Routethat.com is a very unique tool. It allows you to preview your website on any hosting platform before you point the DNS of your domain. This is most useful for web developers and hosting companies to troubleshoot website problems long before the dreaded DNS switch has been made. We've come across a lot of tools in the hosting industry but this is one that stands out to us. Normally one would have to modify their hosts file in order to see their website live before the DNS switch occurs. This eliminates the need to do so. It's a great tool because you can see any website live on any server before the DNS is pointed. This is great for everyone as many are not familiar with DNS or rerouting their computer's hosts file. We recommend this to any one who is thinking of migrating their website. It's quick, simple, and free!

We at Cheap Hosting Solutions make it our business to know hosting. We do much research to ensure that the information we present is suitable, accurate, and above all else helpful. We have one mission and one mission only, to provide the needed information to choose your web hosting provider wisely. We feel everyone should have the right to know about a hosting company long before they commit to a purchase. Part of this mission involves commending hosts when they stand out from their competitors. We've found that it's not always about pricing, very rarely about band width, and certainly not about how much disk space you get. Cheap Hosting Solutions would like to award Aeon Hosting with the "Top Website Hosting Plan of 2007" Award. We feel, all things considered, that Aeon Hosting has stood out among it's competitors in many ways to earn this award. The hosting plan that has won this award is their Standard Website Hosting for $3.95/mo. Moderately priced with ample disk space and bandwidth allotments, this hosting plan caters to almost all websites needs. After all, lets face it, who actually needs 300GB for Disk Space? What is really important is reliability, ease of use, and the assurance that your website will be up and running as you need it to be. Aeon Hosting makes this happen. It is our pleasure to offer this award to a worthy hosting company. Congratulations Aeon Hosting and keep up the good work! We hope to see many more good things from you in times to come.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to warn prospective hosting customers of things that may cost them extra time, money, or frustration. This article focuses on what you can tell from a hosting company's website. There has been a recent trend sweeping the Internet over the past 5 or so years. It has become increasingly easier to fake being a web hosting company. One of the biggest signs of a hosting company who may not be on the 'up and up' is their website. You can tell a lot from a company's website and something very important we think you should look out for when selecting a hosting provider is the type and quality of their website. Website Hosting Templates One of the biggest things to watch out for are companies using website templates. Website templates are pre-made website layouts that take the hard work out of building a website. Websites such as Template Monster are huge suppliers of website hosting templates. They make a fortune off of individuals and small companies who want to cash in on the hosting market. If you look at a hand full of those templates, you'll find they all have the same look and feel. This is also true of hosting companies using templates. They will look very similar in many respects as the same company has made most of them. You may be wondering why this is a warning sign. They are nice looking websites, after all, there are legitimate hosting companies with much less for a website. Well, one very large problem is the price. You can pick up any one of these hosting templates for under $100. In fact, they're all much closer to the $50 range. This tells you a lot about a company if your able to spot this. Price obviously is a HUGE issue to this company if they have to take the route of a pre-made template. The fact that it's a template and one that is designed for hosting companies almost guarantees that someone else will also be using it. That's a pretty huge sacrifice as well. What legitimate company wants an identical website as a competitor? The next logical question in this formula is this. If a hosting company can't afford to hire a web developer and programmers, can they afford to fix their services if they break? Can they afford quality hardware and support? Are they even using their own hardware and support? Chances are, probably not. In fact, many people who use these hosting templates are simply purchasing a large hosting plan from a legitimate company and reselling their services. A lot of hosting companies today offer robust disk space and the ability to host unlimited domains. This makes for a perfect opportunity to cash in on this industry and start reselling. This leads us into the next thing to watch out for when choosing a hosting company. Website Hosting Resellers There are many hosting companies that allow for resellers. This in itself isn't a bad thing. Many website designers for instance have many clients to manage and part of their services may be to square away all hosting costs and services. In this instance a hosting reseller plan is most applicable. It will allow the designer to fully manage every aspect of their clients services to further provide the support and quality they're required to. Apart from this and a few other very specific instances, hosting resellers are something you should be very careful with. Here's why. Hosting resellers use none of their own hardware, often they use none of their own support, and they simply resell hosting services under the guise of a legitimate hosting company. One very famous example of this is a company called Wild West Domains. They offer anyone the ability to resell hosting and cash in on the hosting market. When you call into support on any one of these resellers you are actually speaking with Wild West Domain's support staff. What is more, Wild West Domains was started and is owned by Godaddy. So when you call into a Wild West Domains' resellers site you are actually speaking with Godaddy's support. What a tangled mess don't you think? You'll find when you call into Godaddy, WWD, or one of their resellers, they'll never say the name of their company as they don't know who is on the end of the line. Is it a reseller, is it our customer? etc. Another thing to consider regarding resellers is this. Would you be willing to host with the company backing the reseller? And if so, why not go through the company directly instead of a third party who has no ability to support or fix any of your issues. Not to mention, if it's a reseller, they've obviously upped the price to some degree. There are many other things to consider when searching for a hosting company. These two areas are something most prospective hosting customers should avoid.

Simply put, Website Hosting is a means to house your website content / files on the internet for your visitors to view. Just as you would need living space for an office or dwelling, the files for your website need storage space in a location that your users are able to easily access. You may ask yourself: ‘Why can I not host my files on my own computer? I have an internet connection.’ - While this is true, there are several reasons why hosting your files on a home internet connection isn’t in the best interest of you or your visitors.* 1. Hosting your files on your computer can present a problem for your visitors as most home internet connections do not have a Static IP Address. A Static IP Address is the numerical address that would correlate with your domain so other computers on the internet can locate it properly. Many internet service providers do not facilitate the hosting of websites from home internet connections for various reasons. One of their tactics to thwart this is to regularly change your home IP address. 2. Home internet connections are usually much slower than the servers located at hosting companies. As a result, your web pages will take much longer to load for your visitors. Once you start getting a steady stream of traffic, it will quickly become impossible to continue hosting your site on your own computer. Fortunately, with the recent developments in technology, hosting prices are at an all-time low. You can get massive amounts of space and bandwidth** for your files for very low prices. That is where we come in. It can be difficult to choose a suitable hosting provider, especially if you are in need of constant uptime, no hassle, and ease of use. We have devoted our time and resources to researching the best hosts on very rigid criteria. We carefully monitor, Price, Disk Space, Bandwidth, Customer Support Rating, Ease of Use, as well as many other things to bring you the facts about who really is the best hosting provider. Click here to see our top 10 list. * Some people may successfully host their websites on home internet connections, but the majority of users will want to use a hosting company of some kind. ** Bandwidth is the amount of space it requires over a network to deliver your files to your users. If you have a busy site, the amount of space required per month to deliver your files over the internet (bandwidth) will much greater than an individual who is just starting out with little or no traffic. The more bandwidth the better. A simple frame of reference: if your home page totals 1MB in file size, you will use 1MB in bandwidth

Domain Names are a way to create an identity on the internet. Computers look for IP addresses as a way to route requests for websites. IP addresses look something like ‘123.456.78.90’. Without the invention of Domain Names, this would have presented a problem when trying to give your web address out to someone. Numbers with periods (dots) are much harder to remember than a simple name. ie: mytrucks.com, or something along those lines. Domain Names make it simple to find a website without the need to remember a long string of numbers and dots. A good domain name is invaluable. It is one of the biggest defining characteristics of your website. It is printed on your business cards, in phone book advertisements, on TV commercials, etc. The best possible domain name is a name that is easy to remember, catchy, and pertains to your business. A good domain name can be hard to find nowadays. Prices are at an all-time low and seeing that there are no limits to the amount of domains you can own, people have made entire businesses out of simply buying and selling domains. In light of this, do not despair if you are having trouble finding the domain name that is right for your business. Put some thought and time into the domain that is right for you, and at the very worst, if you decide you do not like it, you can always purchase another.

Some things to keep in mind when purchasing a domain name.

Domains have limits in length. While any component of a domain can theoretically be up to 256 characters long, many registries including .com .net and .org limit the size of a domain to less than 63 characters. In this instance, less is definitely more. Would you want to try and remember a domain that is 63 characters in length? What is more, would you want to try to fit that on a business card? There are many different extensions for domain names. .com is not the only domain extension available. So if the particular name you want is not available you may do well to try another extension such as .net .org .us .biz or .info. There are many different domain extensions to choose from. Domains have expiration dates. Domain names can at the most length be registered for 10 years. This means that a domain name that is not available currently may become available in the near future. There are many services for acquiring expiring names. Backorders, auctions, and other means can greatly improve your chances of obtaining an expiring domain name. Don’t forget to keep track of when your domain name expires!