While the colors probably have fancier names than “purple” or “yellow,” while perusing our paid search ads for top web hosting terms this morning, we noticed that Google was testing a new “purplish” background for its top sponsored search results. Compare the two images below:

Current “Yellow” Background

New “Purple” Background

Do some searches and refresh your browser a few times — perhaps you will see the test as well . . .

Hosting your website can take a tremendous toll on the environment.

One way to reduce this environmental impact is to choose a green web hosting service. While this might seem like an expensive option, it is not. With the right company, you can get great and affordable web hosting with a minimal impact on the environment. SuperGreen is one of the best green web hosting companies out there, combining a great product with a low price and less of an environmental impact.

Read the full Supergreen Hosting Review

How SuperGreen Protects the Environment

SuperGreen uses Dell servers that create 20 percent fewer carbon emissions than standard servers. In addition, the company participates in 300 Trees, a tree-planting project that works to offset the emissions the servers do create. These two steps help combat the Greenhouse Effect, which is a main contributor to global warming.

Price

Many times you will pay more for green products, but not with SuperGreen. If you sign a 36-month contract, you pay just $3.95 per month. Monthly contracts are also available at $7.95 per month. Other contract lengths are possible, and no matter how long or short the contract you choose, you will not pay any setup or registration fees.

Space and Bandwidth

SuperGreen offers “unlimited” space and bandwidth. While not technically unlimited, this will provide the average website owner with plenty of room. As long as your site uses 20 megabytes or less of space and 10 gigabytes or less of bandwidth, you will be fine. If you need more than this, consider dedicated hosting.

Features

You won’t sacrifice features to go green with SuperGreen either. Consider these excellent features:

• Shopping Carts
• Spam Filter
• Front Page Extensions
• MySQL Databases
• Design Templates
• Web Blog Software
• Unlimited Domain Names per Account
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• Webmail Capabilities
• Website Statistics

In addition, features like cPanel and Fantastico make creating and maintaining your website simple.

Security and Reliability

You can safely receive customer information through a SuperGreen web hosting plan, because they use SSL encryption to protect this type of information. Your website will stay live as well, because SuperGreen keeps up-to-date equipment, uses several backup generators, has a climate controlled facility, and employs multiple bandwidth providers to protect against outages. Internal firewalls also protect your website’s information from outside viewers.

Service

If you have a question or problem while you are a SuperGreen customer, you can call or talk via live chat any time of the day. A help ticket system is also in place, which sends an answer quickly. If you prefer to learn as you go, the system has 100 videos and 150 articles for you to explore.

Satisfaction Guarantee

You are welcome to try out the SuperGreen service for 30 days. If you are unhappy, you can get a full refund, no questions asked.

Freebies

Still not convinced that SuperGreen is a good option? Then consider the fact that they offer all new accounts a free domain name. Keep in mind that the domain name is only free as long as you are a SuperGreen customer. However, if you keep your account with them, you will not have to pay domain name renewal fees each year.

If you have not yet registered a domain name for your website, you might want to wait. Unless you want a name that is going to be very popular, you might be able to save some money on the domain name by waiting until choosing a website host. This is because most of the top 10 web hosting companies actually give away the domain name for free. In fact, some companies will even give you a free domain name for the life of your web hosting contract.

Compare Top 10 Web Hosting & Free Domain Names

Competition

One reason that web hosts will give you a free domain name is to help them keep up with the competition. In this industry, most web hosting companies are quite similar in the features they offer. They need a way to help themselves stand out from the crowd, and often the freebies that they include with a contract give just that.

For example, if you are looking at two hosting providers who have unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, similar security and website building features, and the exact same price, how can you decide which one to use? The freebies may be the only distinguishing factors.

Affordability

In reality, giving out a domain name is an affordable thing to do. Even if you were buying this yourself, you could be paying as little as $5 a year for a domain name, depending on the registrar you chose. When a big company registers many, many domain names for their clients, they likely save even more. When you are paying $3-$10 a month for your hosting plan, the company can carve out a few dollars to maintain your domain name for you.

Customer Loyalty

Another reason the best web hosting companies offer free domain names to their customers is to build and maintain customer loyalty. Sometimes you can have your domain name for free just as long as you keep your account with that particular host. If you choose to change hosts, you will lose your domain registration, which will force you to change your website’s name or pay to switch it to a new host that may not offer the free service.

If you want the flexibility of being able to switch hosts when your contract is up, look for one that offers a free domain for life. This will allow you to keep your domain name, even if you choose to switch hosts, and the domain will stay free.

Tips for Choosing Your Domain

Once you find a host, preferably one that offers a free domain name, you need to choose your domain carefully. Here are some tips to remember:

• Keep It Short: Choose something that people will be able to remember easily. The shorter the better, provided it fits your business well.

• Keep It Easy to Spell: Internet users are poor spellers, as a whole. Keep your domain’s name something people can easily spell.

• Make It Catchy: You want your domain to stick in people’s minds, so make it something catchy.

These tips will help you choose a domain name that is sure to be successful.

Web designers and website owners always look for two things when choosing a web hosting company: affordability combined with plenty of services. FatCow provides both of these in one compact little package that makes it one of the top 10 best web hosting companies on the Internet.

Affordability

FatCow offers one of the most affordable packages on the Internet. It costs just $3.67 a month to host your site with them. This low price requires a one or two year contract. There is no pricing penalty for choosing the shorter contract. The price covers a comprehensive plan and has no set-up fee.

Read the full FatCow Review

Comprehensive Plan

Often low-cost web hosting companies offer several plans. The low-cost option is short on features, but is enough to bring in traffic to the site. FatCow does not operate this way. For the same low price, ever customer gets the same package, with the exception of one upgrade that allows for slightly faster technical support. The package includes many features, some of the best of which are as follows:

•    Ability to add Front Page extensions to personalize the website
•    Google Site Search
•    Ability to accept online payments via PayPal
•    Script Barn
•    Shopping cart capability
•    MySQL databases to store customer information
•    Accepts a variety of languages: Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby on Rails
•    North American phone support 24/7
•    Online support 24/7
•    $75 free for AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing

In addition to these features, the FatCow hosting package offers many unlimited options. For instance, customers can set up unlimited domain names per account. This allows them to direct several web addresses to a website’s main home page. Unlimited email accounts with a domain-specific address are also available. FatCow advertises unlimited disk space and bandwidth. This is not technically unlimited, but for the average website that uses 20 megabytes or less of disk space and 10 gigabytes or less of bandwidth, the host is perfect.

Keep Customers and Business Information Secure

In addition to plenty of room and excellent features that allow the website builder to truly customize the site, FatCow has excellent security protocol in place. This protects both the website itself and any customers that use it from hackers, viruses, and spyware. FatCow employs SSL secure servers with 128-bit encryption. This protects the information sent to your site by your visitors. This is necessary for any websites that request user information or take user payments.

In addition, FatCow protects the website its self by storing the servers in a data center that uses both physical and online security measures to keep everything safe. Industrial firewalls and actual security personnel monitor the servers at all times.

Predictable Reliability

If your host has an outage, your website will not be live. FatCow protects against this by using the latest hardware with load balancing technology to ensure that the servers run efficiently. In addition, FatCow keeps backup generators in place and performs daily server backups, which ensures that if there ever were a problem, your website will still be there.

All in all, FatCow is easy to use and safe. Its one main drawback is that it does not offer cPanel, one of the easiest to use control panels, but it does have a simple V-Deck control panel that most can use and is customizable. If you are looking for a way to host your website affordably but reliably, consider FatCow.

99.9% network uptime and an “anytime” guarantee make BlueHost a very reliable web hosting company.

If you have been in the business of creating and managing websites for long, you have probably experienced this scenario: You work long hours getting your website ready to go. After searching, you come across an affordable host that is offering some nice freebies. You upload your site, only to find that almost weekly the site is down for one reason or another.

Read the full BlueHost Review

Soon your traffic drops, because customers stop coming to a site that they know is “always going to be down.” Your dreams for your website are lost because the host was not reliable. One way to keep from falling prey to this scenario is to host your website with BlueHost, one of the web’s most reliable web hosting companies.

Long Company History

BlueHost is one of the oldest web hosts out there. They have been hosting websites for ten years. Their reputation over those years has grown so that they are now considered the most reliable hosting provider.

Why So Reliable?

BlueHost’s reliability lies in its hardware setup. The latest servers are used at all times, and the hardware is upgraded whenever necessary. This means your website will load quickly and will remain live. The technical staff works 24/7, monitoring the network for problems that they quickly fix. The host facility also uses multiple power supplies to keep the computers up and running, even if facing an electrical outage. They perform regular, secure backups so no information is lost.

Reliable Customer Support

While the backups and power supplies are an important part of reliability, customer service and support is almost equally important. If you cannot get a quick answer to your problem or question, your site will not be beneficial to you. With BlueHost, both phone support and live chat are available 24/7. The phone support is handled with United States centers, and customers wait two minutes or less to talk to a representative. If you would rather just email your question, the help ticket system works quite efficiently. BlueHost also provides its customers with an in-depth self-help center that provides informative articles about web hosting.

Other Features

Of course, having a reliable host with excellent services is not important if the product is not up to par. BlueHost would not have earned its excellent reputation with a less-than-ideal product. The list of features BlueHost offers seems endless:

• MySQL databases
• IDN support
• SSH security
• Shopping carts
• Spam Assassin
• Fantastico
• cPanel
• Front Page Extensions
• 2,500 email accounts
• TikiWiki content management program
• Unlimited domain names
• Web blog software

Plus many more features to ensure that a BlueHost account has everything you need to create a customized website to help you reach your target market.

In addition, BlueHost offers new customers some nice freebies. The domain name is free, as is domain privacy service. Free set-up is possible with a longer contract. All new contracts get $100 worth of search engine marketing credit, allowing them to start an AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing account without much out-of-pocket cost. A full refund is available for 30 days, so you have nothing to lose if you are looking for a reliable, proven host for your website.

Watch out for hidden set-up fees, especially on short-term contracts

Website hosting services are typically not that expensive. For less than $5 a month, you can host your website on a secure, reliable, feature-packed server. What few know, however, is the actual cost of getting your site up and running can be quite a bit higher. That’s because some web hosting companies will charge you setup fees. These typically range between $40 and $60, which is a decent amount of money to pay just to get your site live. You can avoid this fee, however, if you know which companies to choose.

Compare Web Hosting Plans with No Set-up Fees

Many web hosting companies are now dropping the setup fee if you sign up for a long enough contract. They do this to ensure your loyalty over a few years, encouraging you to go for the longer contract rather than the month to month option. If you find a host that has enough features to carry your website few a couple of years of growth, this is a great option for you, because it saves you a lot of money at the outset, which is typically when you need to save money the most since your website has not yet begun to earn any for you. Here are a couple of hosts that offer free setup fees.

HostMonster – Lots of Features for a Low Price

HostMonster is one of the most affordable options out there. It offers excellent features such as nearly unlimited disk space and bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, the possibility to have unlimited domain names pointing back to your site, and service that is based entirely in the United States. In addition, HostMonster has built in features that make it easy to set up your website for ecommerce functions. The security is excellent, protecting both your information and any information customers share with you via the website. It offers customizability through Fantastico and Front Page extensions, and MySQL databases allow you to track and store customer information.

HostMonster charges a $30 setup fee and $10 domain registration fee. However, if you sign up for a contract that is 12 months or longer, you do not have to pay these fees. This makes HostMonster a good choice for those looking to avoid these fees, because many other companies require a 24-month contract to drop these fees.

Read the full HostMonster Review

BlueHost – Dropping Fees on a Reliable, Established Host

BlueHost has been around for a while. They have been hosting websites for over 10 years, and through that time have earned the reputation as being one of the most reliable hosts in the industry. They may not be the most affordable, but when you learn how to eliminate setup fees, the price becomes more comparable to the competition.

BlueHost offers 2,500 email accounts, customizability through Fantastico and Front Page extensions, IDN support for international customers, United States support, MySQL databases, and the ease of the cPanel website management program. Like HostMonster, BlueHost charges $30 for setup and $10 for domain registration. Again, these fees are waived if you have a 12-month or longer contract.

Read the full BlueHost Review

The key to avoiding setup fees and domain registration costs is to purchase the right contract length with a company offering to waive these fees. With all of the companies that do offer to waive these fees, you should not have to pay them at all. Take the time to shop around for the best web hosting provider for your individual needs, and you will find one that waives setup fees.

Setting up a website is not always the most affordable thing you could do. First you have to design it, which might cost you something if you are not yourself a designer. Then you have to buy a domain name. Finally, you have to host the site. One way you can save a little money is to get your web hosting through one of the top domain hosts. Not only are most of the top hosting companies the cheapest out there, but most of them also offer a free domain name.

Compare Top 10 Web Hosting & Free Domain Names

Why They Do This

The main reason that web hosting providers offer free domain names with their packages is competition. If the competition is offering this and one particular company is not, you will likely move on. There is simply too little difference between the various providers for you to be willing to lose out on a freebie like this.

The other reason is to get customers. Offering a free domain name is a huge marketing point. They can offer it as a “free gift,” drawing customers in.

Finally, because these web hosting companies register so many domain names each year, they can get a great rate on the registration and renewal. The cost to them is much lower than it would be to you, so in the end both you and the host win. They win because they get your business, and you win because you do not have to pay for your domain name.

Which Company to Choose

Almost all of the top web hosting companies offer a free domain name. You will need to choose the company that best meets your other needs, looking at factors like what type of service they offer (U.S. based or not), the amount of space and bandwidth you will get, the other built in features, and, of course, the price. HostMonster, one of the top-rated web hosting providers, offers a free domain name. So does FatCow, which is known for its excellent price, and JustHost, which is currently running a special making it one of the cheapest options out there.

Free Domain for Life?

One feature to look for as you shop for a web hosting company is the offer of a free domain name for life. This means that you will never pay for your domain name, even if you change providers. The domain registration is taken care of. This will give you the flexibility to shop for a different web hosting company if your needs change or you find one that has a better offer.

Read the Fine Print

Remember, you might have to register for a contract of a certain length to get the free domain name. Always read the fine print before you sign up for web hosting assuming that you will have a particular freebie. If a company requires a two-year contract for a particular price or a free domain name, make sure it has the right products and services for your current and future needs. This will ensure that you are happy with the service for the entirety of your contract.

Having a hosting provider that offers U.S. based customer service ensures that you will be able to understand the representative you are speaking with. This eliminates unnecessary problems that occur when you spend the majority of your time on the phone with the service department trying to understand each other. Here are four of the top 10 web hosting companies that all offer U.S. based customer service.

HostMonster

HostMonster is often labeled the most valuable host. It has a fairly low price, just $3.95 per month with a 24-month contract, but packs its packages with features. The host’s software is quite user friendly as well, which makes setting up your website simple. What’s even better, all phone support is based in the United States. You do not have to have a certain contract to get this. In addition, phone support and live chat are available at all times, and wait times are around two minutes or less for phone support.

FatCow

FatCow also has a low price and excellent set of features. Everyone pays just $3.67 per month and gets the same set of features. A one to two year contract is required. All customer service is based in North America. However, FatCow realizes that some customers simply have to have U.S. based support. As such, they offer a service upgrade for $3.95 per month. With the upgrade, customers receive faster service that is entirely based in the United States. In addition, live chat is always available, and the help ticket system is quick to respond to written requests for service.

BlueHost

If you are looking for reliability, BlueHost might be the company for you. This web hosting provider has been offering their services for over 10 years. They have built an excellent reputation in the industry for their customer support and features. They are also known as the most reliable web hosting provider. They are not the cheapest, but if reliability is more important to you than price, this is the company to consider. Like HostMonster, all phone support is based in the United States. You will wait two minutes or less to talk to a customer service representative, and support is available at any time. Live chat is also available if you prefer to get support online.

InMotion

InMotion has web hosting packages designed for the business owner in mind. Features like Google Checkout and MySQL databases make this the ideal host for setting up a business website. All customer service is United States based, and it is available at any time. Live chat is also available to InMotion customers.

The key to getting U.S. based support is nothing more than finding a web hosting company that offers it. You do not necessarily have to pay more for this service. Remember, as you shop for a host, keep all aspects in mind, including the reliability and ease of access of the company’s customer service department.

It’s simple – just click on the “Big Deal” graphic at the top of this page and use coupon code “50off”

As a website owner, you want fast, reliable, secure web hosting services for your website. You might be thinking that you will have to pay significantly for this service. JustHost provides a reliable, feature-packed web hosting plan, at a much lower price than the competition.

Read the full Justhost.com Review

The Pricing

JustHost has a monthly cost of $5.95. With this plan you do not have to sign a contract that locks you into the host for an extended period of time. However, this is not necessarily an affordable choice, especially when you can get a plan with a fairly short contract for much less money elsewhere.

JustHost also offers 6 and 12 month plans. The 6-month plan is $3.95 per month, and the 12 month plan is $3.49 per month. Again, this does not give you much savings over the other plans out there. The real affordability hits when you purchase a 24 month or longer contract. Then the price can be as low as $2.95 per month.

JustHost is a little tricky, though. When you go to the website, these are not the prices you will see. If you want the prices mentioned above, even the $5.95 for the monthly contract, you need to enter the coupon code 50OFF when you sign up. Move quickly too, because these prices may be a limited time offer. Also, the $2.95 per month for the two to three year contracts is a special pricing being offered right now, but not highly advertised. Use the coupon code (50OFF) and you will see it when you sign up.

Hidden Fees

Some of the other “affordable” web hosting companies will offer a low monthly cost, but they will charge other fees. You will pay for your domain name, set-up, and other steps along the way as you get your website up and running. This is not the case with JustHost. JustHost charges no set-up fee, includes the domain name purchase in the price of the plan, and has no other hidden fees. You simply pay your monthly amount as agreed, and you have hosting.

Comparative Hosting

Maybe you think that getting hosting this cheap will compromise the product. If you need something very specific from your host, JustHost may not work, but for most website owners it has everything they need. It uses the popular cPanel user control panel, allows for Front Page extensions, has Fantastico, offers PayPal support, and supports several languages. JustHost is a fairly comprehensive website hosting provider. They even offer a few freebies to new customers, such as a free domain name for life and $50 in free search engine credits.

Guarantees

JustHost gives a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee to all of its customers. Also, they offer a money back guarantee. If you are unhappy with the service at anytime, not just in the first 30 days, you will get a full refund for your remaining contract. Finally, you have the guarantee that you will always talk to a real person when you call the support number. In general, it is an excellent plan with a good price.

HostMonster and FatCow are almost always found on the lists of top web hosting companies. These two are some of the most frequently used hosts, and choosing between them is sometimes a challenge. While they have similar features and benefits, there are some distinct differences that should help you choose the one that is right for your website.

Read the HostMonster Review

Read the FatCow Web Hosting Review

Pricing

The price is not much different between the two plans. For a one to two-year contract, FatCow charges $3.67. With coupon codes and current special pricing, you can get a 24-month contract for $3.95 a month with HostMonster. However, HostMonster offers shorter contracts, at a higher price, which may fit your needs better. A three or six month contract, for instance, is $9.95.

Features

Many features of the two web hosting companies are the same. One big difference is that HostMonster uses cPanel, but FatCow does not. FatCow uses its own V-Deck control panel, which is fairly user friendly. However, if you are adept at using cPanel, you may feel more comfortable with the HostMonster plan.

In addition to this, HostMonster offers Fantastico, but FatCow does not. However, FatCow is designed to allow you to easily accept PayPal payments, and HostMonster is not (but you can still set this up if you want to through PayPal).

Both plans offer unlimited domain names and email accounts per contract, have shopping cart capabilities, spam filters, streaming audio/video options, and MySQL databases. FrontPage extensions allow you to customize your website with both companies. Both also offer basically unlimited bandwidth and disk space.

Security

Both companies pride themselves in excellent security, using SSL and encryption to secure any information exchanged between your customers and your website. HostMonster also gives you SSH or Secure Shell Access, which means you have a secure channel to use when making changes to your site, a feature not offered by FatCow.

Customer Service

When choosing between two companies with excellent features, customer service is sometimes the best way to make your decision. Both offer 24/7 phone support and live chat. HostMonster guarantees a wait time of two minutes or less for phone support, and all HostMonster phone support is handled within the United States. FatCow has an average wait time of right around two minutes, with North American, but not necessarily American, personnel. An upgraded service with U.S. representatives offers a shorter wait time for $3.95 a month. FatCow offers a video tutorials library for customers to access to try to fix issues on their own, a service not offered by HostMonster.

Bonuses

Both companies offer bonuses to new contracts. HostMonster offers $100 in free search engine advertising credits, as well as free domain name for life, free set up (with two-year or longer plan), and free domain privacy service. FatCow offers a free domain name, free set-up, and $75 in advertising credits. Both offer a no-questions-asked 30-day money back guarantee.

Conclusion

FatCow and HostMonster both offer reliable, secure web hosting with excellent customer service. The main differences are the presence of cPanel, a difference in price if choosing shorter contracts, and the location of phone support. Use these factors to help you make your decision as you choose between these two top 10 web hosting companies.