by ‘Free Hostia’ don’t seem to be very inexpensive (still the Hepsia web space hosting Control Panel and the unlimited hosted domain quotas will no doubt make you smile), starting from $139.95 for the Arctic package.