As an avid blogger and technology neophyte, I’ve used a variety of tools and services to create blogs and websites. I’ve tried Wordpress, Blogger, Google Pages, HostGator, GoDaddy, and others to setup and host sites. All these services have pros and cons in my experience, but the company I’ve stuck with the longest has been Lunarpages. Different web hosting services offer different strengths - so this review won’t apply to everyone.
My profile as a web hosting customer: I’m non-technical, as in I have no programming experience, but I can do simple setup tasks like downloading and installing a Wordpress blog. So I have some basic skills and understand basic web technologies. If you point a gun to my head I can do some basic HTML, but I much prefer to use blog templates out of the box with minimal customization. My basic use of web hosting is to create and host blogs on various topics. I use Google Adsense and Google Analytics as well as FeedBurner as my basic blog tools.
So now that you know my perspective, here are my views of the strengths / pros of Lunarpages vs. other hosting services.
Unlimited bandwidth and storage
I can’t emphasize how important this is. When I was hosting on JustHost, one of my blogs became very popular due to some links on Digg - and after one day of traffic my blog was shut down. I missed tens of thousands of views and potentialy hundreds of dollars in ad revenues due to a low cap on bandwidth! This was really frustrating and made me realize the importance of unlimited storage and bandwidth. Many web hosting providers say they offer unlimited hosting, but very few actually deliver it - watch the fine print for offers that are only good for the first three months. Lunarpages offers true unlimited hosting, and this is one of their main advantages.
Real human customer service offered 24 hours
Many times I run into major technical problems at 1am while setting up a website. And many times I’ve been frustrated by my hosting company only offering customer support during daytime hours. Additionally, many companies hire cheap overseas tech support reps who have no technical knowledge and will simply note your issue down in your records and you may never even get a call back. Very very frustrating! This is why I was so surprised and pleased by the 24/7 live human customer support that Lunarpages offers. They have trained, knowledgeable staff that answer you calls or chat requests within seconds and can guide you to a solution on the spot. This is very important for anyone without deep technical expertise - you WILL run into problems at 1am!
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Free online backup
Best of all - Lunarpages gives you three months of Keepit online backup for free! How online backup works is that your data is automatically saved on a remote server and synced up - so that if you ever lose your harddrive due to a crash or power outage, all your data will be saved and recoverable. You can imagine how much heartache this can save you in a bad situation. This is just another reason by Lunarpages demonstrates they understand important customer needs and delivers.
Free traffic from Facebook and Google
Lunarpages also offers a unique package of free advertisements you can display on Google and Facebook. When I launched my first blog on Lunarpages, I ran my free ads on Facebook and got over five thousand views in the first week. It was a great way to kick-start my blog, and best of all it was free. Getting these ad packages for free is also a great way to get started learning about these ad platforms without any risk on your part, as these are becoming increasingly key to building up traffic for any website or blog.
Conclusion
While there are many great web hosting packages out there such as HostGator, EasyCGI, BlueHost, and StartLogic - I think Lunarpages offers the most value for the lowest price, in addition to the most valuable set of perks and freebies. That plus the great customer service and the fact that the company has been around for over ten years are great reasons to be confident that you’ll get good service from this reputable company as I have.
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