What have I done! Looking for a webhost!

Have you ever noticed that every time you try to save money you spend more? Every time that you think about going on a diet you eat more? Every-time you try to party less….well you get the picture.

Im in the middle of trying to do all three things and Im already failing miserably. It is like trying to hold you breath in the bath tub. You know you can do it but it still freaks you out a little.

So here is my dilemma! I have found 2 webhosts, both were fairly the same with a few differences. Bluehost (which is recommended by WordPress) and Lunarpages (which is recommended by WordPress as well but not as highly). To figure out which one would be better for me I decided to email them with questions about blogging and having an e-commerence site. Here is what conspired:

• email to Bluehost about what I needed for e-com answer-”We have several different Shopping Carts and Merchant accounts” 
• email back to Bluehost, “Which one do you recommend for a new store owner?” answer-”We recommend all of the sites that we carry” (4 by the way). Well that didn’t really answer my question.

So… It was back to researching what I needed for my store. It would be nice to have an all-in-one shopping cart for my store but if you haven’t noticed all-in-one shopping carts can get pricey. I came across a couple sites that looked promising. Volusion and ShopSite Pro, both have nice looking sites and both have an all-in-one cart yet starting at 29.99 per month for 20 items (volusion) and more for Shopsite pro seemed a bit much for me starting out. Last year I started an yahoo store and never published it because of my drop-ship service was not keeping up with my orders in January and February (another story). After looking over these and emailing some questions to both I would have to say Volusion is the better of the two, especially in costumer service response.

A funny thing happened when I was looking at these sites and the Review sites that are out there (and there are a ton of them all saying they know best) Affiliate sites I will call them. Some were helpful others  had to say huh especially when they compare different sites on their own site. None of them were up to date on what the Webhosts had to offer and this told me the world of webhosting is very competitive right now.

On my search a familiar name kept popping up and that was Lunarpages. They rated in the top 10 of most all review. So, I decided to test them out with a few email that were similar to Bluehost. Here is what conspired:

• Question: I am looking at your basic webhosting plan and it looks pretty good. What type of Shopping carts do you have and what type of site builder do you suggest? Answer: We have some of the best shopping carts available including ZenCarts and Ocommerence and a few more. When it comes time to begin your site let us know and we will suggest the best for you. As far as site builders we have partnered up with CoffeeCup, one of the highest rating site builders in the industry. (This answer came back to me within 30 minutes of asking!)
• I also asked them about their free web site hosting for public schools (since I am a teacher) and received a wonderful response. But again that is a different story.

Being extremely happy with Lunarpages customer service (not as a costumer) has led my business their way. On-top of everything they just added more memory and transfer amounts to their basic package AND they have a coupon available for $28 off and 2 months free! (28offplus2) Check them out you might be surprised. PS I am not an affiliate yet! So, Im not selling you anything here!

All I need to do now is just figure out a Domain Name. 

~ by jnstrom on January 13, 2008.