Hi,

Just a bit of a poll. Who would everyone consider the best looking hosting site around? Be they expensive, poorly serviced, etc... When all the customer support and performance is stripped away, who the niftiest kid on the block?

So far my vote goes for Burlee. Can anyone suggest better?

Greg Moore

I would have to agree, burlee. Ours isnt too bad though.
http://www.jaguarpc.com

I would say iServer.com, its nice and I ve my personal account there, really damn niece features ever I seen.

I like to think that our site looks pretty good, but I am biased about it :-).

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

I would also say that Burlee did a great job at putting together a good-looking site.

I think intersurge.com is a great site too, but I might be just a little biased :)

Humm .. good question ... well I've seen allot of great sites out there, but tell me what do you guys think of ours ? I'm very proud of it ...

Carlos,

Must say : very nice site indeed! However, some suggestions :

1. Add a margin to the text inside your 'boxes' on the front page to give it some space and look cleaner.

2. You might wanna get a spellchecker on your Plans page - E-Commerse 500? :D

God dammit ... and we did it even on the plans page .. thanks for poiting it out :(

Carlos,

Your site looks pretty good. Adding some padding your boxes will make them easier to read.

Why do some of your pages have \/ around your name? That may hurt your rankings in some search engines. Remember that your titles are very important in determining where your site is in search results.

I do not care much for having a visible counter on a web site. It can show two things, multitudes of visitors or lack thereof. To me, it looks too much like a personal home page.

You may want to review your sentence, “Please Read our Disclaimer.” Your terms of service guidelines are not exactly a disclaimer.

Perhaps you should explain your 30-day money-back guarantee with a hyperlink on the image. Some hosting companies have failed to live up to their money back promises - explain that you will honor it.

The information on your contact page is a little sparse. Do you have a phone number or a physical mailing address? The more information you provide, the better. Potential clients generally have more confidence in an organization if more information is available. For instance, they want to know how they can find you if problems arise.

Your banner does not have any links. Consider adding links at the top to aid navigation to information about your key offerings.

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

Hi Frank

Thank you for your advices, indeed you have some great and valid comments, we are a young hosting company, and this is the first revision of the site :)

Now, the reason I don't have any links on the banner is because the side bar (with all the links) is present in all the pages, therefore I didn't saw the need for it, but indeed some people might be drawn to click the banner to go back to the home page, so it's a valid argument there

Tanks for you valuable comments, I will get working on it :)

Maybe im alone on this one, but I dont think paypal is what is viewed as a professional sites way to sign up clients. Maybe as an alternative for some that wish to use it but not as the only way to use credit. I mean you dont see Alabanza or the big boys use it as their form of payment. I dont say this to sound offensive to give you some contsructive critisism.

No, you are right, I am not happy for using Paypal, but like I said, we are starting, and money is still an issue, I've contacted cybercash, and they seem to be the way to go, but it's still 495.00 setup, just trying to get a few more costumers in to help pay the bills and then get cybercash (unfortunatly I wasn't able to get it all at once :( )

Oh, ok . It can be expensive to get started, especially if you do it all by the book and get everything you need right away.

Have you looked at Instabill? There's an earlier thread about cc systems, and general consensus tends to falls to them. They take a pretty hefty whack out of your prices (10% plus 10% retained for 6 months), but with no setup fee or monthly fees it may be what you need to get going. At least that's where I'm looking at the moment.

Greg Moore

If anyone followed the link to my site before this evening, it was probably the wrong site. There is another Atlanta based company with a similar name to our own and I made the mistake of typing the link to their site instead of our own. I should be more careful from now on!

Carlos, I am glad to try to help. Your site needs a little work, but looks like it is off to a good start.

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

Thanks Frank

I must say, I am AMAZED with how this is going, I've been getting 1 to 2 people signing up every day since I put it up (some days 4 or 5), it must not seem allot for most of you guys, but for me ... man it's just great.

Carlos,

Congratulations, I hope it carries on going so well for you! As the resident pedantic Brit I have to point out that the "E-Commerse" spelling error has cropped up in your home page title too:

<TITLE> WizardsHosting Caters to all of your Hosting Needs, from Shared Hosting to E-Commerse Packages</TITLE>

Nice site though, and best of luck for continuing good business.

Speedie.

Carlos,

I really like the theme of your site. I haven't gone through any pages but the initial impression is impressive.

Thank you guys, I appreciate all the comments and help, indeed it's still have some rought edges to trim, but when I started it I wanted to make something stylish but not flashy or corny ... but I should have bought a damm dictionary also .. hargh .. e-commerse ... I have to change it tomorrow when I get to the office ;)

I know one company (not a web hosting company) that uses paypal, but they collect all the information on their secure server. and then they use that information to transfer money to them through paypal later. I dont know if paypal frowns on this or not, but he told me that it works out quite well, and id be willing to bet it does.

That is not a good policy, because what he's doing is to go into paypal and create an account for the costumer widouth the costumer knowing about it, I heard of some episodes when paypal sent the address confirmation to people that their hosts had open an account for them and they where pissed off, not happy at all.

Oooooo, I am 99.9% certain that is illegal as well. Although *customers* can set up paypal accounts and enter their ccnumbers, a business cannot do this. To enter a customer's ccnumbers you *need* to have a full merch. account I believe.

While I am not 100% sure on this, I checked out solutions and could swear that I read about this issue. I am not sure you should report them, but I would send an email to the hosting company asking them to be sure it is legal as it could cause them heaps of trouble with the long arms.

I dont know the spefics on this realy at all. I just posted what ive been told. I will deffinatly tell this person what I have been told here. Btw, chicken, hes not a hosting company (as i stated in the post), he sells custom graphics.

I am pretty sure that Kagi is a relatively similar type set up to PayPal and I can tell you that it is ILLEGAL for a business to charge payments for their customers. It makes it tough to do recurring billing so it is one reason that these systems are not preferred for hosting payments. You have to get the customer to do all of the work and most don't really want to take the time.

Chicken and Angela are right - this is a well dodgy practice. The credit card companies call it "factoring" and God help you if they catch you doing it (unless you have a merchant account of course).

Speedie.

CRego3D

Happy to see that you have member signing up everyday ! I went to your site and took a look at the source, it seems that you have a small spelling mistake in your metatags (keywords and descriptions), 'E-commerse', should it be 'E-commerce' :-).

I'm launcing my webhosting site soon, and was wondering if you could share some of your experience in getting signups, and perhaps which method would be the most effective way of promoting a new site.

I vote hostway.com for the '2nd' best looking web hosting site.
I prefer the blue color scheme of hostway.com's heading. Burlee overall is better anyway.

Hi fweikeong

Thank for the info, and in order to get new customers above all register yourself with ALL the host indexes out there (hostsearch, hostindex, etc), I also went to .. belive it or not ... eBay :)

Yep, I bought a bunch of Banner ads in other sites and e-mail systems dirt cheap (On eBay), and so far it's working, now I'm considering in advertising on HostSearch.

I would not seel hosting on eBay trough (like I've seen some people do), that makes you look a little desperate.


[Edited by CRego3D on 09-11-2000 at 03:07 PM]

You're welcome.

which method is directing traffic to you, the banners, emails or the host indexes ? you spend a lot on the ads ?

I've gathered some host index URL as well, just in case you missed out any :-)

http://www.go2.com
http://www.webhostdir.com
http://www.hostindex.com
http://www.hostinvestigator.com
http://www.webhostseek.com
http://www.hostfinder.com

I don't think listing on eBay helps, unless you want to sell out your entire webhosting biz :-D

Originally posted by CRego3D
Yep, I bought a bunch of Banner ads in other sites and e-mail systems dirt cheap (On eBay), and so far it's working, now I'm considering in advertising on HostSearch.

Hey Carlos.. good to see that this kind of exposure gets some positive results with new signups... I'm looking forward seeing how successful your "dirt cheap" campaign is..

Also, the guys at webhostdir.com seem to be open to doing some deals on start up advertising campaigns, we noticed a distinct lift in sales of a reseller we helped out from just a 2 month banner there... and you can actually get a human being to deal with, unlike Hostsearch, who have become very rude and uncooperative lately.. they must be making too much money..

Good luck.. :D

addr.com's new site looks very nice :)

I've always been a fan of Rackspace. The site is so neat and clear, making navigation so easy. Looking through the site is always a delight! :)

I quite like the style of sites such as pwebtech.com and hostway.com (not the new logo though).

Design wise addr.com is great, but a bit slow.

I was a big fan of HostPro's website. All the products were clearly shown. If I were looking for hosting, that would be what I would draw me in.