In this post Hexablogs team has decided to analyze cheap web hosting (Only in terms of cost). Among the various excuses to open a website, the most common reason why someone would start a website would be to earn money online. When you’re first venturing into the world of online business for that matter any business one $ saved is equivalent to one $ profit. In today’s world not having a website is surely a sin, and that too for new business cheapest way to have your brand identity is “Owning a website”. So the new task is to buy a domain, get it hosted.

the new tasks you have ahead of you, especially if you’re completely unfamiliar with the various processes of building and managing your own website. The beginning of the process will largely be a learning process, and so understandably, you may try to cut costs as much as possible.

Cost vs Effectiveness

One term we often hear in the online business industry is “cost-effectiveness.” It is often used to describe whether or not someone is “getting what they pay for.” However, cost and effectiveness do not go hand in hand. In general, you’ll get what you pay for, which means if you pay less you will get less. If you pay less for web hosting, then that lowered cost is almost undoubtedly going to result in lowered efficiency on your end.

When you decide your hosting company ask your self what they provide, and how much they charge. Analyze are they satisfying your requirement fully? If your business requires a static website or CMS driven web site, You don’t need to go behind costly plans. Moving them from one to another is not a big task. Do not compromise on security, Data Back up and web site uptime.

If your business is heavily depends on online presence, than take a plan which will scale with you. The True Cost of Cheap Web Hosting will be felt when you can not grow because your web host is not supporting you. you need to analyze what you;re trying to do with your online presence, and how much are you really willing to pay for the convenience of saving a few dollars temporarily.

How old is your web hosting company?

More than 70% of web hosting companies don’t even cross 1 Year. More than 85% of web hosting companies don’t even have dedicated server. They make money with reseller plan. If you are caught in reseller hosting by chance, you’re Gone.

What is cheap?

When quality hosting companies like Hexahost has cheap hosting plans starting from $12 per year, Why take $1 per year for unlimited and screw up. How much you can save by taking $1 per year hosting plan and $12 per year hosting plan. Difference is cost of one coffee, one meal nothing big. Take wise decision.

Happy Hosting!

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A big task to every web hosting seeker is to choose a right platform. A platform forms the base, it decides your web site shape and functionality. One of the tough task is do so is taking a decision on web hosting server operating system, so far big movers has been Linux and Windows. Though UNIX has huge market share enterprise segment only very little in shared web hosting. Most of the available online information are driven by web hosting provider and they tend to support what they use. Microsoft (MS) owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free, in some distributions it is licensed on support, but still code is open. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. This fact does not affect you much unless your are actually setting up server for yourself. But generally windows based shared hosting prices are little costly.This article is aimed to provide neutral comparison between popular share hosting operating system, Linux Vs Windows.

1. Server Security comes down to the competency of the system administrators.  In both Linux and windows user level control and access restrictions are built in. But Linux offers more control tweaking functionality. A secure web hosting provider should have fully tweaked OS to offer uncompromisable information security. This phase is called as OS hardening.
2. Linux/Unix based servers have better security. Mainly because these operating systems have consistently been reliable while Windows is a big target for exploitation.
3. Windows is seen as being insecure is that it is the most widely used operating system for home PC’s. People spend more time looking for flaws in the most common system. They try to attack server pc with techniques learned from local PC
4. Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn’t true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods.
5. Linux performs faster because Windows (as usual) attempts to offer an ‘all in one’ package instead of the extendable Linux implementation
6. Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be a costly affair. Licensed Software apart from OS licenses individual licenses required for supporting applications
7. Choice of server platforms depends on what you intend to put it. The majority of web features run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, IMAP, POP3, JAVA etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. Rewriting code to work with linux hosting is a big task

Take decision based on what are you going to do with the hosting account and how

More information on shared hosting security:
http://www.hexahost.com/blogs/honest-hosting/information-on-shared-hosting-security/
http://www.hexahost.com/blogs/honest-hosting/shared-hosting-security-2/

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Few points to improve shared hosting Security

• Operating System – unless other wise very demanding do not go for Windows hosting. A well known fact billion dollar anti virus business is based on not so protected Windows environment
• Do not use Web hosting and email hosting from same server. Email is a popular medium to spread infections. Separate email and web hosting server increases service redundancy. It helps on saving server load too
• Use SMTP for system/CMS/application emails. Avoid scripts to send/receive emails
• Be careful when you upload files to server
  • Hosting panel mode of uploading file is preferable
  • Do not use web browser as FTP client
  • Do not save your FTP user name and password
  • Use gftp instead of FTP
  • protect your files with md5 hash and tar/compress/zip it unzip/untar/decompress it in server
• Implement password policy and change frequently
• Check your web hosting server IP before you take up the service
• Check twice before you add external scripts to your web site
• Check twice before you add iframe tags to your site

Securing your web hosting doesn’t stop with above mentioned points. A lot have to be done including log tracking, access tracking, web site usage tracking. Webmaster tools will help in grater extent about site security.

Happy Hosting!

Original Article in Hexahost Official Blog

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