Blogger And WordPress

Most people do not start out with a paid host and a paid domain. Blogger and WordPress have given even the most un-savvy Internet users a way to put their content on the web. The problem with Blogger and WordPress is actually universal to all free plans. You do not get a domain. You get a sub-domain. For instance, let’s say that you do have a Blogger account. Your domain is going to be “domain.blogger.com.” The domain is a sub-domain of Blogger. This is the same with WordPress, Yola or any other free site. Can you still rank in the search engines? Yes. Will it hurt your ranking? Yes. When you pay for a domain, you own the domain and your can have keywords attached. This is more recognizable to the search engines and will help you rank faster.

Monitoring

When you go with free hosting, you might not have all of the features of a paid host. Let’s take WordPress as an example. WordPress is one of the biggest platforms on the Internet. It’s used for sales pages, landing pages and one sheets for millions of products online. But when you are using a sub-domain of WordPress you do not have the ability to install plug-ins. Blogger doesn’t allow you to use WordPress if your blog is adult oriented. These are the consequences of using a free domain and free hosting. When you pay for a host and pay for a domain, you own the domain and you pay for the features of your package. Again, if you’re just starting out, features might not be what you’re looking for. You might want to gain a following before you opt in for a hosting package.

Ads

Free hosting is notorious for putting their own ads on your website. If you’re going for a free package, you should be aware of this. Your web page’s ad space should be utilized for products, RSS feeds or Adsense. Not an ad for your package. When you pay for a package, you don’t have to put an ad on your page. Placing an ad on a free package is the host’s way of making up for the fact that you aren’t paying for their service. The fact of the matter is that hosting doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. You can easily find an affordable host like HostGator for very little money. Consider this when you are determining your packages.

Customer Perspective

The customer or reader on your blog is why you have a blog or website in the first place. When you are trying to establish yourself to the reader, it’s important to realize how they will see you. Will they see you as a professional who is paying for premium web hosting and a great domain? Or will they see you as an amateur who is using free services? Your domain is key. When they see that your site is a sub-domain, they could instantly be turned off. The same goes for free web-hosting advertisements. These are a dead give away that you’re not serious about your website.

Bandwidth Caps

The bandwidth on your website is essential for handling traffic. Free web hosting is going to have a bandwidth cap on your site. This means that even if your site takes off, you will not be able to handle the amount of users who want to visit your site. Upgrading to a hosting package increases the amount of users you can have visit your site in a given day or month. Upgrades can be implemented when needed and you probably won’t notice bandwidth caps when you first start out. Consider a hosting package if you’re getting a lot of traffic.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Hostgator

The first one is Hostgator. It’s one that we recommend, and they have a sweet deal for our viewers where you can start a blog for a penny. If you get a 3 year package, you can get one as low as $3.96/month. Unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, so you don’t run into shortage issues. They also use wind power which is really cool, green, and environmentally friendly.

They have a phone number for international users as well, and 24/7 phone support and live chat. They are pretty good about solving any minor issues that you have so you don’t have to worry about it. Basically their support is really awesome. You can’t say that about all web hosting.

A big difference for Hostgator is that you can sign up month to month and get a good deal vs other web hosts where you can to have a long term contract to do so.

2. Bluehost

The next one is BlueHost. Like Hostgator, you get unlimited disk space and bandwidth. If you sign up a 2-3 year deal, you can get for about $3 to $4 / month. They have 24/7 phone support and email support. They also offer a script setup that can be a little easier than Fantastico. While we love Hostgator, this is a good alternative.

3. 2MHost

Now going down a step and lowering the price is 2MHost. It start at $2.75 / month for a 1 year package. 5 gigs of disk space, so you’re getting some limitations here. Although you get 24/7 tech support, it’s a step down from previous 2 web host companies. If you only sign up for 1 year, then it can be cheaper, but you may get what you pay for…

4. 000webhost

Ok the next one is 000webhost. This is great if you’re really not sure that you want to be in the web business, and you just want to tip your toe in the water and see if you like it. It’s free, but you only get 5 domains and 5 emails addresses, and a very limited disk space of 1.5 Gig. There’s no support, phone or chat, though there is email. You only get 1 ftp account, but you do receive Fantastico.

5. iPage

For a couple of dollars you get what the site claims “over $450 of extras” – and this site definitely is worth your time. With this cheap service, you get:

- A free domain name
- Free security suite (SiteLock)
- Free online store
- Free site-building tools
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited email
- Unlimited bandwidth
The site also boasts that it is 100% green, being powered by wind energy, and they also have an anytime money-back guarantee. It includes some neat marketing bonuses that will help you get started, like a credit for Google Adwords, for Facebook Advertising, and for Yahoo! and Bing sponsored searches. If you live in the United States, they’ll also hook you up with a free tool-free phone number. Building your website is also a cinch with their drag and drop site builder, and there’s also a blog and photo gallery set up wizard to help your page look as professional as possible.

6. Fat Cow

Apart from having a cute name, this web hosting service is not only cheap, it offers you a whole lot. The longer that you sign on with this hosting company, the greater the discount you receive too.

This is another web hosting that is powered by wind energy, and they also have oodles of extra goodies like a Google Adwords credit, a Yahoo! and Bing credit, a Facebook advertisement credit, and you get a free Yellow Pages listing. Nextiva also offers a free toll free phone number with the service, and it’s a great Word Press publishing platform.

So let’s go over some of the specs:

- Unlimited Disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth and email
- Unlimited domains hosted
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Free domain name
- Free shopping card
- SSL secure server
- Free script bar (which includes WordPress, Joomla, and more)
They also have some pretty solid partnership programs, including an affiliate program with a $100.00 payout and a referral program that will get you $10 in credits. Customer support can be reached 24 hours a day, every day of the week through phone, email and live chat, so if you ever encounter a problem you know you have back up.

7. Just Host

The final hosting service to make it onto our list is the justhost.com web hosting service. As with the other hosting services they offer the 24/7 customer service and technical support, and they also boast an anytime money back guarantee – so you know that you won’t get stuck in some service that you hate!

This hosting service offers the same sort of features that other cheap hosting services do, like:

- Free shopping carts
- Free domain name
- Free site builder (including templates)
- Google and Yahoo! Ad credits
- Instant setup
- Unlimited domains, including parked domains
- Free script library (through SimpleScripts)
- Free installation of WordPress and Joomla

What made them stand out is that they use cPanel as a control panel (which some other cheap hosting services do not) and their homepage mentions that they will be able to help you do a website transfer. Whether you’re a veteran when it comes to web hosts or if you’re new at it, Just Host makes it rather simple to navigate and manage any number of domains that you may create through their cPanel.

So in summary, we recommend Hostgator, but if you just don’t like it for some reason, then move down the list to others.

It’s kind of funny because many cases the web host support is the real value especially when your blog is down and you need help. Anyway what web host do you use and why?

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Check Out the New Provider

Before you do it, you have to inspect carefully to make sure you know what you’re getting into. Go to the new web host, create an account (you would have to pay for it, but you’ll get a refund within the first month or so if you decide to cancel), check out their user interface, contact their support team to find out how helpful and responsive they are. You really want to test it out before you make the decision to take the leap.

A good tip is to sign up for the new web host within about two weeks of your current web hosting contract expiring. This way, if anything goes awry, you have immediate backup right there and can correct any errors far more easily than if you jumped to the new host after your previous contract had expired. Not only that, but you have time to renew your current contract if you decide that the web host you have actually isn’t so bad compared to most of the others out there.

Backup All of Your Data

Before you do the transfer, make sure you have backup properly. The last thing you want is to have misplaced certain files that put your blog to a grinding halt. Download everything to your hard drive so that you can restore everything just in case.

It may also be a good idea to backup everything to CD and/or USB. Backup all of your images, files, databases and directory structures, and then store the CD or USB in a safe location.

Your current web host should have a backup option in their Cpanel. Ask customer service to walk you through the steps if you’re still uncertain. You can also do the backup within WordPress where you can go to Tools and then Export to download all of your content, but this doesn’t include any images, audios or videos. Ideally, those files should be on a separate cloud storage company such as Dropbox, Microsoft Live Skydrive, Amazon S3, or even Google Docs. Of course you should make copies of them too. Basically you should get a copy of everything that makes up your website.

Tell People you’re Moving

Visitors hate being inconvenienced by laggy, slow pages, or web pages that no longer exist. Make sure that you give your visitors a fair warning about the transition and that you will be coming back soon. If you can give them warning weeks in advance through a blog entry, or an email for email subscribers, that would be best. Add a note on the homepage of your website advising of the date that the website will be moved, and for how long they can expect to be inconvenienced. Things on the Internet come and go at a fast pace, so if they for just one day cannot locate your website and receive some “404 error” code, they may assume that you’ve packed up and shipped off, and are never to return again.

Making the Big Move

Ok now here’s the big move. It can be scary. There are a lot of things that you might be thinking about such as transferring data to the new web host, notifying the domain registrar if it’s not your old web host provider. Update your DNS. These are things that might make your head explode. This is complicated. You could really screw up your blog if not done correctly. This is why we like Hostgator so much. They will actually bring all of your stuff over for you.

Now once you have everything migrate over, or you have the new web hosting company do it for you, test, test, and test! One thing that you need to take advantage of is the “preview” function that most of the hosting services offer these days. You can see how your website looks on whatever browser or browsers of your choosing, ensure that the functionality is still working as they should, and that everything is all intact. If anything looks wrong, check the coding, and don’t be afraid to contact the hosting’s customer service for help (they can almost always troubleshoot any problem that you may be experiencing).

Only close your old account after you’ve thoroughly checked to make sure that you website works on the new web host. As mentioned above, “don’t burn that bridge” until you’re sure.

Additional Tips on Changing Web Hosting Services

Once everything looks good and is working right, it’s time to configure your email accounts (you really shouldn’t, but just in case you do) on the new web server. Take note of the new SMTP and POP3 account that you will be using once the transition is complete. Once the website has completely transitioned over to the new web hosting service, you will then be able to update your email client so that it does match the new SMTP and POP3 settings on your account.

While you’re in the process of moving, it’s also a good idea to put some sort of a mark on any page on your new web server, just so that you can differentiate the page on your new webserver from the old one. This will make it incredibly easy for you to tell when ever any DNS information of yours is updated.

It may take the DNS information 72 hours or so to propagate across all of the DNS servers, to make sure that you tell your visitors that you may be gone for that long. Though your entire website may be all (or mostly) switched over in as little as two, it’s always a good idea to give your devoted visitors a fair warning.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just a few years ago, a dedicated server was far too pricey an option for most people. It could easy run you hundreds of dollars / month. But times, like everything else have changed. That means you’re in luck, because prices have dropped. Well, sort of.

So what exactly is a dedicated server?

A dedicated server is private server specifically dedicated to your website and your website alone… nobody else’s. You don’t want to share your server, do you? In contrast, a shared web hosting solution is shaky, flakey and your web can be shut down by someone’s else’s problem or screw up (spike in traffic, bugs, etc). None of that is an issue if you’re just getting started and want to keep your costs low, but as you grow, you need reliability.

What are the pros of having your own personal dedicated server?

Nothing is without it’s upside, so here are the pros.  The biggest one, of course, is reliability. When you start a blog or website and it starts to grow, reliability begins to really matter. With a dedicated server, you never, ever have to worry about someone else’s traffic spike bringing your site down. That’s because you never have to share resources with other people on your dedicated servers, it’s all yours. Also, if you have a dedicated server and you find yourself experiencing a traffic surge there’s no need to sweat it, as you won’t bring other websites down.

Yes, a huge surge in traffic will dramatically increase your CPU usage (or bring your server down altogether) but having a dedicated server means you never get charged for the increased use of resources, as you would if you went the shared web hosting route. And that can wind up saving you a pretty penny, and who doesn’t like saving money?

What are the cons of a dedicated server?

Well, first and foremost, as we mentioned is Cost. A dedicated server may be more affordable than ever, but it’s still not the cheapest way to go. You’re buying a whole big box up-front that you may never use. Who knows if you need all that space and processing power on a server? And even today, you’re still looking at $150/month for an entry-level dedicated server.

Let’s not forget, that one server is where all your stuff is. It’s never  a good idea to put all one’s eggs in one basket, yet that’s exactly what you’re doing when and if you go the dedicated server route.

Also, any kind of hardware failure can bring down your entire box. You’re offline and being offline in the web business is a fate worse than death, but you knew that already, right? Point is, that’s a risk you simply can’t afford to take.

When you’re the only one on that server, your web hosting provider is much less likely to notice a problem. However if you’re on a big server with some neighbors, well, you know how it is… someone’s always quick to complain, so the squeaky wheel gets fixed pretty fast.

Also unless you get into the $1,000/month range, dedicated server don’t get even close to the quality and reliability of equipment of shared web hosting and VPS.

All that said, for us, personally, we know a dedicated server solution would not be a good option. We’ve gone that route and it failed miserably as we slowly outgrow it. We really feel that the negatives far outweigh the positives, though after reading this edition of Web Hosting 101, you may still feel a dedicated server is right for you.

Are there any better web hosting options?

That really depends on you and what your needs are. If you’re just starting out and have a small amount of traffic, keep your costs low and go with a solid, reliable, and cheap shared web host. Just be careful to not go with a flaky one. (Here is the only shared web host we personally recommend to our own friends and family).

Truth be told, once you outgrow a shared web host, we prefer the Virtual Private Server (VPS) route. We’ve really found that it’s a much more effective more cost-effective, if and only if you get a reliable provider.

A VPS, as we’ve mentioned before, is the love child of a dedicated server and a shared web hosting solution. It’s a combination, the best of both worlds, really. We like to think of it as a “high-end” shared web hosting solution. You don’t share with as many people and it still has many of the benefits of a dedicated server. It’s like working out at a high end chain gym, like Equinox.

So who do you go with if you’re in the market for a VPS (Virtual Private Server)?

There are a lot of providers out there. We’ve researched options tirelessly and we’ve personally tried a bunch of them, and most of them tend to oversell their server resources which makes them flaky. On the bright side, after all that research, we’ve found one that doesn’t suck. In fact they’re awesome.

To find out which one we recommend, check out our “web hosting resources“. There you can find our personal recommendations for a Virtual Private Server provider as well as a whole hosts of other recommendations that may be of interest to you. I wonder how many of our recommendations you are going to adopt and how fast you will adopt them.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Web Hosting 101 series, where we’re going to dig a little deeper for you…

• Web Hosting 101: What Are My Web Hosting Options?
• Web Hosting 101: What’s Shared Web Hosting? (coming soon)
• Web Hosting 101: What’s A Dedicated Server?
• Web Hosting 101: What’s A VPS? (coming soon)
• Web Hosting 101: What’s Cloud Web Hosting?

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, what exactly is cloud web hosting?

No, it’s not where Han Solo was frozen in Carbonite. What it is, is the future of web hosting. It’s basically a group of dozens or even HUNDREDS of servers all working together to deliver web pages to visitors. These servers working together make up a CDN (Content Delivery Network), a term that’s becoming more and more commonly used.

Instead of having your website and all your data, images, etc. on one sever, the information is spread across ALL of them. And better still, these servers can be located all across the world, meaning closer to your website visitors, wherever in the world they may be.

So if one server goes down suddenly in the night, who cares? If someone’s website gets mentioned on Oprah three or four times or it becomes really popular on Digg and gets a huge traffic spike, it’s all good. With cloud hosting it’s just not a problem because your data is spread across all the servers meaning they can pick up the slack so your site stays up when you really need it to. And if one of these servers crashes, you probably won’t even know it has happened.

The cloud hosting industry likes to refer to it as “the leading edge of hosting.” Is it, yeah, well… but with a few bags of salt. Cloud hosting is a really great idea, but the technology just hasn’t quite gotten there yet so in some cases it really doesn’t quite live up to the hype. It is however a new and great add-on for certain things.

Back in the day, cloud hosting was used only by the really big and well-funded sites like CNN because they really needed their sites to load fast no matter where the person was in the world. If CNN is in Atlanta and I am in Abu Dhabi, it will load a lot slower than if I am in Atlanta. Cloud hosting solves this issue because as you know the servers are spread across the globe so when the guy in Abu Dhabi goes to CNN.com he will hit the cloud server closest to him and that will result in way faster page loads, which in the internet business is everything. But now cloud hosting is far more affordable and available for everyone – and even we use it for all our websites.

What are the pros of cloud web hosting?

Unlike traditional web hosting, cloud hosting is cheap and you only pay for what you use. It also scales instantly, so if you site gets mentioned on Oprah or hits the Digg homepage, all those servers working together keep your website up and running. Also the caching servers located strategically throughout the world make your website load much faster for your visitors, regardless of where they are.

What are the cons of cloud web hosting?

Ironically, all the advantages of cloud web hosting are the cons. What happens if you get a DOS (Denial of Service) attack for days or weeks and there’s a huge spike in your traffic? Guess what? You pay for that.

Cloud web hosting will happily service the hackers’ requests like nothing’s wrong. Because it’s optimized for speed and delivery. Anything that goes crazy, costs more (think a poorly written WordPress plugin or PHP script).

At this point cloud hosting is great for delivering static content (like the images or CSS files on your website), but the technology really just isn’t there to handle full dynamic websites. This means uploading your entire website to a cloud web hosting provider is neither practical nor realistic for you to do (yet). Yes, it can be done, and some websites are doing it, but they’re incurring much more downtime than we would be comfortable with.

The concept of cloud hosting really is the best thing in web hosting in years, but the reality just doesn’t totally live up to that promise. Yet.

Then how come we use cloud web hosting?

So after all these gotchas, how come we use cloud hosting? Well, because it’s awesome, in a “right tool for the job” sort of way.

Then exactly what do we use cloud hosting for, what you ask? We used it to serve up all our static content (images, CSS and JS files, stuff like that) and it works flawlessly.

Here’s how it works… Let’s say someone from Japan visits our Ask Dan & Jennifer website – which has been called “today’s #1 Love & Sex Resource” – and which is actually hosted on a server in Maryland, USA. They click on our site, get the page from our server in Maryland, but the following 30 to 50 requests for small files (images, CSS files, etc.) hit our cloud web host, which redirects the user to the cloud host caching server in Japan for all that static information to view.

Why do we do that? Simple: faster page load times. We went from having page download times around 1 second to download times around 300 millisecond and that is huge. That means happy people and happy search engines and you want both to be happy. Google and Bing will love you for it and so will your readers.

That’s all the time we have for today. And don’t forget Blog Success Journal has TONS of resources for you. Videos, articles, recommendations, you name it. We have everything you need to build a successful blog and also make money off your blog. We are your one stop shot so be sure to take advantage of us!

Be sure to check out the rest of the Web Hosting 101 series, where we’re going to dig a little deeper for you…

• Web Hosting 101: What Are My Web Hosting Options?
• Web Hosting 101: What’s Shared Web Hosting? (coming soon)
• Web Hosting 101: What’s A Dedicated Server?
• Web Hosting 101: What’s A VPS? (coming soon)
• Web Hosting 101: What’s Cloud Web Hosting?

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first thing you have to do is know the four main types of web hosting out there, and they are:

Web Hosting Type #1: Shared Web Hosting

What exactly is shared web hosting? Just what it sounds like: a bunch of websites on one server, and everyone shares resources.

Pros of Shared Web Hosting: This is the cheapest option (some starting well under $10/month), and there are tons of providers for you to choose from. (Although there’s only one shared web host that we’ve relied on ourselves and actually recommend to our own friends and family – read on, we’ll tell you which one that is).

Cons of Shared Web Hosting: If someone else’s site goes down, yours goes down too. Or if someone screws up or gets a traffic spike you get affected by that too. Or you get a massive traffic spike (or you make a mistake) and you take everyone else down with you.

Basically, in web hosting, you get what you pay for. If you get anything out web hosting 101, we hope it is this: don’t cut corners. We’re not saying you should spend like a drunken sailor, but don’t cut your nose to spite your face, okay? It’s not pretty, trust me. And it does nothing for your blog.

Web Hosting Type #2: Dedicated Servers

Whoever invented the web hosting business must’ve been a big believer in truth in advertising, because again, this option is exactly what it says it is. A dedicated server is a server that is entirely dedicated to you and your website. You don’t share it, it’s all yours. This is not an option we, your illustrious hosts, recommend. Why? Well, first the good news:

Pros of a Dedicated Server: No neighbors to worry about, it’s all you. That results in better reliability.

Cons of a Dedicated Server: You have to buy the whole server, whether or not you need it. It’s not scalable which makes it very difficult when your website outgrows your current situation. It’s also very expensive for most of you just starting out in the world of blogging (costs $150/month to start)

Now you see why we don’t recommend it. Most of you can’t really afford to spend that kind of money on your web hosting solution (at least not initially), and even if you can you’re going to outgrow it at some point and then what? You can’t quickly and easy ramp up to the next level when you need to.

Web Hosting Type #3: VPS (Virtual Private Servers)

This is our preferred solution. VPS is what we use, and what we recommend you use as well. What is a virtual private server? Simply put, it’s a cross between a shared web hosting solution and a dedicated server. You still share, just not with as many people as you would if you went the shared web hosting route. We like to think of it as “high end” shared web hosting. We use it and we love it because it’s very easy, and you can just scale up to as much as you need, as soon as you need it.

Pros of a VPS (Virtual Private Server): Fast, easy, affordable ($50/month to start), you can ramp up later at the flip of a switch; and we use it (isn’t that reason enough for you?)

Con of a VPS (Virtual Private Server): You still have neighbors and you may still have to be very careful of VPS providers: they may over-sell the service, resulting in a flaky server for you. In fact many do, and there’s only one that we trust to power our own websites. (read on, we’ll tell you which one)

Web Hosting Type #4: Cloud Hosting

What is cloud web hosting? Hundreds of servers (many spread all over the globe) all working together to serve up your website (and the sites of all their other clients). If one of their servers goes down, no problem. The rest of their global servers will pick up the slack. It’s really great in theory, but not quite all the way there in real life. We don’t recommend using this as your sole web solution.

We use VPS coupled with cloud hosting for static content. Why? Because this combination decreased our page load speed time to less than half of what it was before – and that matters (a lot) to both your website visitors and to Google. Before it might take a couple of seconds to load our page, now it takes a matter of milliseconds, because our static content is on cloud servers all over the world. So someone from Japan gets our static content from a Japan based cloud server, for example.

Pros of Cloud Hosting: Pay only for what you need. Scales instantly. Global server network.

Cons of Cloud Hosting: You can but really shouldn’t offload your whole website to them (yet) – that technology just isn’t reliable enough yet. And you pay for all you eat – so a poorly written WordPress plugin or PHP script, or a denial of service attack, can drastically increase your web hosting cost.

By now, you’re probably wondering: which specific web hosts do you recommend Dan & Jennifer?

Well, we’re happy to tell you:

Our Recommended Shared Web Host:

HostGator - At just $7 (or less) per month for solid service this one is our first choice. It’s who we’ve used personally relied on for our websites, and the only shared web host we refer our friends and family to.

Our Recommended Dedicated Server Host:

N/A. We don’t recommend dedicated servers. Go with shared web hosting (above) or VPS (below) if you’ve outgrown shared web hosting.

Our Recommended VPS Host:

ServInt – Very solid VPS; they’re the ones we trust to power our websites today, serving just under a million page views per month (and growing fast!!) – all dynamic content, mostly WordPress and vBulletin.

Our Recommended Cloud Host:

Rackspace CloudFiles - Cost is less than Amazon S3, and it just works. We’ve been very happy with the service.

“This is a lot of information, just tell me what to do!” you say! Okay, fine. Here goes:

Keep it simple! If you’re just starting a site: go with a shared web host that’s solid, reliable, and cheap – just be careful to not go with a flaky one. (here is the shared web host we personally recommend).

Then when your traffic grows over 100k page views a month, jump to a VPS. As your traffic keeps growing, say around 300k page views a month, offload your static content (images, etc.) to a cloud host. That’s exactly what we did with Ask Dan & Jennifer and our other websites with amazing results.

Coming up in the Web Hosting 101 series, we’re going to dig a little deeper for you…

• Web Hosting 101: What’s Shared Web Hosting? (coming soon)
• Web Hosting 101: What’s A Dedicated Server?
• Web Hosting 101: What’s A VPS? (coming soon)
• Web Hosting 101: What’s Cloud Web Hosting?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Answer: not on your website. Yes, yes, we know. Every good web host (and even the not so good ones) gives this away for free when you host your site with them. This is exactly why you DON’T want to take them up on it. Think about it: if your website goes down (and trust us, it WILL) what’s going to happen to your email? Oh, that’s right. It’s down too. Why? Because you put all your eggs in one basket. So your website and your email server are BOTH down. How are you going to be notified? D’oh! You can’t be notified by email because that’s not working either. You’d better hope you get notified by SMS, and forget about receiving any important emails from perspective clients, fans or anyone else.

Think that’s enough reason not to host your own server? Well, we’ve got more. As if this wasn’t enough, hosting your own email can eat up half of your resources making your web page load slower. In the internet business that’s a fate worse than death. Because no first time visitor to your website is ever going to say “wow, that page loads really slow. I’ll come back later and give them another chance.” Doesn’t happen. Pure and simple. Also Google measures every millisecond it takes to load your website, and they track that daily. If you’re slow, Google will be happy to send their visitors to someone faster.

Your web server exists to load your website pages fast. Period. It exists to do nothing else. Anything that gets in the way of this is simply bad for business. That’s why you don’t ever, under any circumstances host your own email server. Period.

So, now that we’ve scared the pants of you and told you what not to do, what are your options? We’ll the truth is, you’ve only got two in our opinion. But they’re really good ones, so fret not, fledgling website owner. We’ve got you covered.

Email Hosting Option #1: Gmail

First and foremost is Gmail. They are simplest option. They are free, and for your domain they are the cheapest option which may be all you need to hear if your website is just getting started. Beyond having an unbeatable price, they also offer something else that’s much more attractive: piece of mind. See, Google has big, huge buckets of money to throw at, well everything. This means they’ve invested in the best people and technology money can buy to ensure that nothing bad ever happens. You won’t ever have to worry about your Gmail going down, because if that happened, a lot of insanely well paid people would lose their incredibly cushy and killer jobs unless they get it fixed FAST; and they just aren’t going to let that happen. So Gmail won’t let you down and it’s incredibly simple and easy to use. You don’t need a huge amount of technical knowledge. A few simple clicks and you are up and running.

Email Hosting Option #2: Rackspace

Rackspace (or as we like to refer to them “The Artist Formerly Known As Webmail.us) is our recommendation, and they are our email hosting provider. Why? Rackspace is comprised of rock stars. Their support people are awesome, and when you call or email them with a problem, they actually call or email you back – with an actual solution. People at Rackspace aren’t just passionate; they are, as they like to call it “fanatical.” And we mean that in a good, non cult-y way. Rackspace has created a culture (they refer to it as their ‘special sauce) where employees thrive and have been named one of the best companies to work for by Computer World and The Sunday Times. All of this means that your business is handled by happy people who actually want to go to work and not some disgruntled college kid sitting in a basement somewhere. You can probably tell by now that we’re pretty big fans of theirs. It’s really hard not to be, actually. They’re reasonably priced too! Give them a try and you’ll see why we love working with them.

As a small side not on Rackspace, we also use them for Cloud Hosting all the static content on our websites, but more on that soon in a separate article.

Whether you go with Gmail or Rackspace, your email will still be up and running if your website ever goes down… and you won’t be impacting your website load times every time you get an email with those huge NSFW pictures from your pervert friends and funny cat videos from your less perverted friends. FTW!

If you get a really big traffic spike because you’re YouTube video went viral – can your web hosting plan handle it? Or will your blog simply be ‘unavailable’?

We experience some very large traffic spikes in the beginning of our online presence. At a time when AskDanAndJennifer.com was getting about 10,000 page views per month, one of our article would get featured on a major social media site sending somewhere between 30,000 – 60,000 visitors in one day!

Sounds awesome right? Well it’s awesome until your blog goes down – completely – because your web host can’t handle the traffic spikes.

That was the case with our first web hosting service so we decided to try HostGator. Guess what? Amazingly, our $7/month web hosting plan held its own and we had no more downtime from these traffic spikes. Yes!

I’m not saying HostGator is perfect and we never have any downtime…

Listen, all websites go down occasionally – even Amazon… What matters is how your web hosting provider handles the situation when there’s an issue. HostGator’s email support team responds to tickets very quickly – sometimes in a matter of minutes. Plus, if you need to, you can pick up the phone and call them.

HostGator’s customer service simply cannot be beat. Their staff is knowledgeable, responsive, and helpful – that’s a trifecta in my book.

Are there other good web hosting options?

Sure, there are web hosting companies that offer great good, solid service and reliable servers. But there’s a catch (read on, we’ll spill the beans below).

When we started looking for a good web hosting service a few years ago, we asked around and got a general shoulder shrug from most of our friends. Yeah, they all had one host or another that was “OK”, but nobody could tell us”the best one to go with”. So after a LOT of painstaking research, we ended up with a “short list” of possible contenders and the end decided to go with HostGator.

HostGator – Best web host to start out with. Solid, reliable, and very inexpensive: as low as $5/month. And a unique feature that other low-cost web hosts don’t have: you can sign up monthly, no commitments.

HostGator is great because it JUST WORKS, they offer a lot of great features, and (unlike most other quality web hosts) you can just sign up for an inexpensive monthly plan, month by month. We highly recommend HostGator. The fact that their email support replies to most issues in literally minutes certainly doesn’t hurt.

NOTE: Use Coupon Code BLOGSUCCESS when you sign up with HostGator – and your 1st month is just $0.01! That means you can start a blog today for just $0.01. Now you’ve really got no excuse to delay, so take a few minutes and do it before you get busy and forget!

Why We Personally Recommend HostGator

Handling 30,000 – 60,000 visitors to our WordPress blog in a single day is not bad for a $5/month hosting account. We were pretty darn impressed. And that’s why we recommend HostGator to our friends and family regularly…

AND, they offer a 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee… so they really make it easy for you to try it out and see how it actually works for you. If you don’t like it, they’ll give you a full refund, no questions asked. We think that’s pretty cool.

In short, if you want a hosting provider that is inexpensive and JUST WORKS, we recommend you go with HostGator. That’s what we did, and that’s where we send our friends.

So go ahead… Try HostGator for yourself. You’ll be glad you did. 

Tip: Don’t forget to use Coupon Code BLOGSUCCESS when you sign up with HostGator – and your 1st month is just $0.01! That means you can start a blog today for just $0.01. Now you’ve really got no excuse to delay, so take a few minutes and do it before you get busy and forget!