posted on July 5, 2001 09:08:16 AM new
Hey mfcwizzard,
The bizhosting site you mentioned does look pretty good. CNET has rated bizhosting very good (the review link is on bizhostings info page).
I've been looking at freemerchant, hypermart, bigstep, bizland, homestead, and so far this looks the best for the money. Has anyone tried bizhosting?? Wallypog, can you take a peek at this site for us??
Hope everyones having a good holiday!
Thanks Ethel
posted on July 5, 2001 09:25:57 AM new
Wow--I'm impressed. If I was building a site and wanted minimum hassle that looks like a great hosting service.
I especially like that you get a free merchant account through ProPay. ProPay is a good service, though unfortunately doesn't seem to be widely used in the auction industry and I can't figure out why. I think mostly because PayPal was there first. However, they have the added advantage that your customers don't need to have an account set up there to use CC for purchases which in my opinion makes them a much better choice for a website. A free merchant account would more than pay for your monthly hosting fees.
Best of luck to you, and when you get your site up, send a link to [email protected] and I'll include it on my link exchange page.
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posted on July 9, 2001 01:36:10 AM new
Ethelmarie, I don't know whether or not you've got your web host settled on but I found absolutely what I'm hoping is the most wonderful web hosting service on the internet.
I'm not real happy with my current host--too many problems and their support is entirely too slow. I know I've been recommending them as possibles, but was rather hesitant until I saw exactly what they were about.
I learned a really big lesson. It's very important to pay attention to what kind of control panel your host provides. Mine provides one called Plesk. It's hard to navigate and you can do virtually nothing there but fix your e-mail addresses and make password protected directories.
Anyway, I spent the entire day yesterday searching for a good web hosting service. I had a question and e-mailed and they replied within a very short time. I also took a look at their control panel which is super. They have an entire help BOOK on-line, not just a few pages with FAQs.
The business is located in Indiana so I'll be finding out for sure if that's where their servers are located. Nearly all the others I found were located in either California or the East coast (hurricane territory).
Their monthly plans start out at $6.95 and I was absolutely shocked at how much you get for that price. Their highest priced plan is around $17.00 a month and that includes unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth (some will say this is impossible). They also have their own SSI script for you to use on your site as well as a bunch of other scripts available including shopping cart, chats, guestbook, counters, and I honestly can't remember what all.
They also take checks or payments and you don't have to sign up for a year's worth of their service. You can sign up for one month at a time.
Anyway, I'm too tired and am going on and on and on here, LOL.
But the site is www.wantsomegetsome.com
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posted on July 9, 2001 05:05:37 PM new
Hi Wallypog and Mfcwizzard (and all the auctionwatch users out there). The reason you haven't heard from me is because I've been busy trying to set up a website on Bizhosting. I decided to try it out and I'm starting with a website for my husband's construction company. Due to my limited html knowledge and a few Bizhosting bugs its been slow but its progressing. I should have it up and running soon. The longest wait I've had from customer service has been about 12 hours. I've had to email them for help four times and each time I ended figuring things out myself before receiving their response. LOL
Anyways, so far - so good. I plan to try out their shopping cart for my own site soon. I will check out the wantsomegetsome.com site first though. The cheapest plan through Bizhosting is about $17 if you pay month to month and don't want banner advertising (that's what I chose for my husbands website). They offer a FREE storefront if you don't mind the banner ads and unlike the other storefronts you can have unlimited items. Anyways, good luck to all of you. Hope you all had a good holiday. I live near the Canadian border so it been a LONG week with their holiday on the first and ours on the 4th!
posted on July 9, 2001 10:13:40 PM new
wantsomegetsome looks confusing to me, do they require banner advertising? do you get your own www.yourname.com? I can't tell from reading their page. Bizhosting gave a www.yourname.com included free, and banner advertising removed IF you upgrade. Any comparisons wallypog?
posted on July 10, 2001 10:08:01 AM new
I have a website set up with Bizhosting and am pleased with the service. Here are a few of the ups and downs of the service.
The templates for the websites are top of the line, you won't find any better, and very few that match. The ASP is easy to use, easy to understand, and limits the amount of time you need to do in developing your website.
The servers are quick, even loading well with graphic intensive pages. Site navigation works well.
For those who want to customize their website beyond the template you have nearly unlimited options. You can design your own and FTP it, you can use a template and design some pages and use template pages for the rest of the site. Even though I've created sites from scratch before, I am using their templates, just because it makes it so much easier, and I've never really been able to do a good job with frames by myself. (if you don't want frames, you should use your own html.
Customer service has always been curteous. Not always as fast as I'd hope (I don't think they work weekends, for example), but usually answer by the next business day (can't think of an example when they didn't).
There was one day when the servers were down. I mean 24 hours of downtime. They did apologize and admit what happened was a server error.
The web-based e-mail service is kind of bad. I get pop-ups and it's slow. You may want to consider the mail forwarding. They do not offer POP mail.
If you're not going to use the shopping cart, just use Freeservers. Freeservers and Bizhosting are the same company, same service, just with and without the shopping cart.
posted on July 10, 2001 10:33:14 AM new
I just checked out wantsomegetsome.com and while it looks like a nice service I wouldn't really put it in the same category as Bizhosting. Wantsomegetsome.com appears to be a regular hosting service, where you write your own html and FTP it up to their servers. Bizhosting, OTOH, offers a web-based service where you enter information and it creates the website for you. Big savings in time for people who either don't want to learn HTML, or don't want to bother with it. I'm using Bizhosting because it would have taken me months worth of my free-time to figure out how to set up a shopping cart even using something like Frontpage. Heck, I couldn't even figure out how to set up a decent looking frames page on Frontpage, and I've built a number of websites. I could have also hired someone for $85/hr to build the website for me. Probably would have been a nice site too. But Bizhosting does it all for me, and I'm paying $9.95 per month (I guess they eliminated that option since I signed up). The great thing is that I can log on and change/update my website from anywhere, and it only takes a few minutes.
posted on July 10, 2001 12:57:59 PM new
Thanks Peter for your comments on Bizhosting. I'm just getting my website on bizhosting up and running and am very pleased so far. I agree that customer service is slow but Bizhosting definately offers the most for the price. (I just signed up and its $17 if you pay month to month). I am not a HTML wiz so I needed a site with a site builder. I haven't tried the shopping cart or email yet but I'm looking forward to doing that.
One note to mfcwizzard regarding the domain hosting: Bizhosting provides a "subdomain" for free, ie. www.yourname.bizhosting.com. If you want your own domain you need to purchase it or forward your existing/prepurchased domain.
Best wishes everyone,
Ethel
[ edited by ethelmarie on Jul 10, 2001 12:58 PM ]
posted on July 10, 2001 01:50:37 PM new
The shopping cart works great. No problems whatsoever with it so far, but I only have about a dozen or so items set up now. I expect to have a couple hundred up by the end of the summer, though.
I don't see why anyone bothering to set up an online store wouldn't want their own domain name. It looks so much more professional, and gives you a better shot at being listed at the good search engines and directories (Yahoo!). It should only cost around ten or twelve bucks. I've been using gandi.net for the past year or so, because of their terms. The terms are much more friendly than NSI. If you don't mind dealing with French people, that's the way to go
posted on July 10, 2001 04:37:52 PM new
In may of 2001,i ditched rubylane and open a shop on yahoo.
it took me 7 days to create and stock my shop and it has been in business for 2 months and 13 days.
i made money in may and june,and july looks even better.
the old saying -it takes money to make money,or if you want to make money,you have to spend money is very true here.
maintaining a yahoo shop is not for the faint of hearts.
i have it wired so that when someone places an order in my shop,i receive email as well as fax order,there was a time i wonder if there is a problem with the system,the phone company or both!!!!!!!
yahoo is a place for new items,not old used ones,shoppers come looking for gifts-wedding,birthday,graduation etc and they are willing to pay.
a small shop with 50 items would not do unless you have something unusual which no one else has ,like all shops,you have to stock it well,soemthing for everyone !!
the traffic will come in,slow at first but more and more as more search engines pick up your items.
IT is a class act,you can design it yourself or have someone do it for you,yahoo provides a list of consultants available .you will be in the company of high end boutique shops,musuems,specialty shops and superstores.
shoppers do not haggle like ebay bidders,but intl shoppers may ask for relief in shipping fee,you can adjust the total or issue electronic coupon for future purchase.
yes,you get your own website URL and email addresses which you can forward to your every day email addr.
posted on July 10, 2001 10:09:23 PM new
hwahwahwahwa
can you give the url of your shop i'm going to open a yahoo shop and would like to check it out. How are the fees? Do they charge extra for hosting your domain name?
I am looking for a hosting co. to host my domain name, right now I have it forwarded to my free isp site www.doityourselfstore.com
ethelmarie
I thought bizhosting would host your domain at no extra charge? I am pasting this from their own site:
Transfer your domain from another host on the Web and host it for free at Bizhosting (i.e. yourname.com
Am I missing something here?
posted on July 11, 2001 06:16:23 AM new
you can go to yahoo shopping and get the information on how to open a shop and details on fee and shopping carts.
there is a one time fee for creating your own domain name and you can choose either to include yahoo in your url or not.
to open a yahoo shop,you need a merchant account.
all the detail are on yahoo shopping site.
you get daily reports on where traffic comes from and what each shopper looks at once they are in your shop.
posted on July 11, 2001 04:47:13 PM new
Hi mfcwizzard,
You are right that Bizhosting will host a domain name for free BUT they do not provide the initial registration of the domain name. You must either transfer your existing domain name or purchase a new one. Bizhosting will give you a "subdomain" name for free, ie. yourname.bizhosting.com
I registered my domain name through godaddy.com which costs $8.95 per year plus godaddy.com charged me an additional $8.95 to transfer the name to Bizhosting. That's still cheaper than most other companies are charging to register a domain name.
As far as the Yahoo! stores, I felt it was too expensive. I certainly recognize that Yahoo! advertises and has more traffic than the average bear but the cheapest Yahoo store is $100 and limits you to 50 items. I'll take my chances with Bizhosting
posted on July 24, 2001 09:28:40 AM new
Thanks for asking Peter! Things are going so-so. I had my site up and running (no storefront yet) and when I went into the "advanced editing" tools to make changes I had problems. I made changes with the HTML editor, previewed them, saved them, etc. Unfortunately, the changes are not displayed when I go back to the regular site builder for additional changes. Sometimes it seems as if SiteBuilder defaults back to the original settings. Oh well, I'm learning!
I do wish customer service was a little quicker but for an inexperienced Html person such as myself, I am very happy with Bizhosting.
posted on July 24, 2001 10:10:26 AM new
Weve tried Econgo last year they have a free deal that worked pretty well included a shopping cart and a mall listing but you couldnt use your own domain name - We settled on Bigstep .com and built our company site there - Its just the thing for our budget .You can add space and features when your ready - I believe it starts under 10.00 a month. good luck
posted on July 24, 2001 10:26:50 PM new
I would also add, that bizhosting's other site (i think it is their's or a partiner) freeservers also will host your site for free i.e. www.yoursite.com, has removal of any banner or advertising for around 5 bucks a month. Draw back, no shopping cart, and you get more storage space 20 megs free compared to 12 with bizhosting, as I remember.
posted on July 28, 2001 08:30:02 AM new
Well, I finally got my website up and running on Bizhosting . . . put an ad in my local paper with my website URL . . . and guess what? Bizhosting is down for "server maintenance". I can't even access my own website.
Hopefully, they will have this fixed soon! Does this happen very often Peter?
posted on July 29, 2001 07:20:01 PM new
All hosts will have downtime. The better way to judge it is by seeing how they handle it, and how long it lasts, and how frequently it happens. Obviously, a host that doesn't score well on that test isn't someone you want to send your money to. Thus far, I've noticed one outage on my website, they handled it fairly well (could have gotten to it quicker and answered my complaints sooner, but they did respond). I wouldn't leave them for that. I did, OTOH, leave my former hosting company because of frequent down time.
