Second is the organization of the design templates. Webmium is the first website builder that I’ve come across that does an excellent job in categorizing its design templates. More than 100 design templates are offered, along with 32 blank templates featuring various layout options. The pre-designed theme templates are categorized into five main sections: Restaurants, Health & Beauty, Legal, Contractors and Others. Webmium does a great job drilling down these main sections into sub-categories that closely match the needs of small businesses. For example, the Health & Beauty section includes Hair salon, Beauty salon, Massage salon, Spa, and Fashion & makeup artist selections. The Others section is quite encompassing as well, offering 12 options: Agriculture & Gardens, Architecture, Cleaning Services, Coaching & Training Classes, Construction, Financial Services, Healthcare, Hotels & Resorts, IT & Telecommunication, Property & Rentals, Tourism & Traveling, and Sport.

Webmium earns the award for most well-organized templates with main categories broken down into very specific sub-categories. The Restaurants category is a great example of this, with nine sub-categories covering different types of food or establishments.

While the design templates are professionally presented, their layout is pretty basic. I have seen much more creative layouts from other website builders. The overall design is somewhat run-of-the-mill, particularly in terms of images and color themes. I would recommend that users consider switching out the generic images with their own and move around some design elements to give the design a more unique look.

Once you select your design template, it is here where Webmium asks you to create an account by supplying an email address and creating a password, as well as provide a name for your site and a sub-domain name. The free site from Webmium includes a sub-domain, which means your website name will be followed by .webmium.com. This is fine if you are simply planning to market your site on your print advertising and marketing materials, but if you want to be found by a search engine search, your own domain is essential. Your own independent domain name is available with one of Webmium’s fee-based plans.

The shortfalls in the design templates are quickly disregarded with the third best thing about Webmium, the workings of its website builder. I absolutely loved its In-Editor Guide, which nicely guides you through the first steps of the website creation process. It was if I had a Webmium support person right there with me! If I wanted to, I could click on links to view corresponding how-to video tutorials. The In-Editor Guide covers all the basic components of a website, showing how to add text, images and other various elements, how to add and organize your web pages, and how to publish your website to the Internet.

Webmium’s In-Editor Guide gets you started in creating your website. Presented as a pop-up window, the In-Editor Guide offers a great support service and shows you how to add all the basic elements to your website.

The Webmium Editor itself is very easy to use. Once signed in to your account, you simply click on the Editor button to start building your site. The Editor environment itself is very organized and easy to navigate. A small menu bar displays Site Setting and Page Settings, with a Need Help button at the ready. Depending on which option you select, another menu bar appears with various task selections. Under the small menu bar is another one with icons for Manage Pages, Change Design, Change Layout, SEO Settings, First Steps In-Editor Guide, Marketing Academy, Publish and Preview. Whichever category you choose either directly presents your options or provides you with a menu of tools.

I was pleased to see that the Webmium Editor is extremely intuitive and uses drag and drop functionality, which makes creating a website so much easier. For instance, I didn’t need to click on a menu and select a tool to resize or move an image. All I had to do was click on it and drag in the corners to resize it, or drag it to the area on the web page where I wanted to place it. I also liked that all I had to do was click on a blank area on a web page to add text, a photo gallery, a video, a contact form, a map, a Facebook comment or like button, a Twitter feed, or a blog. When I clicked, for example, on the text icon, a text box appeared with a tool bar providing me with formatting tools for my text. If I needed help adding or editing my text, the text box tool bar included a question mark icon which, when clicked, presented me with a video on how to add and edit text in Webmium. I must say it’s ingenious how Webmium has developed its Webmium Editor. They couldn’t have made it any easier!

Webmium really gave some thought to the typical things small businesses would need, such as a food menu list, a list of services, price list, etc., and incorporated the basic format for creating and customizing them within the Webmium Editor. Providing these specific, business-related templates is something I haven’t seen with other website builders.

That brings me to the fourth great thing about Webmium, its unique resources, in particular its Webmium Academy. This is an online marketing course that surprisingly is very comprehensive. Topics, ranging from Market Research and Know Your Competition to Your Products and Services Page and How Can Someone Even Find Your Website?, are aimed at not only marketing your website, but your business as well. I found the Checklist particularly useful.

The Webmium Academy is an online marketing course that covers a wide array of marketing topics under the categories of preproduction, designing your site and marketing your website. A handy checklist is also provided.

The fifth plus is the Webmium Support Center with its extensive help and support options. I particularly liked the Support tab, available on all its website pages and the Webmium Editor, where you simply type in your question and are presenting with links related to your inquiry. The Support tab definitely speaks to Webmium’s mission of helping people create with confidence. So do the other Webmium Support Center resources, including a searchable knowledge base, tips and tricks, FAQs, Webmium community help, the Webmium blog and submit a request form. But I was most impressed by the extent of the video tutorials, covering just about any website building topic imaginable, from how to change the design and layout of your site to how to configure a contact form.

Webmium has an extensive video tutorial library. This is just one of four pages filled with video tutorials covering a wide range of website building topics.

This do-it-yourself website builder offers a free plan plus two other fee-based packages simply called Webmium Pro 1 year and Webmium Pro 2 years. All plans include free web hosting, free professional templates, the In-Editor Guide and Webmium Academy.

The free plan features 20MB storage, 300MB bandwidth and online help resources. If you select the free plan, be aware that Webmium will place ads on your site and you are unable to remove the Webmium promotional footer at the bottom of your website. Both Webmium Pro plans feature a custom domain name, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, and premium support, which means a response to your support email will be given within 24 hours. In addition, both plans are ad-free and the Webmium promotional footer can be removed. The difference between the two plans is the price. The Webmium Pro 1 year is $16.66 a month or $199.92 if paid in full for the year, while the Webmium Pro 2 years is $14.66 a month or $351.84 if the two years are paid in full.

Technical Info

Platform – HTML

Free Plan Includes – Web hosting, professional templates, 20MB storage, 300MB bandwidth, In-Editor Guide,WebmiumAcademy, online help resources

Premium Plan Prices – Webmium Pro 1 year: $16.66 a month or $199.92 paid in full; Webmium Pro 2 years: $14.66 a month or $351.84 paid in full for 2 years

Domain Registration Cost – Included with Pro plans

Number of Templates – Over 100

Bandwidth – 300MB free plan; Unlimited with Pro plans

Storage – 20MB free plan; Unlimited with Pro plans

Shopping Cart – No

Support Options – Support tab search inquiry, searchable knowledge base, video tutorials, FAQs, tips and tricks; In-Editor Guide, Webmium Academy, Webmium community help, Webmium blog and submit a request form; email support with Pro plans

Free Trial – No

Summary

Webmium says its purpose is to give you the tools to accomplish your goal. I would have to say this website builder has its purpose well in focus. Webmium is spot on with its home page claims that its website builder is deadly simple and that you can create with confidence.

Webmium sets itself apart from other website builders with its In-Editor Guide. Built right into the Webmium Editor, it shows you how to create a small business website. Also unique to this website builder is its Webmium Academy, a comprehensive guide that demonstrates how to create, market and optimize small business websites.

Where Webmium could put more attention is its design templates. While they are professional looking, all the design templates seem to have a similar look. And although there are over 100 design templates to choose from organized nicely in categories specific to what small businesses are looking for, I would have liked to see more design templates in some categories. For instance, some categories only had two designs. However, both these issues are easily resolved in the Webmium Editor. Its intuitive, drag and drop platform makes is super easy to change the look of a template, from color scheme and column layout to where text and images are placed.

In terms of pricing, I thought Webmium’s prices were a bit high compared with other website builders. Granted, you are receiving unlimited storage and bandwidth and other perks, but other website builders offer similar value for a lesser price. Surprisingly missing with Webmium is the option to add a shopping cart. Seeing that Webmium is focused on small businesses, I would think ecommerce would be a big small business need Webmium would want to fulfill either as an inclusion in its fee-based plans or as an add-on service. Also missing is telephone support or live online chat, something that always disappoints me. However, Webmium makes up for this with its extensive help and support resources. Particularly impressive is the number of video tutorials.

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As soon as you click on the sign up for a free trial button on the ezweb123 home page, you are presented with nearly 150 design templates to get started. These samples of business templates were selected by using the select a category drop-down menu.

With ezweb123, there are nearly 150 design templates from which to choose. You can either scroll down through the choices or select from the category box. The categories are broad and include personal, business, online shop, photography, craft, portfolio, modern, simple, natural, quirky, feminine, masculine, blog, brochure and new themes. Since some of these categories have quite a few templates within them, I would have liked to see sub-categories rather than having to take time scrolling through the designs. However, I do appreciate that ezweb123 gives a title description on each design template, which is easily viewed by pointing your mouse on it.

Overall, the design templates offered by ezweb123 are top-notch. They are very professional looking, offer high quality images and display an excellent range of layout options. There are also blank layouts that you can customize yourself from scratch. Once you find a design layout to suit your website style, you move on to Step 2 by entering site information, including what you want your site url address to be, your site name and a brief description of the purpose of your site for search engine optimization. As with other website builders, ezweb123 offers fee-based plans as upgrades to its free plan. One major difference between the free plan and the premium plans is your site address. With the free plan, the url for your site will have ezweb123.com after it, making it a sub-domain and much harder to find by search engines. With a paid plan, you receive your own domain name, which, for a business, also looks more professional. Another major difference between the free and paid service options is with the free option, ezweb123 will place ads on your site advertising its website building services. After entering your site information, ezweb123 requires you to create an account. You will be asked to create a username and password and provide your email address. Then it’s on to Step 3 and adding content to your website using ezweb123’s SiteMaker Editor.

The main feature of the SiteMaker Editor is its SiteMaker Toolbar, which I found conveniently displays at the top of all my web pages in my site. From this toolbar, I was able to easily access the tools needed to carry out various functions, such as saving my work; uploading my own files; inserting or editing content; adding, deleting, or rearranging pages; modifying design elements; and accessing online help resources. In addition to the SiteMaker Toolbar is the Page Editor, which ezweb123 designed as a floating panel, making changing basic settings of text or images extremely easy. But it gets better. From the Page Editor, the small arrow on the menu bar revealed a Mini Toolbar, where I was pleased to find all the basic functions that were on the SiteMaker Toolbarso I didn’t have to scroll back up the page to save a page, upload files, or modify content.

This sample website shows the components of the ezweb123 SiteMaker Editor. The letter A shows the navigation bar of your website, while the letter B points out the SiteMaker Toolbar and letter C shows the SiteMaker Page Editor.

Besides its simplified website building environment, most of ezweb123’s website creating functions are drag and drop, so adding text, images, videos and other content is quick and very easy. All I had to do was select the type of content I wanted to add and drag it over to the web page I was working on and drop it into position. I also liked how easy it was to create a contact form for my website using a widget provided by ezweb123. I soon discovered that ezweb123 has a wide range of widgets for adding a variety of functions, like chat or comments to your website. I was also pleased to find that ezweb123 is real-time, online editing, so the changes I made instantly appeared on my site. This was a real convenience because it skipped the Preview and Publish steps required with other website builders.

Another area where ezweb123 goes above and beyond is its search engine optimization. When developing its website builder platform, it took added care to ensure that Flash does not get in the way of search engines being able to index your content, images, or links. In addition, ezweb123 offers some helpful advice in its Forums/FAQs and Guides section about maximizing the SEO functions it provides to get better ranking with search engines.

Although ezweb123 is very simple to use, if you need assistance when creating your site, ezweb123 has a comprehensive Forums/FAQs and Guides section. A nice feature is its search box, where you can enter a question or keywords related to your concern and get results pertaining to it. This is also the section where you can submit a request to the ezweb123 support team. Although there is a lot of information posted in the Forums/FAQs and Guides section, ezweb123 gets high marks for nicely organizing the information by topic. I recommend using the Beginner’s Guide, available in the Forums/FAQs and Guides section, for step-by-step guidance on using SiteMaker Editor and building your website. I was hoping for a guide with step-by-step help on using the ezweb123 Shopbuilder, but there isn’t one available as yet.

Online help is available from ezweb123 by accessing the Forums/FAQs and Guides section, or you can submit a request to the support team. Live customer support is only available with premium plans.

If you are interested in upgrading your free account, ezweb123 does a great job presenting its service plans as a chart under the Upgrades button on the home page navigation bar. The chart outlines all the features you will receive under each plan. I was particularly impressed with the option at the end of the chart to select your country’s currency to see the applicable prices. You also have the option of paying monthly or yearly, with the annual, pay-in-full option offering a 25% savings.

The five service package options offered by ezweb123 are presented in a convenient comparison chart format so you can easily review what is included in each package and make a well informed decision on which package is best for your website needs.

With the Free plan, ezweb123 provides one free site with up to 15 pages; its website editor; free hosting; 20MB storage space; 1GB of monthly bandwidth; an ecommerce shop with up to 10 products; a Facebook shop; and membership tools that allow you to require visitors to become members of your site, send bulk emails to your members, restrict access to certain pages of your site and control editorial permissions.

In addition to the Free plan, ezweb123 has four upgrade plans called Lite, Standard, Plus and Max. All upgrade plans include the ezweb123 website editor; free hosting; an unlimited number of web pages; an ecommerce shop; a Facebook shop; customer support; membership tools; and Google Adsense. The remaining services included are based on the plan. The Lite plan, which is $4.04 monthly or $35.99 annually, provides one website; 500MB storage space; 10GB of monthly bandwidth; and up to 20 ecommerce store products. The Standard plan is $8.09 a month or $71.99 annually and includes five websites under one account; 1 free domain; up to five mailboxes; 1GB storage space; 20GB of monthly bandwidth; and up to 50 ecommerce store products. The Plus plan, at $12.59 monthly or $107.99 yearly, provides 10 websites under one account; 1 free domain; up to 5 mailboxes; 5GB storage space; 60GB of monthly bandwidth; up to 150 ecommerce store products; and mobile checkout. The Max plan, which is $21.59 a month or $197.99 a year, includes an unlimited number of websites under one account; two free domains; up to 5 mailboxes per domain; 10GB storage space; 60GB of monthly bandwidth; up to 500 ecommerce store products; and mobile checkout.

Technical Info

Platform – HTML and Flash

Free Plan Includes – 1 website of up to 15 pages, ezweb123 website editor, free hosting, 20MB storage space, 1GB monthly bandwidth, ecommerce shop with up to 10 products, a Facebook shop, site membership tools

Premium Plan Prices – Lite: $4.04/mo. or $35.00/yr.; Standard: $8.09/mo. or $71.99/yr.; Plus: $12.59/mo. or $107.99/yr.; Max: $21.59/mo. or $197.99/yr.

Domain Registration Cost – Included with Standard, Plus and Max plans

Number of Templates – 149

Bandwidth – 1GB Free plan; 10GB Lite plan; 20GB Standard plan; 60GB Plus and Max plans

Storage – 20MB Free plan; 500MB Lite plan; 1GB Standard plan; 5GB Plus plan; 10GB Max plan

Shopping Cart – Yes, but limited options with free and certain premium plans

Support Options – FAQs, forums, searchable help, email support request, live support with premium plans only

Free Trial – Yes

Summary

The ezweb123 website builder is probably one of the easiest around, so it definitely lives up to its name. What is particularly valuable about this website builder is its Shopbuilder offering. Even the free plan allows you to build an online store, stock it with products and have payment integrated with PayPal. For those who aren’t looking for an ecommerce solution, ezweb123 offers a large variety of high quality design templates for artists, crafters, photographers and other businesses, as well as those looking to start a blog or create an online portfolio of their works.

One area where ezweb123 shines is its website building features. The drag and drop function makes it easy to maneuver modifications to elements like text and images, and the menu bars offer a familiar look to those in Windows programs. I also found a generous array of tools and widgets and the website building platform is designed to allow you to quickly and easily add in all sorts of enhancements, like your own videos or slideshow, music or other audio files, discussion forums, a blog, live chat and much more.

While the ezweb123 website building platform is abundant with tools and widgets to make your site attractive, functional, interactive and SEO friendly, I felt information on its Shopbuilder feature was sorely lacking. Even the Beginner’s Guide provided in the Forums/FAQs and Guides section failed to mention how to use the Shopbuilder function. At the very least, ezweb123 should have a separate user’s guide for building a store or provide video tutorials.

All in all, ezweb123 is definitely worth considering as your website builder, especially if you are looking for an inexpensive way to build an online store. Of all the website builders out there, I found that ezweb123 best appeals to the reasons why people need a website and has geared its design templates accordingly. In terms of its free website building service, ezweb123 is above par because it includes ecommerce with its free offerings. It also gets above average marks for its good selection of quality design templates, its easy-to-use website builder editor and its nice selection of upgrade plans to meet the budgets and needs of a diverse group of buyers.

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The Website.org homepage

Features

If the user can work his way through the registration process, these are the features that Website.org say are available with the free hosting plan: 10GB of storage space for your home page (with the option for more but with no information on how to go about getting it), unlimited traffic, PHP5, FTP, MySQL five, and up to 500 free domains.  Users are promised a ‘fast and reliable web server, and a forum with a great community of users helping users’.

The features page showing some of the features provided with Website.org

An ‘additional features’ link is provided; this takes the user to another page which lists the features already mentioned, along with these, exactly as listed on the website:

Up to 100 projects per account

Graphics Client Admin Interface

Domains included – up to 500 free subdomains choose from over 590 domain extensions (5 per project)

External add-on domains

Redirect

Commercial use allowed

Where advertising is permitted

Mod Rewrite (.htaccess)

Password Protection (.htaccess)

FTP access

MySQL databases – up to 300 databases (3 per project)

MyISAM and InnoDB

Preinstalled php MyAdmin

Server monitoring

High availability

Fast server

Documentation Wiki

Whois Page

There is also a ‘Whois’ page, which provides a form for users to find other domains that are hosted with Website.org.

Customer Support

Customer support seems to be by way of forum only. The forum is in English, and has a search facility, so it should be easy for users to find answers to some queries there. Under the ‘system’ category on the forum, there is a section entitled ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ and specific issues are addressed there by other users. It is not clear whether Website.org’s administrators monitor the forum, so specialized help may not be easy to come by.

Contact

There is a ‘Contact’ tab at the top of the website page; clicking into that reveals a form that users can complete (in German or English) to send their queries to the Website.org team.

Help

At the top of the Contact page, there is a ‘Help’ section which takes the user to a ‘Start’ page, which is written in German. Scrolling down the page, users will find a link to translate the page into English. The English page has seven links, two blue, and the rest red. There is a note on the page that says that only the blue links work; the red ones don’t because the articles haven’t yet been written. The blue links are ‘User Area’ and ‘FTP’, both in English. Unfortunately, they both provide nothing really useful. The User area has a registration form, but it asks users for their ‘travel dates’ which makes no sense whatsoever.

The ‘Help’ page takes the user to this page which is in German, with the option to translate it into English, which has been done for this screenshot

Conclusion

This website is untidy and difficult to follow, mainly because it has been poorly translated from German into English. Some of the features are not well explained, or have no explanations at all. There appears to be no paid-plans with this provider.

Customer support is sparse and poor, and links have been provided for articles that may well be helpful once they have been written.

This is not a website for the beginner because the site is so difficult to navigate and understand, but Website.org describe it as ‘one of the largest free hosting providers in the world’ and suitable for both beginners and professionals.

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The 000webhost homepage

Features

Free web hosting

000webhost provides the user with disk space of 1500MB (megabyte), and bandwidth of 100,000MB = 100GB, an unlimited number of domains, and cPanel (Control Panel). The user will have a site that is ad-free, but he can add his own advertisements if he chooses.

Package details

The free web hosting account with 000webhost provides the user with a website builder, PHP scripts autoinstaller, unrestricted PHP support, MySQL databases, FTP support, web file manager, 99% uptime, and instant activation.

Users can check service uptime here

Supported Features

Supported features with the free account include Cron jobs, Curl, GD, and PHP pear modules. For PHP and MySQL there is a separate list of options as follows:

Zend Optimizer, IonCube loader, Curl support, file uploads, allow_url fopen ON, PHP mail () and Sendmail, fopen () and PHP sockets, and register globals (configurable).

PHP fully supports many other modules, too.

These are the email features:

POP3 Accounts

Web Mail

Spam Protection

Mail Forwarding

IMAP Support

Modify MX Entry

The Control Panel Features

The control panel is the latest cPanel, so is completely up to date.  These are its features:

Getting Started Wizard, video tutorials, multi language support, Hotlink Protection, Redirect URL, IP Deny Manager, and Password Protected Directories, along with phpMyAdmin, and Web Based File Manager.  Other features are Website Builder, and Fantastico Autoinstaller, and details are provided separately for these.

The Website Builder is completely free, comes with hundreds of designs, and a step-by-step wizard which enables even a beginner to build a website quickly and easily. Multiple modules include photo gallery, and voting system. Fantastico Autoinstaller enables the user to enhance his website by installing popular PHP scripts.

Plans

Users can choose either the Free Hosting Plan or the Premium Hosting Plan. The free account provides disk space of 1500MB per month, and data transfer of 100GB per month, along with five add-on domains, and five sub-domains, two MySQL databases, and five email addresses.

All the features and allowances that come with the free plan are unlimited with the Premium option; this means unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, unlimited add-on domains, unlimited MySQL databases, along with cPanel Pro (demo provided on the website), and Reseller hosting feature. The Premium Plan costs $4.84 per month.

Free Web Hosting Affiliate Progam

The Affiliate Program page showing how the user can join and start earning from his website

The Affiliate Program provides users with a way of earning money by promoting the website. Every visitor that registers once he has been directed to 000webhost will earn $5 for the user. Payments are made via PayPal, wire transfer or cheque, but the pay-out limit of $100 or twenty registrations needs to be met first. Once a user joins the Affiliate Program he will be provided with a selection of banners from which to choose one for his website; they are designed to be noticed by visitors, and generate a high click-through rate.  Forums create the best traffic.

Customer Support

A comparison of the features provided by both the free and paid-for plan

000webhost.com has a forum that users can access for information, and to post questions for other users to answer. On the forum page there is a tab which takes the user to FAQs where there is a search box for asking about specific issues. On the homepage, there is a link to Frequent Questions; clicking into it will bring up a categorised list of the various topics that users can access for further help and information.

There is no telephone number available on the site. There is a Contact Us/Report Abuse form, but when it is accessed it says it is only for ‘questions or offers’. Another link says ‘To report abuse click here’, and takes the user to yet another form specifically for reporting abuse.  If users need to submit specific queries, they are asked to log in to the Members’ Area and submit a ticket from there. This all seems to be very long-winded, when a page with all three forms on it would make it more user-friendly.

Conclusion

000webhost’s website is neat and easy to navigate, and has a lot of information about both the free hosting plan, and the Premium option.  The free plan provides a lot of useful features, and a chance for the user to earn money from his website by directing traffic to 000webhost.

There is not much in the way of customer support, and the contact forms could be better explained and more easily accessible. Users will find they have to jump through a few hoops before they can actually find the form they need if they have a query. The cPanel looks useful, though.

For a free web hosting service, 000webhost is good; it comes with a free website builder that has its own step-by-step wizard, so a user can have a website of his own in no time at all, and the features provided will help him to make the most of it.

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The Doomby home page is a fun and playful presentation that succeeds in taking the intimidation factor out of building your own website.

Ready to get started, I clicked the Sign up button from the home page and was directed to the Website Creation Wizard. Before moving on, I had to establish an account by providing contact details, including legal entity type, name, country and email address, as well as account codes, such as user name and password. Setup also asked for optional information, such as gender and date of birth. Doomby says it uses this information to better develop and modify tools to meet your needs, but I decided to skip this section. Once my account was created, the wizard began guiding me step-by-step through the website building process.

I was surprised to see that a design template was already selected for me based on the information I entered at signup. Several website builders assign default templates, but I’m not a fan of this process because rather than save time, I find it causes unnecessary tasks for those who don’t want to keep the default template. However, I was able to change this template by using the Site Manager and selecting the Settings menu and then the Design sub-menu. There were about 50 to choose from and the quality of the templates was top-notch. I later read that the Doomby design templates are created by professional graphic artists and it certainly shows in their attractive presentation and creative layout. However, I did notice that quite a few templates had the same layout look.

A sampling of the design templates offered by Doomby. They are created by professional graphic artists, which shows in the vivid design and creative layouts.

The only thing I wasn’t too happy about was the manner in which the design templates were organized. They were organized by artistic design, such as light, minimalist, efficiency, instead of function, such as professional services, restaurants, etc. This caused me to have to browse through all the templates to find options that best matched my usage. It made choosing a design much more time-consuming than it had to be. However, I was happy to see that the Doomby website builder makes it extremely easy to personalize any design template to your liking. For instance, if you want to use a different color combination, change the font style, or replace the pre-loaded images with your own logo and images, it only takes a few seconds using the Site Manager.

Overall, the Doomby website builder is extremely easy to use and well organized. I quickly found that the Site Manager is the main interface for creating and managing your website. It has a user-friendly dashboard with four main menus – Pages, Add-ons, Settings, Marketing – that guide you in your tasks. Under each main menu are sub-menus with more specific options.

The Doomby Site Manager gets you started with building your website with its four main menus, each with their own sub-menus and tabs, for guiding you through the various components of a website.

I was especially pleased to find that the Doomby website builder platform is equipped with drag and drop and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) functionality. This made it super easy to change content and images. For example, the pre-designed template already had existing text blocks that were positioned to match the layout. To add my own text in the text blocks, all I had to do was click within a text block and the editing tools appeared. Better yet, the text editing tools on the toolbar were all familiar icons because they are the same as those found in any Windows word processing application.

Another powerful tool that Doomby provides is its Visual Editor. This is where you can enhance your text, add an image, add a video player to a page, change the layout of your content and much more. A fantastic feature, which I haven’t seen in other website builders, is the ease in which you can change content blocks on each page. At the bottom of the Visual Editor is a toolbar for changing the structure of any content block from one column to two or more. This gives you much more flexibility and allows you to add some visual appeal to your site. For example, you can have a single column text block in one area of a web page and another one that’s three columns in another area of the same web page. These content blocks can contain all text, text with an image, text with a slideshow, or whatever content you want to put in them. This tool really opens up the design possibilities and makes it easier to create a unique site while using the pre-designed template as a starting point.

On the topic of content, Doomby is one of the few website builders that gives you a good assortment of widgets. These widgets allow you to add interactive elements, such as video players, MP3 players, slideshows, photo galleries, RSS feeds, contact forms, polls or quizzes, location maps, social sharing buttons and a blog, just to name a few.

The Doomby Visual Editor gets a lot of use when building your website. With it, you can enhance your text in a variety of ways, add an image or downloadable file, adjust the layout of your content, and much more.

From what I experienced, Doomby is very generous with its free version. It includes web hosting, unlimited web pages and bandwidth, and an ample 250MB storage. Plus, you get a playground of free website builder tools. Among them are a splash page; a website directory; the option to publish site links to other websites; a visitor comments feature; tracking of website statistics; a PayPal page; members-only site content; and site widgets.

You also get a full complement of interactive features for free, among them an e-newsletter setup; an online diary; a guestbook; an online video directory; a forum; eCards; and email templates.

But what I was pleasantly happy to see included in the free plan was an online store. You can actually build a store, a multilingual one at that, for free and sell up to 5 products, displaying one photo for each product. You also get stock and shipping management, SEO and sales tools for the products, order management and automated invoicing, and payment management. By providing an online store for free, Doomby really raises the bar on value and puts itself in the forefront of the competition.

However, the free version does include ads, which means Doomby will place advertisements promoting its service on your website. In addition, with the free version, your website will be a sub-domain of Doomby, which means your website address will have the name of your website plus the doomby.com extension in it. This makes it hard for search engines to find your website, a real challenge if you plan on selling products with the free online store feature.

If you don’t want ads on your site, or if you want your own .com website address that can be easily found by search engines, Doomby offers its DoombyPlus plan for $71.39 a year. Besides all the features and services of the free plan, the Plus plan upgrades to 2,500MB of file storage and also includes the ability to create a members-only website with exclusive content, or place access restrictions on certain pages or page features, and provides a wide array of pro site builder tools and features, including detailed site statistics, Google AdSense, e-commerce via PayPal and up to 60 e-newsletters per month.

I also liked that Doomby offers additional options so you can have all the necessary components related to maintaining a website all in one place. For example, Doomby offers an add-on package that include a domain name and 10 email accounts linked to the domain name for $55.60 per year. The service includes checking if the domain name is available, registering it for you and setting it up on its servers. If you already have a domain name, you can transfer it to your new website by using the Site Manager.

Another additional option is a more complete e-commerce solution for $246.21 a year. This package offers much more than the features in the free plan. For starters, you can sell unlimited products and have an unlimited number of photos for each product. You also get some powerful marketing tools, like cross-selling products, the ability to use discount codes and group discounts, and displaying customer comments about products. For the services and features included, I think the price for this e-commerce plan is comparable to other plans offered by hosting companies.

If you need help with any topic, Doomby offers a good array of Webmaster Resources that include the user guide, step-by-step illustrated tutorials on website creation, a searchable community forum, FAQs, online technical support and phone support, although it is limited to Monday-Friday and for U.S. residents, international rates would apply because the company is based in France.

Technical Info

Platform – HTML and HTML5

Free Plan Includes – web hosting, unlimited bandwidth, 250MB storage, unlimited web pages, a full complement of website builder tools and interactive features, online store

Premium Plan Prices – $71.39 a year

Domain Registration Cost – $55.60 for the first new or transferred domain name, $31.77 for each subsequent domain name

Number of Templates – About 50

Bandwidth – Unlimited

Storage – Free Plan: 250MB; DoombyPlus: 2,500MB

Shopping Cart – Yes

Support Options – online technical support; Monday-Friday phone support; user guide; website creation tutorials; searchable community forum; FAQs

Free Trial – No

Summary

Doomby wants you to unleash your imagination using its website builder and it certainly gives you all the tools to inspire your creativity. I think Doomby is a fantastic website builder. It has a lot going for it, from an easy-to-use website builder platform to features-rich tools and endless interactive options.

The design templates, although limited in quantity, are vibrant and created by professional graphic designers. The templates are fine to use as is, but Doomby gives you so many great editing tools that you’re motivated to make some enhancements to add a unique touch to your website.

The free plan is quite the value, considering you can actually create an online store. And the fee-based Doomby Plus plan is competitively priced considering all that it includes. Doomby gets high marks for offering add-on services, such as domain name registration and full e-commerce store, to complement its website building services. It was nice not having to shop around for these services.

My only concern with Doomby is that it is not globally focused. It is based out ofFrance and has its package prices in pounds. Furthermore, its phone support number is not toll free. This might discourage people outside ofFrancefrom using its website builder. That would be a shame because Doomby is an excellent website builder that is extremely easy to use and full of great features. As its home page reflects, with all that is offered by this website builder, you feel like you’re in your own big playground, one that is inspiring you to unleash your imagination and creativity.

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The homepage that users will see when they first visit FreeWebSpace.com

A free website builder, described on the site as ‘award-winning’, is also provided, and users can choose FTP or the web-based file manager for file upload, and they can improve website traffic with site promotion, and enhancement tools.

More about FreeWebSpace

Signing Up

As soon as the user accesses the sign-up page, he is asked to choose from three options – registering a domain, registering a sub-domain, or re-directing an existing domain. Users opting for the sub-domain are provided with disk space of 50MB, a maximum file size limit of .25MB, and monthly bandwidth allowance of 1GB,along with three email accounts, free website builder, site copier, file manager, and domain manager.  Customer service, in the form of online help and FAQs, is available 24/7. The free web hosting  service is not ad-free, so users will have banners, pop-ups, and advertising emails on their site.

The sign-up page

Tools are provided with the free hosting option; they include file manager, webrings, corkboard, form emailer, guestbook, and counter.

Paid-For Web Hosting

For users who find that the free web hosting service provided is not enough, either in terms of space, features, or tools, they can upgrade to the next level, the Starter Hosting Plan which, for $3.95 per month, provides disk space of 1GB, a much more generous maximum file size limit of 50MB, bandwidth of 10GB, and no banners.

As soon as the user visits the website, he can sign up for his free account and gain access to all the site’s services and promotions. FreeWebSpace will provide services for a sub-domain for those who don’t already have a domain.  Looking at the right-hand side of the page, the user will find links to the other pages on the site, including current accounts, FAQs, other free sites that are relevant, an invitation to download Firefox, and free file hosting, although the user can choose FTP or the web-based file managerfor uploading files if he prefers.

The web hosting packages offered by FreeWebSpace.com

What you get with the free package:

An illustration showing some of tools and services that are available with FreeWebspace.com. Please note that only those marked ‘yes’ are provided with the free package. Those marked ‘no’ are only available with the paid-for options

Form emailer – this provides an email form for visitors to use to contact the website owner.

Webring – this is a series of Websites that have been linked together to form a ‘ring’; the visitor can click through all the sites, but will eventually be returned to the original one.  The sites are linked by topic or purpose, and will all be relevant to the user’s own website. A webring is a great way to generate more traffic to a website because it encourages visitors to visit other sites within the ring.

Corkboard – this is exactly what it says. The user’s website will have its own virtual corkboard which can be used in the same way as a real one by adding notes, reminders, and so on.

Free Stuff Websites

By clicking into the Free Stuff Websites link on the homepage, the user will be taken to a list of useful free websites – FreeSite offers the Web’s biggest collection of free stuff, including fonts, screensavers, coupons, anonymous browsing, webmaster freebies, chat programmes, and javascript.

MyFreeFileHosting is another option that provides free file hosting for any type of file as long as it is under 100megs.

Free Image Hosting allows a user to add pictures to message-board posts, create online galleries, and host eBay auction photos without having to pay bandwidth costs.

Another freebie is Online Free Host which offers the user a free website with 100megs of webspace, web promotion and webmaster tools, and FTP access.

A useful Freebie Directory is also available. It is a searchable source for lots of free stuff like graphics, games and freeware. Users can search by keyword or category.

Other freebies available are Video Sharing, Free Music Downloader, and Salary Calculator.

Customer Support

A menu on the right-hand side of the homepage has a link entitled ‘Need help? FAQs’; by clicking into this, the user will find on the left-hand side of the page a list of topics from which he can access further information. The topics are Compatibility Requirements, FreeWebSpace.com Rules, Billing Questions, Abuse/Spam, and Technical Support. The last option invites users to make suggestions, pay compliments or make complaints, or report violations on the site. There is also a Wish List option, for users to tell FreeWebSpace.com about something they would like to be included in the free package. Clicking into any of these categories will produce a form that can be used to email the FreeWebSpace.com team.

Help files are also available, and these deal with signing up, billing, and abuse issues. To access help for specific issues, the user will need to log in to his site.

Conclusion

FreeWebSpace.com’s website is very basic, and little short of in-depth information. Users have to sign up to get all the details. Unlike most websites, there are no tabs along the top of the page, so it’s not always easy to find out about specific features.

The free package offers basic features but, to get the most benefit from their websites, most users will probably find that they need to upgrade to the Starter Hosting Plan which will suit most needs.

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Host1Free’s homepage which illustrates the various plans

Host1Free offers a free web hosting plan that the user can keep forever; it provides web hosting on secured servers that are powered with top cloud computing technology, assuring the user of almost 100% uptime, secure data, and a hassle-free online presence.

Host1Free is managed via web browser interface, which means no command lines or black screens. This level of hosting is normally left to experienced professionals, but users of the free plan can take advantage of the web hosting management training it provides.

Plan Options

Host1Free has free plans for hosting and for Cloud VPS (Virtual Private Server), and paid-for Premium plans for both.

The Free Plan

Host1Free’s introduction to free hosting, with an invitation to sign up, and links to options on the right-hand side.

The Free Hosting Plan is free of advertising and comes with 2GB (gigabyte) disk space, 10GB bandwidth, five domain names, five sub-domains, five email accounts, and two MySQL databases.

 

Additional Features and Options

Installation

This is available with the free and Premium hosting plans, and makes for easy installation of certain applications. It can set up more than a hundred different web applications  (known as ‘turnkey’ applications), blogs, forums, galleries, video sites, e-commerce solutions, project management applications, CRM, and many others. As some are used for big project management, the free plan is a great place to test them out prior to moving to a paid-for hosting plan.

PHP Support includes the most current technology installations such as PHP5 and MrSQL database support, and provides server CPanel access, file manager, free file transfer, and data backups.

Direct Admin control panel which allows for easy management – Host1Free pays for but provides free to all users.

Customer error pages for use in the even of incorrect URLs, and when pages cannot be found.

Website builder with more than one hundred different designs from which to choose,  and website application that requires no knowledge of HTML.

WebFTP application allowing easy management of download and upload of website files in the browser interface.

cURL, a command line tool that collects or sends files using URL syntax.

ZEnd Optimizer, a free application for PHP to run files encoded via Zend Guard, and which enhances all PHP application performances, and executes fast scripts.

Customer support via forum and FAQs.

 

About Host1Free Servers

Host1Free’s server center is situated inFrankfurt,Germany. It has air-conditioned rack-space on a raised floor, fire detection, shot-secure windows, keycard door protection, access 24/7 with or without personal check-in, 24/7 technical service, acquisition for connectivity with other carriers, and UPS and power generators supported at 230 and 48V.

 

Host1Free – What the Free Cloud VPS offers

The Free Cloud VPS Plan provides 128MB (megabyte) RAM, 10GB disk space, unlimited bandwidth, OpenVZ Virtualization, and instant set-up.

Paid-for Premium hosting and Cloud VPS plans are also available, and users of the free accounts can upgrade if they choose.

 

Customer Support

The community forum is one of two ways for users to find the answers to some of their queries.

Customer support with Host1Free consists of a community forum, and FAQs with search facility. There is no introduction to either. At the bottom of the FAQs page, there is a series of clickable numbers with no indication of what they are for. Clicking into them reveals a variety of different items, one of them being the FAQs page again; some are ‘technical support archives’, some are ‘community and support’ and others are forums in various languages.

 

Conclusion

Customer support with Host1Free is disappointing; only a forum and FAQs are available; there is no option for the user to make contact with Host1Free – no telephone number, no email address. There is a contact telephone number on the site, but the rather stern instructions are that this is not for technical support but for ‘abuse and general contacts only’.

The website is not as informative about the service as it could be, but it has a blog which has some interesting posts for users to read, and describes how they can take advantage of Host1Free while building their blogs.

 

Host1Free is ad-free which is something that many users will appreciate;  not many free web hosts offer ad-free hosting.

 

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There are many advantages for choosing Jimdo as your free website builder. A major one is an online store interface that is included with the free service, as well as many other features not typically found with the free service of other website builders.

As with other free website builders, it’s pretty quick and easy to get started with Jimdo. For example, to sign up, I had to decide on a name for my website. Like other free website creators, my website name will be a sub-domain of Jimdo.com unless I upgrade to a premium plan. Next, I provided my email address and within seconds Jimdo sent me an email message containing a link to my new website and a password. From there, I could get started using Jimdo’s website building tools.

I like any website builder that is either intuitive or uses an editing platform that mirrors the toolbar of Windows programs. Jimdo gets high marks for delivering on both, plus extra credit for providing comprehensive support options. If you’re new to creating a website, I highly recommend using the Getting Started tutorial accessible from the Help link on the main navigation bar. Jimdo nicely presents the process in five easy, non-intimidating steps.

Choosing a layout is the first step in building a website with Jimdo. This is where you get to see the full complement of available design templates. While the number of templates and styles are adequate, I would like to see the templates organized by category, rather than scrolling down to preview them. It should also be noted that not all of Jimdo’s design templates are available under the free service. Jimdo reserves certain templates for those who select its Business and Pro plans. Nevertheless, with the extensive layout tools provided, you can do a lot to change the layout and make it your own. If you plan on doing this though, be sure to choose a layout that allows you full design flexibility, such as adjusting the layout, changing background and header colors, expanding or decreasing header size, customizing fonts and switching navigation background colors. Jimdo offers some examples of what others have done to change the design of a particular template, which I found very helpful. You can access them by clicking on the Pages link from the main navigation bar, then Templates in the sub-navigation bar, then select a template category.

Jimdo has more than 100 design templates which are nicely arranged into six categories. When you click on a category, you can select from the designs offered, plus see examples of other websites using that particular template.

Jimdo has done a nice job presenting its layout and style menus along the right side of the web page for easy access. It uses a point and click function for selecting design elements and changing them. I also like how the Jimdo’s video tutorials explain website terminology, such as header, footer, etc., truly catering to those with little or no experience in designing a website. So that the toolbars are not overwhelming with multiple selections, Jimdo hides tools until you need them. For instance, I wanted to change the header, so all I had to do was click on my header and then the Edit Header tool appeared. When I clicked on it, I got lots of other tools for accessing the Jimdo photo gallery, patterns, logos, or uploading my own photo. Whichever option I chose, the applicable toolbar menu appeared. I really found that so much better because there’s no time wasted trying to figure out the functions of all the toolbar elements at once.

Adding and deleting pages and subpages and changing my site navigation were also quite easy to do using the Edit navigation tool. All navigation tools, like hiding a page, changing the order of pages and creating levels of pages, are concisely located in a pop-up box. Adding content to either the main page or sidebar is equally simple and easy. Text, photo galleries, videos and other building blocks can be added or changed effortlessly by clicking on it and making your selection from the Option menu. Placing elements can be done quickly by dragging and dropping. What I particularly liked about Jimdo is that for every element necessary to create a website, there is some form of tutorial for it that shows you how to do it or offering tips on how to enhance the element.

By clicking on the plus sign icon next to the existing element, you can add new content, such as text, photos, tables, text with photos, and much more, and easily resize them using the drag and drop function.

With the Jimdo Free Plan, you can keep the free site you created forever because there are no requirements to sign up for a premium plan within a specified time period. Jimdo Free includes web hosting; limited design templates; custom layout interface; 500MB storage; unlimited pages and subpages; widgets for integrating external services; up to 12,500 image galleries for your website photos; 10MB max for file downloads; 1 password protected section; online store interface; 5 store items; PayPal store payment option for credit cards only; search engine optimization; blog feature; guestbook section for visitor comments; RSS feed; ability to add Flash files; and support team assistance. However, with the free website option, Jimdo will add its logo and advertisements in an ad box located in a sidebar on your website.

If at any time you want to upgrade your plan, you can do so without losing the original design and content of your free site. Jimdo gets kudos for making it a seamless conversion from free to premium plan by simply logging in to your account and clicking on the Upgrade button on your Jimdo account page. Once you upgrade to a fee-based plan, Jimdo removes its logo and advertisements from your website.

Jimdo offers two premium plans: Jimdo Business and Jimdo Pro. I like that Jimdo has a Compare chart under Pricing on the main navigation bar so you can compare the features and services included in the price. It should be noted that unlike many website builders that offer monthly price plans, a Jimdo subscription is for one year.

The Jimdo price comparison chart enables you to easily see and compare what is included in each of the three Jimdo service plans.

Jimdo Business costs $240 per year and includes web hosting; 2 domain names through which your website can be accessed; 20 email accounts at 10GB each; unlimited email forwarding; access to business design templates; custom layout interface; unlimited pages and subpages; the ability to add your company logo; over 1 million images galleries for your website photos; 100MB for file downloads; widgets for integrating external services; unlimited storage; unlimited password protected website sections; online store interface; unlimited store items; PayPal store payment options that include credit card, check and invoice; the ability to turn off the administrative log-in link on your website to give it a more professional look; the option to remove print, sitemap and about links in the website footer and add the links you prefer; access to the Jimdo email newsletter system; detailed analytics for your website; search engine optimization; meta tags for each web page on your site; automatic site optimization for mobile viewing; blog feature; guestbook section for visitor comments; RSS feed; ability to add Flash files; and support team response to your submission within 24 hours.

Jimdo Pro is $90 per year and includes web hosting; 1 domain name; 1 email account of 10GB; 3 email forwarding aliases; access to pro design templates; custom layout interface; unlimited pages and subpages; the option to add your company logo; up to 125,000 image galleries for your website photos; 100MB for file downloads; widgets for integrating external services; 5GB storage; 5 password protected sections on your website; online store interface; 15 store items; PayPal store payment options that include credit card, check and invoice; the option to turn off the administrative log-in link on your website; the ability to remove the default links in your website footer and add your own; use of the Jimdo email newsletter system; detailed statistics regarding your website; search engine optimization; meta tags for individual web pages; site optimization for mobile viewing; blog feature; guestbook section for visitor comments; RSS feed; ability to add Flash files; and support team response to your submission within one to three days.

Technical Info

Platform – HTML

Free Plan Includes – web hosting; limited design templates; custom layout interface; 500MB storage; unlimited pages and subpages; widgets for integrating external services; 12,500 images galleries; 10MB for file downloads; 1 password protected section; online store interface; 5 store items; PayPal store payment credit card option; search engine optimization; blog feature; guestbook; RSS feed; Flash files; support team assistance

Premium Plan Prices – Jimdo Business: $240/year; Jimdo Pro: $90/year

Domain Registration Cost – Included in premium plan prices

Number of Templates – 120

Bandwidth – Unlimited

Storage – Free plan: 500MB; Jimdo Pro: 5GB; Jimdo Business: Unlimited

Shopping Cart – Included

Support Options – Online help; text and video tutorials; keyword search; webinars; support ticket; Jimdo community board; FAQs

Free Trial – No

Summary

What stands out about Jimdo is the manner in which it really simplifies the process of building a website. I really liked using Jimdo. All the information and what you can expect when signing up for the service is given to you upfront so you’re aware of the process beforehand. More importantly, Jimdo is a really good value, especially when you consider all you are receiving, even with the free plan. Of all the free website builders I’ve reviewed, I don’t recall any that include a free ecommerce solution. To get a good idea of what Jimdo offers, click the Tour link on the navigation bar of the home page. The Tour is rather helpful because you can make a decision from it on whether Jimdo is the website builder for you.

Jimdo excels in its website builder platform. The design and editing functions are extremely easy to use because the interface is intuitive. As added bonuses, the toolbars are similar to a Windows environment and there are point and click and drag and drop functions for most elements. All of these combined made creating a website with Jimdo super easy. And I’m not talking about just a basic website. Jimdo enables you to add in a wide assortment of widgets and other enhancements so you can create a really professional and functional website.

I would, however, be prepared to do some customizing on whichever design template you choose. While the selection of templates with the free service is limited and the quality is okay, they do look a bit generic. But the layout and style tools are quite simple to use so you can easily turn the ordinary design template into something extraordinary that reflects the purpose of your website.

By far, Jimdo is one of the most inclusive website builders and the prices of the premium plans are competitive with other website builders. However, I believe Jimdo is the better deal because of all it offers for the price. Take a look at the Compare chart under the Price link on the home page navigation menu to see what I mean. There’s no denying that Jimdo is right up there among the top five of website builders for its intuitive website building platform, its all-inclusive services, its extensive support options and its low price. This is definitely one website builder worth checking out.

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The number of companies providing web hosting has grown considerably in recent years; they all offer the same basic hosting service with their free accounts, but features vary so time needs to be taken when choosing which one to go for.

100WebSpace

The 100WebSpace front page

100WebSpace was created to meet the web hosting requirements of users who need a Linux web hosting service. It provides free and low-priced shared hosting plans as well as dedicated server solutions, domain name registration, and transfer. Each shared plan has integrated domain and email managers in a purpose-built Control Panel. Users get automated installations of WordPress, osCommerce, Joomla, phpBB2, and other PHP scripts. Free templates come as part of the 100WebSpace package.

The ‘About Us’ page offers lots of information about the company and, besides the free plan details already provided here, an idea of the Personal Hosting option available.

Features of the 100WebSpace free account

Connectivity and backup:

Secured data storage

Stable Linux with Apache

2.5 Gbits network connectivity

UPS and diesel backup generator

The free account offered by 100WebSpace comes with a range of features:

100 MB (megabyte) of data storage, and data transfer of 3,000MB. 1 hosted domain, free set-up, and Elefante Free Scripts Installer. Customer support is available 24/7, along with extensive online documentation, and an integrated ticketing system; support response time with the free account is six hours.

Information about the Elefante Free Scripts Installer that is provided by 100WebSpace

Users also get one hosted domain, ten sub-domains, Custom MX and A records, and a feature-rich domain manager. Front page extensions support is also included.

The email features provided consist of three Pop3 email accounts, three email aliases, email filters, anti-virus protection, Web email, catch-all emails., and Advanced Email Manager.

Scripting and databases include one MySQL database, MySQL database storage of 5MB, php MyAdmin, CGI-BIN/Perl, PHP support, FrontPageExtensions, and more than 3,400 Perl modules.

The site management tools provided comprise Hepsia Control Panel, one FTP account, Web-based file manager, Custom ERROR 404 page, and password-protected directories.

Additional features with the free account include instant account activation, SSI (Server Side Includes) support, traffic stats (WebAlizer), and detailed bandwidth stats.

Of course, the user needs to be aware that the free account is not ad-free.

If the user wants a domain, the domain registration transfer fee is $10.

Several paid-for accounts are provided by 100WebSpace, and there is an almost-free (at $0.99 per month) option, the Bannerless plan, which provides most of the features included in the free plan, with some enhancements, but without advertisements.

Customer Support

100 WebSpace provides a comprehensive level of customer support, 24/7. Their technical support can be contacted in various ways – via the web hosting control Panel for context help, with easy-to-understand explanations on every page of the Control Panel. Clicking on the ‘Help’ link produces a drop-down menu with more useful information about specific areas.

More than forty video tutorials are available which will help users to familiarise themselves with the Control Panel.

100WebSpace provide a Help Center based on searching by keyword, and a FAQs information database which they boast is more advanced than other web hosting services provide. TheHelpCenter is kept fully up to date.

Another option for Customer Support is the Ticketing System; users can open a ticket via the Request Help link, and 100WebSpace promise that every ticket is responded to within one hour of opening.

A Support Forum is also available, and users can access it to ask questions which will be answered by technicians; the forum can also be used for contacting other users with ideas about the service, and to keep in touch with others who host their websites with 100WebSpace.

The final option for assistance is telephone support. Initially, this will only be available for enquiries about dedicated and semi-dedicated accounts but, once a dedicated hosting plan is purchased, a user will have 24/7 telephone support.

Conclusion

100WebSpace’s free account comes with many features, some of which have free demo videos to enable users to learn more about them.

The customer support system is fairly good for a free account, especially as 100WebSpace have even included an estimated response time for queries. Some users might think that even the six hours quoted is too long, but at least will give them idea of how long they will have to wait before they get a result, or before they can re-submit the same request.  It has to be better than waiting indefinitely for an answer.

The 100WebSpace website has a lot of information to get through, but it is very detailed, and there are lots of tabs and links making it easy for the user to find what he wants.

All in all, for a free web hosting account, 100WebSpace is one of the better ones available today.

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5GBFree’s free hosting plan includes features such as MySQL databases, PHP ability, and an administrator-monitored community forum. 5GBFree’s cPanel Adminis also on hand, and will handle any edits and enhancements the user may need.

5GBFree has two plans – one free, with a reasonable number of features, and one for $7.95 per month, for which the user gets more.

5GBFree’s Features

Many of the features that are available with the paid-for account are provided to users of the free account:

cPanel Admin – a backend administration tool.

5GB (gigabyte) of space – this is quite generous for a free account; some only provide 2GB. If the user finds that he needs more space, he can upgrade to the 5GBPro account which will provide unlimited space, for a monthly fee

File size – the maximum file size for uploading any file type is 8MB (megabyte).

Bandwidth – 20GBs of bandwidth enables the user’s free hosting account to deal with the traffic it will receive.  Again, for those who need more, upgrading to the Pro account gives the user unlimited bandwidth.

Support – two levels of support are provided to users of the free account, but neither provides the ‘live’ assistance that is available with the paid-for plan.

FTP account – users will have the ability to handle lots of file uploads with the 1 FTP account that is provided with the free 5GBFree account. As with all the other features listed, upgrading to the Pro account will provide more.

Custom Error Pages – signing up for the 5GBFree account allows the user to use generic error pages. He will need to sign up to the 5GBPro account to be able to customize his pages. This will give his website more free advertising.

MySQL databases – the 5GBFree account lets users launch their new websites with three MySQL databases; if they need more, the 5GBPro will provide an unlimited number.

Domain – one domain is provided with the 5GBFree account; to get an unlimited number of domains, the user will need to upgrade to the 5GBPro account.

What is CloudLinux?

CloudLinux has been described as ‘the latest miracle software in shared hosting’; it protects each user, and the server, and prevents both from being brought down by other users’ resource-spikes. This is a bonus feature that 5GBFree provides free of charge to all its users.

The 5GBPro paid for plan

Users who find the free account inadequate for their needs have the option to upgrade to the 5GBPro account, which will give them many more features, as well as enhancement of the features already provided free. The Pro account costs $7.95 per month for unlimited bandwidth, unlimited space, unlimited MySQL databases, and 24/7 customer support.

5GBFree’s homepage, showing details of the free account, and how much it will cost to upgrade to a paid-for plan.

Customer Support

5GBFree’s Customer Support Page; only the first two options are available with the free account.

5GBFree has a community forum for asking questions of other users, many of whom are experts, and many queries are resolved in this way.  5GBFree monitors the forum to make sure it is providing the correct information, and keeps it up to date, too.

FAQ

The FAQ section has answers to basic questions, but it is not as full of information as most users would like, and most answers blatantly push the user towards upgrading.

Users of the free account have only the community forum and FAQs to turn to if they have problems. The hosting company also has live dedicated support which provides access to Tech Support Representatives, but this option is only available by upgrading from the free account to the  5GBPro paid-for account.

Conclusion

As some web hosting companies offer ad-free free accounts, the fact that 5GBFree includes embedded advertising may not win it many customers.

Customer support with the free account is very limited. Users only have access to the community forum and the FAQ page to be able to resolve any issues, and these will not provide all the queries that may arise while using 5GBFree.

The website is easy to navigate; everything is explained in easy-to-understand language. The CloudLinux provision is something that many users will appreciate.

5GBFree guarantee that their users, current and new, will never be asked to sign a contract for the free account.

The 5GBFree account is tidy and fuss-free, if very basic; it will suit users with few web hosting requirements, but not those who want to ensure that their website gets a productive online presence. The constant attempts to direct users to the paid-for account will irritate a lot of users, and may well cause them to abandon 5GBFree altogether.

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