But wait? Isn’t this hosting fee unbelievably low and too good to be true? So as always, we contacted the web host company to inquire and here is what we were told:

“Some customers maybe a bit skeptical about our hosting price, but to those people, we would like to stress that we offer a FULL 30 day money back guarantee policy. That way they can try our services and find out for themselves to see how good it really is.“

Ok, but we also noticed that even though they seem to have a live chat support feature on their site, it ultimately leads us to their “Contact form”. In addition, they seem to only accept Paypal at the moment. So we thought we will ask them these queries as well and here is what they have to say:

“At the moment, we only accept payment via Paypal, and offer around 14-16 hours of live support per day every single day (including weekends), but in the near future we will be looking to accept credit and debit cards directly on our website, as well as offer 24/7 live support.“

Fair enough! But when one thinks about the affordability of such cheap hosting plans, one question that comes to mind is — how? So we asked them about their business model behind these cheap plans and how they plan to stay true to their promise. Here is what they say:

“At present we don’t offer dedicated servers, but again, this is something that we are working on and hope to offer this in the near future. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of site owners don’t need a dedicated server and are looking for a simple, cheap and reliable hosting service, this is exactly what we offer.“

Moreover, when we took a look at their web hosting features, they are offering some really cool SEO tools for your blog as well. The Search Engine Optimization Tools that are included are Get In Google, Google Score Card, Broken Links Reports, Top Local, Targeted Traffic and Link Building. These applications are intended to help you along your way to ranking your website high in Google. They also include a voucher for Google Adwords or Yahoo Marketing. However, for the price of their cheap hosting server you can easily afford your own marketing campaign.

Zyma’s unlimited hosting plan, which has been tailored to suit the majority of website owners is also certain to attract a lot of attention at this time of the year as many website owners look to either purchase a new hosting plan or renew their existing plans with their current hosts.

Overall, they seem to offer a very competitive service for a ridiculously dirt-cheap price. £4.95 per year is about $7.80 US per year. Add to that the cost of a domain… $7 to $10, and you have a very cheap website/blog. The next cheapest option we could find around was more than $50 US a year. So this really is a great looking deal and well worth checking out, especially since they offer 30 days money-back guarantee too.

Even a novice to site building will easily be able to create a Website/blog using WordPress that is fully functional and easy on the eyes. Once you have created a plan for the site itself, you will need to figure out where your site will be hosted. Finding a good hosting plan for your WordPress blog/site can seem like a daunting task when you begin to look at all the options that are available. Since there are so many web hosting companies to choose from, you might think that they are all about the same. This is simply not the case. There are several things that you need to look for in good web hosting companies. So here’s a few things to look for when shopping for a plan to for your WordPress blog hosting.

What to look for in a WordPress web hosting plan?

1. Blog/site Uptime: You will want to find a hosting company that has a history of excellent customer service. Remember, every moment that your site or blog is offline, you are losing out on money and potential visitors, readers and customers. Research any hosting company that you are interested in and check out its user reviews before making the purchase.

2. Reliability: WordPress is very resource intensive, which means it uses a lot of server CPU and database bandwidth. The larger and more popular your site becomes, the more important it is for you to have reliable and inexpensive web hosting.

3. Compatibility: WordPress is constructed in PHP language and runs on a MySQL database. So your hosting account should support both PHP and MySQL. Most hosting accounts that use Linux hosting plans should meet the requirements for hosting a WordPress blog.

4. cPanel: Most of the people who are using WordPress are not so geek. Having a web hosting with cPanel will make your life easier. You can quickly add addon domains, create FTP account and many other things with cPanel GUI.

5. Intuitive user panel: WordPress installation is pretty straight forward, but some new users may not feel comfortable installing it by FTP or even from within cPanel. That’s where installers like Fantastico and SimpleScripts make the job much easier. You can install WordPress in your hosting account from an intuitive user panel rather than having to manually upload and extract files.

6. Live chat: WordPress sites are prone to hacking and issues like high CPU usage and many times website goes down due to any buggy script. If your hosting support live chat, you can quickly ping them and ask them to look into the issue. Phone support is usually offered by most of the hosting but with live chat support, your life would be easier.

7. Ability to update WordPress easily: It’s important to keep WordPress updated, as there are frequent security fixes and updates. A script installer like SimpleScripts or the built-in solutions used by iPage and FatCow notify you of WordPress updates, so all you need to do is click a button and your blog will be automatically updated with the freshest, most secure version.

8. Bandwidth and storage: The word “unlimited” is highly overrated and there is nothing as unlimited! But still it is possible to find a web hosting provider who offers unlimited resources, which is usually very high and good enough for any high traffic blog. Go for hosting, which offer your WordPress blog maximum resources in terms of storage and bandwidth.

9. Ability to handle Digg front page: Blogging and social media have created a new need for stable web hosting. If you’ve ever had a blog post hit the front page of Digg or another blog mashup service, you know that traffic can instantly spike to insane levels. That’s why buying a reliable hosting plan now should be your top priority even before you get your first visitor through your door.

10. Accessibility: As great as WordPress is, you can experience occasional issues with your site that can be the result of a poorly coded plugin or theme. It’s important to have good support with your hosting plan so you have somewhere to turn to if your site suddenly shuts down or you get the dreaded “white screen of death” or a 500 server error. Make sure you WordPress hosting company has multiple methods of contacting support included email, chat, support tickets and phone support.

I agree, there are many sites out there, which make the best yet cheap web hosting research much easier and also there are some independent web hosting directories which contain detailed information of all the major hosting providers at one place.

At such web hosting directories you can read the user reviews and customer feedback of all the popular and trusted hosting companies from a single website and don’t have to look here and there and collect information.

5 Steps on How to Easily Compare Web Host Providers And Find The Best

1. Firstly, use Google or Yahoo and search for — Linux webhosting, Windows webhosting, reseller hosting, vps hosting, dedicated servers, etc — depending on your particular need. Skip all those web hosting services saying “cheap” or “free“. You will only loose your time with those companies. Add others to your list.

2. Once you have shortlisted few web hosting companies, check hosting company’s domains with whois service. If you do not know what is whois, then try Whois.net. You’ll see when the domain was registered and to whom. I would not host with a provider, which is only providing web hosting services a year or two.

3. Doing the above must have narrowed down your initial shortlisted hosting providers. Now, browse online Resources to know feedback for the web hosting company that you are considering. You need a new search “<hosting provider> review”, “<hosting provider> uptime”, for each hosting provider left on your list.

Read reviews, make your notes. But do not make decision based on one review. Read at least few reviews for each hosting provider. Also I would value review on some blog more than on a review site (because hosting providers can pay such sites for a good review).

4. While doing so, make sure you also pay attention to server uptime. I do not think you would like to buy hosting for $2 per month, and have your visitors facing “server down” page every day. Uptime less than 99.9% is a bad one.

5. Finally, check their hosting packages/plans. Almost every hosting provider has a package which would suit your needs. And do not pay until you have spoken (online chat) to their support/sales team. I would not go with a web hosting company who suck at providing 24×7 support and assistance.

As a final note, don’t solely depend on other’s reviews or advise. Think once before buying a hosting package. Today most of web hosting companies offer their services with Moneyback guarantee. So you can try them for a while before you decided to continue with their service. Good Luck.

In response to the overwhelming success of their web-based Downtime Cost Calculator, Storagepipe has also published 2 new versions of their Downtime Cost Calculator app for Android and iPhone/iPod Touch platforms.

The online version of the Downtime Cost Calculator was released a few months ago, and now to meet the demand for a more portable offline mobile version of this application that could be installed on mobile computing devices and smart phones, Storagepipe has released the Downtime Cost Calculator app for iPhone/iPod Touch and Android platforms.

By using a complex math formula this calculator allows you to see instantly how your dollars are flying out the window in case of a downtime. Here are the parameters that Downtime Cost Calculator considers while calculating downtime:

- Annual Revenue of you organization (can be your website or blog too)
- Business Hours in a Year (transactions)
- Impact that a downtime would have to sales of a company
- Number of employees in a company that would be affected by a downtime.
- Average Employee Cost per hour
- Average Percentage that Employees are effected

To calculate downtime cost, just go to Downtime Cost Calculator website or install their mobile app, and provide the aforementioned information. Then you can start the calculator. Downtime Cost Calculator will show you how downtime cost increases with passage of time. You can leave the calculator running for desired time to see downtime cost of a projected downtime.

How To Calculate Downtime Cost?

The Downtime Cost Calculator web tool and the Android and iPhone/iPod Touch apps are completely FREE (The iPhone version can also be found in the iTunes App Store). For business owners and IT managers, this is an important financial tool that will help the company save money.

- If processors are constantly becoming more efficient, wouldn’t it make sense that they use less energy?
- And if that’s the case, wouldn’t Green Computing just take care of itself over time? Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way.
- When gas is cheaper, do you drive the same amount and pocket the savings?
- When Internet bandwidth got faster, did you finish browsing the web in less time?
- When hard drive storage got denser, did you store the same amount of data in a smaller space?

Of course not, you maxed out these resources… just like you always did before. And this also applies to businesses in the same way that it applies to individuals. When processors get more efficient, they also get smaller. That means that businesses can run heavier applications, and IT departments can fit more servers into a smaller area.

Old fashioned servers were big, slow, clunky boxes that emitted a bit of warmth. But today’s modern servers are tightly bundled blades of red-hot power. And in order to combat this heat, modern servers also need robust cooling systems that consume even more electricity.

It’s gotten so bad that – within the past few years – companies have begun counting electricity costs as part of their total cost of ownership (TCO) for IT.

But there’s more to green computing than just hydro bills. Datacenters can only handle so much power consumption before the servers overwhelm their electrical wiring. Once this limit is reached, expensive renovations are required in order to expand capacity. (The cost/square foot for datacenters is extremely high)

Finally, companies have to tackle the exponential nature of power consumption growth. Throwing money at the problem may work for the short term, but if power consumption doubles in the next 2 years… and doubles again 2 years after that… there is no way that any company  can sustain this rate of spending indefinitely.

The only way to fight power consumption and resource constraints – without hitting the limits of exponential growth – is to go about IT planning and energy management in a smarter way.

This is the challenge that IT managers face when tackling the issue of “green computing”. The problem is a very difficult one, and innovative new approaches are being introduced every day.

Author Profile: Paul Rudo writes about enterprise computing topics at EnterpriseFeatures.com. If you’d like to learn more about business computing, you might want to check out his blog.

Searching for the right hosting solution can be a long and arduous task. If you have been looking for reliable web hosting solution but were confused because of the numerous web hosting providers to choose from, then your search is officially over. Web Hosting Clue has seemingly done all the hard work for you and has listed honest independent reviews of the best web hosting companies based on key and bonus features, reliability and up time, customer support, client feedback, hosting awards and price to value ratio. This host rating site is pretty useful to build the biggest searchable web hosting directory featuring complete information on all  best web hosting providers, all their web hosting plans and their drawbacks too.

Apart from the hosting reviews, Web Hosting Clue also provides web hosting coupons that can save you a few hundred bucks. Their coupon page contains more than 15 prominent web hosts and maximum of them are the best in business. The only downside I noticed is all of the coupons are linked, which means the owners might have affiliation with them. However that’s the open secret of affiliate marketing and I personally think the owners surely deserves that for the well maintained site.

Another thing we liked about Web Hosting Clue is that they have their own Award System for a wide array of webhosts. Awards are categorized and based on the performance of the webhost and winners are selected by the votes from the members of the websites. That is surely a good thing for those who need detailed information of webhosts as other review sites lacks that.

They claim to provide all of their clients with the best customer service, exceptional support and the highest server up-time. Their packages are based upon non-overselling and at the same time they try to stay a profitable company that will stay in the competition for a long time. All packages are hosted on Core2Quad 2.83 GHz with 2 x 500 GB, minimum 8 GB RAM and 100mpbs connection port. Their servers run a RAID-10 system with external backups made, but they also claim to have some amazing features to refer to when it comes to their datacenter.

Datacenter Highlights:

- SAS 70 Type I certified (audit report available on request).
- Dual-city grid power feeds, plus battery backup with automated transfer switch and on-site diesel generator.
- FM 200 server-safe fire suppression system with early pre-fire detection mechanism.
- Automatic temperature and climate control system with humidity and temperature sensors located throughout the facility.
- Biometric and key card security system including man-traps and rack level locking mechanism.
- Staffed 24×7 by data center technicians and engineers and monitored remotely.

Coupon Codes:

- Save 20% on your first order by using the coupon “SUMMER“. [works for any kind of account]
- Use the coupon code “WOW” at checkout to receive 50% off recurring on reseller account. [for life time]
- Buy annually and get 2 months free. [valid only for sales made this month]

In short, even though they are new in front of other big and more established web hosting service providers, Vixile Hosting Solutions is a dedicated and educated provider of online webhosting services and solutions. By providing outstanding services and 24/7 quality support they are aiming at providing satisfactory service to almost any clients with almost any needs. So don’t spend time doing invisible server-administration, let Vixile and it’s crew do it for you.

With their wide range of hosting packages you can surely find the one that fits to your needs. What’s more? Their every hosting package offer things like PostGreSQL, Ruby Gems, Mono, ASP.Net, SVN, JSP and various other as well.

We particularly like their 100% server and network uptime guarantee and the way they refund your hosting fee (on a prorate basis if the down time was unexpected and below 5 hours and a FULL month refund in case it was more than 5 hours). They also offer a Lowest Price guarantee – you show them some other hosting service that is cheaper than them and they will match the price and credit you with free hosting for the last month. We also like the way they buy back your current hosting plans and move all your files for FREE in case you decide to change your web host and switch to LayerOnline, which we think is a great thing to have while switching web hosts!

For almost all hosting operations, they offer various wizards and a nice, awesome interface that works way better than many other leading web hosts. Similarly, you can get all those commercial tools to commence your website without paying any additional cost. You can get site templates, site builder, site installer and accounting software for FREE.

LayerOnline Hosting provides green web hosting services for just $0.99/mo and that includes 1,000 MB of storage and 1 GB of file transfer. That should be enough if you are new to blogging. In addition, you can host multiple websites using the same $0.99/mo. hosting account from LayerOnline Hosting. Isn’t that cool?

Pros: LayerOnline Hosting claim to use latest hardware such as Intel Quad Core and Athlon Phenom processors, with 8GB of RAM, and large redundant disk arrays. LayerOnline’s servers are designed to handle large amount of today’s most demanding LAMP and web 2.0 applications without breaking a sweat. The servers are designed and built from scratch and every LAMP and even Linux kernel parameters are adjusted to allow handling of very large data sets for optimal performance. They constantly monitor Apache, MySQL and other applications’ performance and make adjustments as needed. All servers are firewalled and all software are claimed to be kept updated.

For tracking site visitors, LayerOnline Hosting provides Awstats. Among the three popular stats scripts – Awstats, Analog and Webalizer – TechChunks prefers Awstats as it is user-friendly and much more powerful than the rest.

With the threat of email viruses growing, LayerOnline Hosting’s servers are equipped to block viruses from reaching your inbox. And guess what? Server-side spam filtering is also provided to all clients. Needless to say all your hosted websites and blogs are DDoS proofed as well.Cons: On the down side, the only thing we notice going against them is their not-so-professionally designed website. This can create a negative impression on first time visitors (it did on us) and in turn can result in lost business opportunities, something we are sure LayerOnline Hosting guys would not want.

Apart from this they certainly look like a web hosting solution that any blogger would dream of. LayerOnline Hosting’s automated order system will setup your new $0.99/mo. account instantly. And within minutes, you’ll be issued with your username and password.

LayerOnline Hosting also provides a money-back guarantee with their $0.99/mo. plan. You can try out their service and get a full refund if you’re not completely satisfied. Then what are you waiting for? Go give them a try!