Continue for the last post, I will review 3 web host that I’ve witness their power and reliability.

There are so many web hosting provider out there on the web. Each provide you different features and prices. Some of them even offer you a “free” hosting and life time domain.

Well, not a bad offer anyway, because it’s free!

It’s oke if you want to start something for fun on the web. But it’s extra dangerous if you want to host your lifeblood blog or site with them.

The most headache for web hosting provider nowadays is in handling the huge spike traffic form Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

Many so-so web hosts are crashed badly and having a serious downtime which will stop your blog form showing up at the web.

To avoid the risk, you should make up your mind and face the truth of traffic spike from several social media. Cheap provider won’t be able to handle it, so your target must higher a bit and start to purchase a high standard web host.

The first and most reliable Web host is Media Temple.

Media Temple (mt)

2 words for (mt), Reliable and Expensive.

Well, to have a higher standard hosting, Media Template won’t be a mistake for you to host your creativity there. With a record of 9 years serving, Media Temple is one of the big100 hosting companies in north America. It is also a part of the fortune 500 big company.

You can feel the dedication through there presentation and promises. Well, no kidding, media temple currently hosting many monster companies’ website like Sony or Starbucks coffee. It’s the prove that Media temple’s providing a world class hosting services for their customers.

Media Template also proved to be able to handle High Traffic site excellently by using their Clustered Scalability technology. This technology allow high traffic website and blog to run properly with the power of hundred servers! Cool isn’t it?

But, they are expensive! This is what make me hold my mind when choosing a web hosting before. Well, for U.S. Peoples, $20 a month may be not a big problem.

But for me and people who live outside U.S whose salary is not in dollar, 20 buck could be a serious problem, especially for a simple employee like me.

If I want to buy from Media Template, I must spend: 20 x 12 months = US$240.

Oh, It is my 2 months salary!

Although there is a $40 discount, I still think it’s not affordable to me.

Well, I know that we must dare to invest on best hosting and domain for our blog future. But, how should I pay my daily meal after buying the service?

But!

If you feel that price is affordable for you, I strongly recommend you to go along with them. No other hosting could beat them!

The cheapest hosting plan at media temple is “Grid-Service” ($20/Month).

Grid Service Web hosting plan provide you the following features:

• 100 Gigs of Storage
• 1.000 Gigs of Bandwidth
• can host domain up to 100 website
• For more detail features, please click here.

I found out that Mayank from ReviewSaurus.com, just switched to Media Temple from his old host. He also have written a personal review about Media Temple in this link.

Oke, next follow up web host:

BlueHost

There is no doubt BlueHost is the favorite amongst Bloggers. You can find out a lot of blogger is recommending Bluehost in their blog, for example, a review from Ray at FreshBlogger.com.

Bluehost have a record of 11 years of serving since 1996. The homepage of Bluehost is very simple in design. But it have a powerful performance at the back.

I personally agree to some blogger who said Bluehost is fast in respond and have a good live chat support system.

I happen to help a friend solving her database error by contacting Bluehost Livechat at 2 a.m.

Yeah, I still able to chat with the customer officer at that time. Their Tone is not influence their personal emotion. Practically Friendly and very honest in admitting that there is a problem happen to their MySQL database.

And they fix the problem quick, too! No more than 1 hours, my friend’s blog is up and run again (around 3 a.m.).

I’m happy for her, and I’m I happy to find out that bluehost is reliable too! If not, the problem may cause my friend to lose her readers and opportunities to grow.

Well, every web host will have their own marketing objectives. I think bluehost objectives it to surprise blogger!

Why? because of this features along will make you fall in love immediately:

1. Large Storage: 300 Gigs
2. Host UNLIMITED Domains
3. Free For Life Domain (As long as you buy the hosting with them)
4. 3.000 Gigs of Bandwidth per Month
5. Free Site Promotion Tools:
   1. Search Keyword Analyzer
   2. Search Engine Position Report
6. More Feature is listed in Bluehost Web Host Website (affiliate link).

Currently, Bluehost is working under Unix System with the Cpanel X as their User Control Panel System.

Cpanel X is a very useful control panel system amongst all type of web host control panel. Beside of the easy navigation, it’s feature-full and nicely arrange for your daily usage.

Want to look at the demo? Try this link to taste Bluehost’s Cpanel!

If you are confuse of cpanel system, You can download this manual as your personal guidance.

If you want to see some review from Bluehost user, you can find it at BlogFlux’s Hosting Directory in this link.

How about the price. Well, they are actually very generous. BlueHost only have one web host plan and it only cost you a cup of StarBucks Coffee to pay their monthly fee!($7.95 for 2 years contract or $9.95 for 1 years)

If you contract for 1 year only:

• $7.95 x 12 Months = $95.4

For 2 years:

• $6.95 x 24 Months = $166.8

Expensive? How about adding this as your bonuses?

• Free $50 Microsoft Ads Center PPC Credit
• Free $50 Yahoo Search Services
• Free $30 Google Adwords PPC Credit

Total of $130 Advertising Credit to promote your blog?

If you are interested, use this link to check them out (affiliate link).

DreamHost

DreamHost is currently hosting my dreams. DreamHost is my personal Choose at the time when they are making a huge offer when they’ve successfully hosting five hundred thousands of domains across the world!

It’s huge, comparing to Bluehost that only successfully hosting 350.000+ domain names, Dreamhost have gone beyond them.

DreamHost Web Host Currently having 1.500 Servers up and running. They keep improving their services since 1997 until today. Yes, they indeed have a bad name in the passed years due to the downtime and server problem, but today’s DreamHost is different.

Entering DreamHost website will not make you feeling stiff because their design is funky. Just like our blog design, they use the web 2.0 graphic design and implement a free style writing technique across the site.

What’s more interesting is that you can meet with those DreamHoster (Dreamhost crews). If you would like to make friend with them, Use this link greet them!

Btw, Do you love green? If so, DreamHost may suit you because they are “Green”.

The biggest motivation of me to purchase hosting with them is the little logo on my sidebar. “Mysite is Green“, because DreamHost is Carbon Neutral Web Host. What is Carbon Neutral? Check this out!

My second motivation is on their Account Features. DreamHost have a feature to increase your Disk Storage and Bandwidth size regularly on each week.

For example, on the cheapest hosting plan, the “Crazy Domain Insane!” package which will cost you:

• $9.95 a month for 1 year contract
• $7.95 a month for 2 years contract

Have the following size of Disc Storage and Bandwidth Size:

• Bandwidth: 1456 GB (increase by 16 GB every week)
• Storage: 145.6 GB (increase by 1 GB every week)

You will have extra 64 Gigs of Bandwidth every end of month. And It will keep accumulating until the end of your contract. I already have extra 160 Gigs of Bandwidth since I joined with them! Yay!

It is mean that you will get extra 832 Gigs at the end of 1 year contract.

DreamHost have 4 hosting plan and each plan have a different weekly extra added Storage and bandwidth. Basically, “Crazy Domain Insane” is the lowest price hosting plan amongst them and the lowest add up each week.

By the way, they have an ongoing promotion happening today:

“Prepay for two years of service on ANY of our hosting packages and you’ll get the absolute best value! Not only will we waive the setup fee, but we’ll also cut the price by 20%! Every two years when your account comes up for renewal, you’ll continue to be charged the lower, discounted rate!“

Let me count it for you. Let’s say you want to get the Crazy Domain Insane web host plan. it is $190.8 for 2 years. Discount by 20%, become:

$190.8 - ($190.8 x 20%) = $190.8 - 38.16 = $152.64 for 2 years

This price have already include these following features:

• Free for live Domain Name
• 97-day money-back guarantee, no question will be asked!
• 24 hours Technical Support
• Full language Support (ASP, PHP, MySQL, Perl, C++, etc)
• See their site for more deep detail of features

DreamHost’s Support is not bad too! They have their manual book made into a wiki at this link.

To be frankly, My domain name was transfered from the old host to DreamHost server. You know, transfering domain name is a very daunting tasks. If you do it wrong, your blog will stop responding to your user request and you will have to wait for weeks until the transfer is complete.

But, Dreamhost’s Wiki Files and tutorials teach me step-by-step to avoid any downtime happening to may blog! I was jumping happy to find out that I can avoid such troubles.

I successfully transfered my domain name and things going smooth because every question from me is responded quickly.

Well, It’s my personal experience with DreamHost. Until today, I found nothing goes wrong at all to my blog. I also ever received huge spike traffic from digg and stumble, but everything seems fine!

There is a reviews by other users too at blog flux. Use this link to see what’s other talking about Dreamhost and DreamHost’s Stats at blog flux.

——–

Oke, something funny here is how Alexa looking at this three web host. I basically think that Media temple will earn more Rank than other while DreamHost will score the lowest between them.

But the fact tell me a different story:

1. BlueHost: Alexa Rank(905), Google PR(7)
2. DreamHost: Alexa Rank(2.939), Google PR(8)
3. MediaTemple: Alexa Rank(7.615), Google PR(8)

What the Heck is that? Well, may be Ashish Post would explain to you why Alexa Rank is not reliable.

I hope this longest post ever in the blogosphere will not make you dizzy in reading. And hope this post will be your guidance to get what you need in choosing web hosting.

Have a nice Sunday and See you again at the next post.

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