During my stumbles across the web for an inexpensive host for unlimited domains, I have decided to look at three more closely. Strangely, they all have the word ‘host’ in their names. Each offer unlimited domains, tons of storage space, and lots of goodies for less than a buck a month. Currently, blowitoutyourpiehole.com is hosted at racknebula.com for a whopping 99¢ per month for 100MB. 100MB is enough space for a Wordpress installation and a couple of other applications. Paying yearly, I get two months free. Translating that into the unlimited host world, I would have to find 600MB for $5.94 a month for six hosts to “break even,” or 800MB for $7.93 a month for eight months. Any extra value is a winner.
A couple of things that I’m not looking at here, but they’re pretty moot anyway. All the domains that I host will either be mine, or as a favor to someone. Email accounts will be handled by google apps for domains, so I don’t care how many email accounts the host has. I don’t need any newsletter lists, because between Yahoo!Groups and phplist, hosted newsletters are moot, as long as you have crontab access. I’m only looking at Linux hosting, because, well, let’s face it, Windows hosting sucks.
So let’s take a look at three unlimited domain Linux hosts, my current host, and a free webhost and compare them side by side. This information is taken off their webpages and is believed accurate as of 12/28/07.
| HostMonster | BlueHost |
HostGator | RackNebula | Reverend Jeffro’s | |
| Disk Space | 600GB | 600GB | 600GB | 100MB | 250MB |
| Monthly Bandwidth | 6,000 GB | 6,000 GB | 6,000 GB | 2 GB | 6 GB |
| FTP accounts | Unlimited | 1,000 | Unlimited | 1 | 1 |
| MySQL databases | 100 | 50 | Unlimited | 1 | 3 |
| PostgreSQL Databases | 100 | 50 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| PHP 5 |  |
|
|
 |
|
| SSH Available | |
|
|
|
|
| SSL Available | |
|
|
|
|
| Free Domain Name | (with 12 month minimum signup) |
(with 12 month minimum signup) |
|
|
|
| Free Setup | (with 12 month minimum signup) |
(with 12 month minimum signup) |
|
|
|
| Guaranteed Uptime† | 99.9% | 99.9% | 99.9% | 99.9% | n/a |
| 3 month billing | $7.95/mo +$30 setup | $9.95/mo +$30 setup | $9.95/mo | $2.95 quarterly | ad supported |
| 6 month billing | $7.95/mo +$30 setup | $8.95/mo +$30 setup | $59.70 half yearly ($9.95/mo) | $5.45 half yearly ($.91/mo) | ad supported |
| 12 month billing | $7.95/mo ($94.50/year) | $7.95/mo ($94.50/year) | $119.40/year | $9.90/year | ad supported |
| 24 month billing | $5.95/mo ($142.80) | $6.95/month ($166.80) | $214.80 | $9.90/year | ad supported |
 |
Each host has more features that you may be looking for; most come with cpanel, which for some is a real special feature. Whoopie! Right now, HostGator has a 20% off special, which expires January 1, 2008 February 1, 2008. Once my paid hosting plans start expiring, if everything stays the same, I’m switching to the 24 month plan at HostMonster. I’m not sure I need more than 100 databases for an extra $80.
Jumping to the new server would be like getting 6000 sites at my current host for a tenth of a penny a month. That sounds like a deal to me.
† Last time I checked, one year is 31,536,000 seconds. 99% uptime means that the server can be down for 315,360 seconds, which is more than 3-½ days per year. 99.9% means that the server can be down for 31,5360 seconds over one year. That’s 525 minutes, which is almost 22 hours. That means that the server can be down for almost one straight day. At 99.999% uptime, your server can only be down for 315 seconds. That’s just over 5 minutes a year. Having a host with 99.9% uptime sounds really good, but look at the math.
Popularity: 32% [?]
This post was tagged with bluehost, free hosting, hostgator, hostmonster, iGoogle, racknebula.Related posts
Comment on this post
War was declared on the United States of America 2,587 days, 13 hours, 45 minutes and 41 seconds ago.
