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Thought I would test drive HostGator.com, so I committed to 3 months of "Aluminum" Hosting Reseller account.
HostGator is advertising on their site, a 20% discount using the keyword "SPRING". :)
I intend to be my only customer for a while . . .
I've played with Godaddy.com and Powweb.com Hosting services, and thought it would be handy to be a bit more in control as a reseller account would leave me to believe.
Glad to hear :)
If you have any questions, use the Live Chat or call anytime. HG is open 24/7 and live chat hold time should always be less than 30 seconds and phone hold time generally under 5 minutes.
Also some other things to point out....
We have network wide licenses for almost 5,000 templates. Free for customers as long as hosted with us. Check out templates.hostgator.com for info.
If you decide to go into the reseller stuff more, we offer free licenses for WHMCS or WHMAutopilot (billing systems). Again, we paid these customers for network wide licenses.
Fantastico (found in control panel) is also something to look at. One click installs for 52+ scripts.
Just a few things to point out.
Am I missing something looking at the web hosting reseller packages? The disk space you get is very low. I wonder how people successfully resell web hosting, when you have very little disk space to work with (the Aluminum package gives you only 24GB of space). It seems that people would rather get shared hosting...and get much more disk space, while still getting great features included.
How many sites actually use even a GB though? Hosting is built on massive overselling. Our 60K resellers can't be wrong. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by sbradshaw
Speaking of that, now how many of you think the VoIP market is saturated given that we alone have 60K active resellers selling hosting. Some food for thought.
Here's a post by my partner that kind of explains what most won't tell you...
http://blog.hostgator.com/2007/10/06/selling-out/
All very interesting.
Godaddy gives me 150GB of space and 1,500Gb of bandwidth
Around $7.00 a month (middle shared hosting plan)
Powweb gives me 1500GB of space and 15,000GB of bandwidth
Around $7.00 a month (only shared hosting plan)
The bottom HostGator Reseller Plan
Powweb gives me 24GB of space and 250GB of bandwidth
Around $24.00 a month (lowest shared hosting plan)
Obviously it should be hard to compete against these examples.
HostGator does have a lot of interesting tools to work with.
A closer look at Powweb it says disk usage for me is:
Used: 31.66
Available: 300000.00 (Should be MB)
A closer look at Powweb it says bandwidth usage for me is:
Used: 0.00
Available: 3000.00 (Should be GB)
Thats odd, I do not seem to get the newly advertised limits.
I am still cutting my teeth on PHP mainly.
My most real product would be http://FAH-Tool.org
I've not pursued money-making projects.
I also signed up with HG, but with a regular hosting account, not a reseller account. I used to have my site hosted by godaddy, and there were a few gripes I had: Two primary ones--I didn't like GD's control panel as much as cPanel, and their webmail service was flaky. It often timed out on me or took forever to load screens, even using the 'lite' version.
To be fair, I didn't give GD a chance to rectify the problems (didn't report the email issue, and figured they wouldn't change to cPanel)... :) Unfortunately, I've taken my sweet time to get my site up and running on HG--I had to switch to a new CMS, because I was using Windows hosting at GD. I've liked the service and found it to handle my needs so far (do like Fantastico), probably won't use most of the scripts that are available, though.
I'm one of those customers who justifies over-selling. Even after my site goes live, it won't get much traffic or use much space.
As for customer support, the few times I've had inquiries (switching over domain name, etc--took some hand-holding), responses have been prompt and professional.
I'd definitely recommend HG.
I moved up from a shared to reseller when I started reselling to customers. It was immediately obvious that the server was faster and less loaded.
I would also guess you are less likely to have punks on them doing stoopid things with scripts !!
I use Godaddy hosted email for an extra $30 yearly.
I get some complaints from Sprint and CapitalOne to re-verify my email.
Similarly I had some subscribed email threads that would warn about issues sending emails to me.
There are lots of good things about it and it keeps getting new enhancements.
I see email was included in various ways on Powweb (Like SquirrelMail)
I never tried their mail offerings.
I plan to check out HG more thoroughly.
I know I signed for much less on Godaddy, but they bump your abilities as they become available and I've been there a while.
Everybody is getting more slick with tools and such.
HG looks like they have the lion's share in that category.
Rumor has it that this is your site:Quote:
Originally Posted by fisamo
http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html :rolleyes:
Regardless who you use for your webhosting (I recommend HostGator, btw - been with half a dozen hosts and this is the first I'm happy with), I'd recommend Google for your mail hosting. Great uptime, reliability, IMAP...and all FREE :)Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
But you can't use your own domain name, right ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian
Thats the whole idea of email to me and my customers, make it professional.
Can anyone sign up for google mail now, I might end up changing from yahoo if MS swallow them up !!! Personal use only of course.
I have one of my domains set up with Google Mail and it works great. The email is me@mydomain.com not me@gmail.com
They launched that option recently...Quote:
Originally Posted by quattrohead
http://www.google.com/a
We actually use it for VOIPo internal mail. :)
Are you saying that this is free?
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en...sources/setup/
There is a free version and a pay version.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
For personal or small business, I can't think of a good reason not to use the free version. The pay offers more storage space (6+GB on free version, the same as whatever GMail is at at any given moment) plus additional tech support options. No ads in your emails, nothing to indicate to your clients/family/etc that you're using Google's mail.
I see now ...
- Standard Edition includes all of the communication and collaboration applications, support for an unlimited number of user accounts each with 2 gigabytes of email storage, and it's free. If you don't already have an internet domain (like example.com), choose Standard Edition and we'll help you purchase one for $10.
- Premier Edition includes all the benefits of Standard Edition, plus an uptime guarantee for email service, 25 gigabytes of email storage per user, integration APIs and phone support for critical issues. Premier Edition is $50 per user per year, but for a limited time you can try Premier Edition for free for 30 days.
Added emphasis -- looks like free is plenty
Can never figure out how the can afford this.
They don't hit you with adds or adds on a signature ... then that is amazing.
Absolutely right, except about 6 months ago they changed the limit from 2GB to the ever-growing limit GMail users have (currently about 6.6GB). :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
"- Relevant text-based ads alongside email Standard"
So the interface may have adds ...
Even so, I'm going to test it using a domain I added to HG.
Google Apps
"We are checking domain ownership. This may take 48 hours to complete."
"You can create up to 100 user accounts for this domain."
Regarding HostGater - so far I am enjoying the experience too.
I'm taking my time, my test sites merely say "Hello World" in PHP for now. :)
Google gives these MX records
MX Server address / Priority
==========================
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. / 10
ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. / 20
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. / 20
ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. / 30
ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. / 30
ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. / 30
ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. / 30
And I see only one entry allowed under HostGator? (Per URL)
Test out HG support. :) Everyone you would talk to is in Houston.
Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
I tried the chat, but they suggested email, so I've done that :)
HG made the changes that fast!
Already sent test emails.
Was told after that I could have done it with WHM
I'll have to at least take a look some time.
Going back to rate the guy with high marks :)
Cool. We use the person's average ticket ratings (and will for VOIPo as well) for quarterly reviews, additional training, and for compensation.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
HG is wrapping up a completely custom CS platform which has ticket, live chat, and phone stats all together so ALL of them will be rated and factored into the average. VOIPo will also be using their software when we're ready.
We have enough volume that comes in (each person is expected to do a minimum of 75 tickets a day) that the averages are pretty good indicators of what they're doing.
An observation about gmail
This app seems geared to the unorganized. I see no way to create sub folders. I have imported many emails from my old email address by pulling them from the old inbox and classing them as archive.
I think to Google's credit, their amazing search knowhow might be why one big bucket is used.
Do you mean setting up "LABELS" ? That is what GMAIL call folders for their mail app.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
You set up a LABEL, check off the mail you want to go there and then archive it.
Once labels are set up, you can set up filters t make the mail go there first and bypass the inbox.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...n&answer=10708Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
Thanks all for that feedback!
Another thing that kind of makes labels better than folders is that a message can fall into multiple labels.
Like as an example key people that I deal with a lot via email have their own label for their name. Then key companies have labels. Then other sorting I need is also done. One message typically falls into multiple labels for me.
Gmail does take some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it's very robust.
You can also setup "filtering" to very easily forward messages meeting certain criteria to be labeled automatically, forwarded, deleted, etc.
With our corporate e-mail using Gmail, I don't delete any emails unless it's obvious spam or something I know I'm not interested in. This has come in very handy with our monthly carrier billing disputes :) You'd be surprised how much trouble everyone goes through with carrier billing. CDRs are always a mess for everyone.
When I open gmail I notice almost 100% CPU Usage :mad:
It goes to normal on the home page ......
The CPU usage looks normal on Vista AMD64 2800 at home.
On work's Celeron P4 using XP it maxes out and goes away when I kill the gmail page
Some odd firewall thing getting it in a tissy? (We use a proxy at work for www.)
Another look at the CPU usage on gmail, then killing the web page ....
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocumen...307201&lc=1033
Using Firefox, but likely the same effect :(