Who Do You Recommend for Business Web Hosting? Other Paypal User Advice Wanted.

[HolidayGuy]

Hi,

I'm kind of lost on this. There are so many hosting sites that it's hard to know where to start. I've tried a couple places but been a little unsatisfied for a lot of reasons. A lot of the sites don't tell you the full story of their terms until you're almost done signing up, then you see something you don't like. A lot of the hosting sites are really heavy on resources using a lot of flash eliments and stuff moving around, etc., really a turn off to me I guess...

What do other paypal users use for their webhosting? Do you have a business online?

Here's what I think I want:

1. Free to start (don't mind upgrading if I like it).
2. Let's me use my own domain.
3. Simple site, dashboard and interface, not heavy on computer resources.
4. Simple site builder with templates.
5. Can integrate easily with paypal.
6. Support a messanger or email of some kind.
7. No ads.
8. Doesn't require a bunch of browser plugins like flash, java, h264, etc.

I think that's all I want but I'm not sure completely. Feel free to advise me.

Anyway, thank you in advance. Who would be good for me... what host do you use... have I missed anything, etc.

Thx

[DPCreations]

From my own research you will need to pay about $30/month if you want a working eCommerce site.  1and1.com is a good place and offers a quite capable ecommece site with inventory management, customer database, and a nice template design with a lot of options.

Free sites are not likely to have integrated shopping carts.

So, it depends on what you really want and how much you want to showcase your business.

For free, you can have a market store on Square and use your Square inventory items.  Not a lot of options on designs, but it works.  All you need to do is point customers to your store on Square.

[HolidayGuy]

Thank you for mentioning Square (SquareUp). I had actually never heard of them and their site looks pretty simple. Eventually I'll probably do something big like GoDaddy which is in the 30 per month range you mentioned, but I wanted to start free or cheap just to get my ideas out of what I want my store to be.

Are there any other suggestions for hosting?

Thx

[HolidayGuy]

Has anybody looked at 000WebHost? I went to their site and it was pretty lite on my computer's resources, clean site, organized... It looked like they had a pretty full free starter package, and then a pretty afordable business package to step up to.

https://www.000webhost.com/

It looked to me like a pretty good package. What do you all think?

Thanks

[DPCreations]

@HolidayGuy

What does it offer?

[HolidayGuy]

Hmm... My reply disappeared... I wonder what happened?

Stand by...

[HolidayGuy]

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@DPCreations wrote:

@HolidayGuy

What does it offer?

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My post keeps disappearing. I have no idea why. I tried to give links to the two different plans and highlights of what they offer in answer to your question, but it keeps going away. I have no idea what's going on. I hope I'm not required to type out everything that's included... that's a lot of typing.

[DPCreations]

I can check links when I want to do research; I've done a lot of research for my own sites.  I'm suggesting you do the research and explain what you found and summarize what they have to offer.

[HolidayGuy]

The links were just for convenience. I also posted highlights lists of the features included in the two packages which seemed like a good overview of what they included. This must be kicking off some kind of spam filter or something... I don't know.

I'll try to just list the features...

Free option has these features: 2000 MB Disk Space, 20000 MB Bandwidth, 2 MySQL Databases, 5 E-mail Accounts, 1 Website, Website Builder, Free domain hosting.

Business option has these features: Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited MySQL Databases, Unlimited E-mail Accounts, Unlimited Websites, Website Builder, Free domain hosting, 1 Free Domain included, SSL Certificate, US/EU Server locations, Private nameservers, 3X resource power.

Those are just highlights. There's a full page of features and description for each. It looks to me like the free option has everything I might need to get started except a free domain.I have my own domain, so I could start off pointing it to their host if I try them.

The reason I'm looking at this is because it looks like a pretty complete package to start, and I could try it for free, then if I'm happy, I could bump up to the business option when I'm ready. It's like seven bucks, which seems pretty good. Cheaper than GoDaddy...but of course I know cheap isn't everything. They claim they're 99% up time, which seems pretty good.

Hopefully this post won't get erased. LOL

p.s.

I was impressed that their site didn't hog up my computer's resources. Some sites put so much flashy junk in that it slows stuff down.

[DPCreations]

Number by the hosting services are meant to impress, but do you really need the numbers, like disk space, MySQL database, free domain hosting?

What do you want?  That's what really matters.

Do you want to build a web store or just have a nice web picture for yourself?

How much time do you want to spend building a web site?  How much customization do you want?  How much cusomtization can you technically manage?  How much customization will the hosting service permite.

Focus on what you want and what are the most important aspects and then start reviwing sites which offer what you want.

For me, I wanted a site with significant customization.  I also have some smaller information webs which don't have much customization.

Here's an exame of a build with 1and1.com ecommerce basic:  DPCreationStore dot com (It's just to show what you could achieve without programming experience, but you would need to understand images creation.)

Be very cautious about upgrading from free (almost free) to business as you may need to start over as the free would not be ecommerce with inventory and it would be more likely that you would not be able to convert a non-selling site into a selling ecommerce site.  It's not like "Oh, I can now just add an inventory database".  The inventory and customer database must be integrated as part of the site from the start.

Some ecommerce sites will have a 30-day trial.  It will take a lot of work, but accept the offer and spend serveral days and many hours buidling a site to see if you like it.  Do the same for another one.  Just remember to cancel before the end of 30 days.  It takes a lot of time and reserch to find one that suits your needs.  Select what works best, not the cheapest.