Homebase for knot-heads.com
Written: Aug 24 '04 (Updated Aug 24 '04)
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Pros: Cheap. Liberal about content. Fairly easy to use.
Cons: Customer service sometimes gets an attitude.
The Bottom Line: Lunarpages' slogan is "Taking your site higher". Knot-heads.com has definitely grown in a big way in the past two years! Come visit and see for yourself!
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| knotheadusc's Full Review: Lunarpages |
Back in August 2002, my husband Bill and I set up our website, www.knot-heads.com. I had decided that I wanted to bone up on my fledgling HTML skills. I also enjoy writing and was hoping to post some of my scribblings for the world to see. Bill just wants to support me in anything I do. We needed a web host that was inexpensive, yet user friendly for "knotheads" like me. Naturally, I started searching for hosts online and quickly found Lunarpages.
I have to admit it. The fact that Lunarpages only charges $7.95 a month for their "Shuttle" plan was appealing to Bill and me. We weren't planning to run a business from our site-- we just wanted to have a personal space on the web. The Shuttle plan offers 800MB of storage and 40GB of bandwidth per month. If I needed more bandwidth, I could order it for $3.95 per GB per month; however, in the two years we've had our site, we've have never even come close to maxing out either the storage or the bandwidth limits.
Lunarpages also offers three parked domains and 15 subdomains, as well as 2000 mbit connectivity. Another feature that I enjoy is the online control panel, which allows me to set up and edit my site online. I can also view user statistics by accessing the "Webalizer". I can find out how many people have visited my site, where in the world the hits are coming from, and what times of day my site is most popular. It's fun to see where my visitors are coming from; I'm often shocked and amazed to see where knot-heads.com has been.
This isn't a concern to me, but it might be to those of you who use Dreamweaver and Front Page. I'm happy to report that Lunarpages is compatible with both. Users of the Shuttle program get one FTP account, which allows me the opportunity to run a message board.
Lunarpages also allows users to have an unlimited number of email accounts. I can't comment on the email accounts, though, because I don't use one myself. I choose not to have an account from my own website because I already have at least two email accounts and don't need another one. My forum boasts 44 (count 'em) members. If I wanted to, I could make email accounts available to my members. At this point, though, I don't see the need to do that. Maybe if more people joined my forum, I might consider using the email accounts.
At the time that we signed up, the site didn't restrict the type of content allowed on the site-- meaning that if we had wanted to, we could have even had an adult-oriented (read: porn) website. Luckily, I wasn't interested in putting porn on knot-heads.com, because Lunarpages has since ruled that pornographic sites are forbidden on their servers. Otherwise, Lunarpages is pretty liberal about content.
Lunarpages' other plan, "Voyager" is set up for businesses and costs $22.95 a month. This plan offers 1200MB storage and 800GB per month in bandwidth. Users can also set up a shopping cart for business ventures. Both Shuttle and Voyager boast 24 hour customer support, seven days a week and a 30 day money back guarantee. Luckily, I haven't had to use customer service too much. When I did need it often, it was when I had just set up my site and Lunarpages was very new on the hosting scene. I will admit that some of the emails I got from customer service were a little terse. Once I figured out what to do, though, I had no troubles, and a couple of months ago when I emailed customer service, I got quick, courteous resolution of my problem. Lunarpages promises 99.9% uptime for my site. I can't honestly claim that it's up 99.9% of the time because that would mean that I would never sleep... but I will comment that my site is up most of the time. When it's down, it's generally for scheduled maintenance, which Lunarpages usually warns me about by email. There have been a few occasions when the site was down unexpectedly, but Lunarpages is quick to fix technical difficulties and my site is almost never down for more than an hour.
Bill and I pay for the site by credit card on an annual basis. It's my understanding that Lunarpages only offers the $7.95 monthly rate if customers pay for a year in advance. This means that once a year, we pay one bill of about $110.00. I have noticed that Lunarpages has started to offer more security features and servers, but my monthly charge has not yet increased; it has remained at $7.95 per month. Bill and I think this is a great deal.
Now for a couple of cons... When we signed up for Lunarpages, we had to wait for customer support to call us to let us know that they had set up the site. At the time, this was a big pain in the butt because we were using dial up and I'm an internet junkie. I had to go offline for a couple of hours and wait for the call. Now that we have DSL, this would no longer be an issue. Bear in mind also that Lunarpages is based in California and I live in Virginia. Although customer service is available all the time, back when we first set up our site, it wasn't and we had to take into account the three hour time difference. Lunarpages has now set up a toll free phone number, but when we first signed on, they did not have a toll free number, so when we called them, we did so at our expense. Finally, when we first built knot-heads.com, I was pretty ignorant about being a webmistress. I had to learn a lot through trial and error because the Lunarpages was pretty no frills. On the other hand, I DID learn a lot and that's a good thing. Lunarpages offers an online manual that is helpful for newbies and failing that, customer service is ready to help. There's also a user forum available so that Lunarpages users can get in touch with other Lunarpages users.
I think that in the past two years, Lunarpages has come a long way. When we first signed up, Lunarpages had only a few servers. Since then, Lunarpages has expanded exponentially. Every time I log on to update my website, I notice a new server on the list and most of the time, they are all working fine. I have no complaints about Lunarpages. Perhaps if my site were used for business purposes or got a lot more traffic, I might be less satisfied. As it stands right now, though, Lunarpages has been a very gracious host to my little spot on the web. I recommend Lunarpages.
Lunarpages home page: http://www.lunarpages.com/index.htm
Knot-heads.com: http://www.knot-heads.com
Drop by and pay me a visit!
Recommended:
Yes
Monthly fees (US$): $7.95-$22.95
Platform used: Linux
Hosted on Secure Server: Yes
Database used: MySQL
Main focus of Web site: Customer service and retention
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