Web design & hosting forum: WHO IS THE BEST LOW PRICED WEBHOST COMPANY IN 2012?

Your help is really appreciated, another newbie here

I am looking to start an e-commerce site. Nothing too major, just a small online business. I plan to register my domain with a different company from whomever I'll host with (still debating on a few register places). I think I can figure out a good place to register but I have no clue who to host with. So many people are saying iPage is good and really cheap. I looked them up and it seems that they have some deals for about 2 or 3 dollars a month for one year which sounds really good and kind of too good to be true. I dont think they offer cPanel, and even though I dont know much about cPanel, it seems that many people favor it for ease. One thing I want for my site is the ability to have more than the 5 pages most hosts offer for free. I want to put many tabs on my site as it will be a clothing/ accessories site. Can I still do this without paying more?

What do you think of iPage? Would it go well for an e-commerce site of my needs? Any suggestions are appreciated greatly!

iPage for an e-commerce system website, because it looks like they only offer shared hosting accounts. If you exceed the shared hosting limitations, there's nowhere for you to upgrade to.

You'll want to look for a host that makes it easy for you to upgrade to a virtual private or dedicated server when your website becomes more demanding in terms of speed, size, and resources.

~Sovereign

Okay, here's the scoop. I recently began a mobile automotive detailing business and I need a website up and running super soon. I've lots of potential clients awaiting to confirm my validity and to confirm my business's platform. So, I would need a site that will page a photo gallery, video of work in progress, a menu for pricing and available detail packages, a blog or page that exercises daily tips for care of an automobile, contact page, a little about me and an appointment set up page and whatever else that will help me promote my new business. That's it in a nutshell. I'm just exhausted at looking at page after page of web-hosts that boast this, that and the third and at the end, when I think I've found the right one, "BAM!" it's another damn negative report of that host and the usual "Stay away!" theme. I've been told to stay far away from GoDaddy, IPage, JustHost, WebHostingPad, and a boat load of others. I'm on a budget. I'm looking to spend no more than $100 for the go ahead and then whatever happens after the term, so be it. I'm sure my business will be able to handle $10 a month to keep a decent host. What host out there do you recommend will genuinely help me achieve that goal today? By the way, when I said newbie to the game, I meant it. I know absolutely nothing about coding nor do I know relatively anything about Linux or windows software.

The first thing to distinguish are the types of hosting accounts. To keep it simple, there are three levels of hosting: shared, virtual private server (VPS), and dedicated. They are also in the order from least to most expensive. A shared hosting account is a web server with possibly hundreds of other people on it and all the server's resources are shared among all of you. A VPS is a few people on the same server, where each customer gets a subset of dedicated resources. A dedicated server is an entire server for yourself.

For your project, a shared hosting account will do just fine. I say that because it probably won't use a ton of bandwidth, space, or other server resources such as the CPU and memory. If it did, you could always upgrade down the road, but I think you'd be fine on a shared hosting account for at least several years.

That said, you do get what you paid for. No shared hosting provider is perfect. Sites will be down from time to time (couple times a month for 30 minutes at worst), whether it's maintenance or one of the hundreds of users maxing out the server's resources, causing the server to crash. Support will be a little bit slower compared to if you were a VPS or dedicated server customer. That's the con of a shared hosting account, but that's also why they are so cheap.

To give you some prices, shared hosting accounts are usually between $5-10/mo, a VPS can be anywhere between $40-60/mo, and a dedicated server is usually $100+/mo. So the shared account is definitely the only one in your current budget.

Now, you'll always want to register your domain from a company other than who your hosting provider will be. I personally get mine at GoDaddy, but another good option is NameCheap. The main reason being, is that the prices are usually more consistent and should you get into a dispute with your host at any point, your domain won't be jeopardized or held hostage by the host, meaning that as long as you have a recent back up of your website, you can leave any time.

You'll always want to pick a host that has been around for a long time e.g. 3+ years. There are many start up hosting companies that show up one day, get really great reviews, but can't afford operating after a while and then they disappear forever (with your content). A host that has been around for 3+ years, even if they have the occasional bad review, is still going to be a lot more stable.

The most recent shared hosting provider I've used was MidPhase. They aren't perfect, but the support and server uptime is good, and it will get you where you need to be. I'd recommend you take a look at them and compare them with maybe one or two other options you found on the Internet.

For your particular website I'd recommend a content management system. Lots of them are free, they provide you with decent website templates that you can modify at your leisure (or buy for really cheap ~$50 per template), and they have plenty of plugins to add capabilities and features to your website that you're looking for (photo gallery, contact form, etc). Specifically, I'd recommend the Wordpress CMS. It's well established, easy to use, has a good community, and it's free.

Lots of hosts nowadays have one-click installers. That means that Wordpress is most likely already pre-installed on the server and all you have to do is login to your control panel and "activate" it.

This information should get you started. Once you have something like Wordpress running, you can come back to CNET and ask more specific questions if you want.

~Sovereign

Thanks so much for your time and effort. More importantly, thanks for the great 101. I will definitely use it to my advantage. One last thing before I venture off and this won't take but a second. I've registered a domain name with GoDaddy.com for the next 3 years. The cost was less than .03 cents a day. You couldn't get it better than that. Anyway, you mentioned that you should register a domain name with one company other than the one you'll choose as your host. Does that mean I can still keep my registered domain name/dot.com at GoDaddy.com and get hosting(should I decide not to choose GD.COM) thru another carrier and still get to register the same domain name/dot.com I have with GoDaddy.com? Or do I have to transfer the dot.com name to the host I choose all together?

is via DNS. When you sign up for hosting with any host, they will ask you whether you want to register a new domain or whether you already have one. You tell them you have one. Then after you've signed up, they'll most likely email you a pair of nameservers to add via your registrar's (GoDaddy) control panel. Then you go and add those to your domain.

http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/664

~Sovereign

The domain will always stay add GoDaddy, you're just telling GoDaddy via the nameserver who is hosting your website and from then on, the domain will be linked to your hosting account. The beauty of that is, as I mentioned, you can always update your nameserver to a new host, should you decide to change. The host has no control over that, because it's not registered with them.

~Sovereign