Lunarpages Basic Hosting Review After 23 Weeks

I am back with another honest review on Lunarpages basic hosting. I’ve had the Lunarpages basic hosting account for 23 weeks now, and I am glad that we are still with each other

My Experiences

Uptime

My last uptime evaluation of Lunarpages basic hosting was till 24th March, 2009 with details at:

http://lunarpageshostingreview.com/lunarpages-uptime-for-march-2009/

I checked from my serviceuptime.com (independent server monitoring service) account today and found that the total uptime from 25th March 2009 to 21st June 2009, i.e. 89 days is 99.96%. For my new readers, I want to inform that I have Lunarpages Linux basic hosting on Laima server.

Email

I don’t have an online automated monitoring tool like serviceuptime.com to constantly check the Lunarpages basic hosting email servers but in general, I have not faced any problem with sending and receiving of emails.

Ease Of Use and Some Time Saving Tips

I have explored and used almost all the tools and features of my Lunarpages basic hosting plan in last four months. I didn’t find any problems in tracking and using any of the features.

However, for new customers of Lunarpages basic hosting, who are new to hosting, I want to share some time saving tips:

Tutorials: To make user conversant with Lunarpages basic hosting, video tutorials are available. After logging to your Lunarpages basic hosting account,the link to the Tutorials is located at the middle top. Some of the important tutorials are of Working with cPanel (Control Panel – Control of your hosting space craft), FTP (File Transfer protocol- for uploading and downloading your site/blog files) and Setting Up your Email Client (e.g. Eudora, Outlook, Pegasus etc.).

The tutorial video display window size cannot be increased and if Zoom In is used (after right clicking on the video), the video somewhatgoes out of the monitor. However, to remove distractions from the tutorials window, click on the video window at right and then press F11 on keyboard. This way, only the video tutorial window is displayed and your browser title bar, menu bar, address bar and status bar etc. are removed.

cPanel: Reaching Lunarpages cPanel is important as you can see the detailed status and do the entire management of your Lunarpages basic hosting account. The shortcut URL that you can use to reach Control Panel, i.e., cPanel is:

https://account.lunarpages.com/control_panel.php

The general account information and the hyperlinks in Control Panel are self explanatory and easy to use, you can very well understand where they are going to lead you before clicking.

File Manager: Management of your hosting files (uploading, downloading, deleting, renaming and changing file attributes etc.) is done by the File Manager utility in cPanel. You won’t have problems in using File Manager like me when I was new to it, if you remember the following two rules:

• Click on a folder icon or picture to navigate or explore (find what is inside it).
• Click on a name or text to view its properties (Delete, rename, move and copy)

A common mistake is to click on the text of the folder and then expect its content to be displayed. Click on the picture (icon at the left of the name in text form) of the folder to see its content.

Note: File and folder management is easier via FileZilla freeware FTP program. I have used it and found it OK. The download page for FileZilla FTP freeware for various operating systems is at:

http://filezilla-project.org/download.php

Suggested Improvements

There is always scope of improvement in even the best of the services. Some suggested improvements that I see Lunarpages should presently make to improve the user’s interface are:

• Sharing of the monthly uptime log with their customers along with reasons for the same.
• An option to increase the video display size of the tutorial window.

Coming back, I am really happy that my Lunarpages basic hosting account on Linux Laima server has an uptime of 99.96%, close to 100%, in last 89 days. That’s all in this 23rd week review of Lunarpages basic hosting. More of my Lunarpages hosting experience, tips and suggestions in my later review posts.

Why Choose The Lunarpages Basic Hosting Plan?

Choosing the right basic hosting plan can be really tough as there are many hosting providers offering a range of features to lure the prospective customer. The task of matching your upcoming site or blog requirements to the basic hosting plan can be more tough if you are new to web hosting.

Before buying the Lunarpages basic hosting plan customers often ask which sites it is best  suited for. The purpose of this post is to tell you about some of the important technical features that go behind your decision to buy Lunarpages basic hosting.

After some research and comparison with other providers, I zeroed in on the Lunarpages basic hosting plan (Linux). The following specifications made me decide upon the purchase:

- Unlimited disk usage (Yes it’s true, hard disk storage with no limits).

- Unlimited bandwidth (No bandwidth limit exceeded errors!).

- 30 day money back guarantee (Try and see if it suits your hosting needs).

- Unlimited – MySQL databases, Add-on domains, Sub domains and parked domains (999 display in cpanel is due to server display restriction and can be increased by Lunarpages when needed by you).

- 99.9% uptime (Almost very close to 100%).

- Free 24-7-365 hours online support via email/web interface (No worry about support issues! Normal low response time of 30 minutes to 4 hours. Free telephonic support too during office hours!).

- 2,000 Mbit connectivity (My, that’s huge!).

- Protection against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks (Another factor for downtime avoided).

- All at a price of just $ 4.95 per month!

So if you are looking for economical yet proven hosting with great hosting features, go for Lunarpages basic hosting.

Deciding if the Lunarpages basic hosting is the right work environment for your site? Here is the checklist:

- Personal, small or medium website or blog with most of the dynamic content as text

- Typically less than 90,000  hits/month (Shouldn’t have 1000 HITS/second, 90,000 HITS/month is just a broad measure, not a hard and fast rule)

- Less demand for hosting server resources, i.e, RAM, processor and MySQL queries etc.; suitable for non Images and non Videos hosting.

- Simple Machine Forum (SMF) software support for forums site via Fantastico (automated installation).

- ASP (Active Server Pages – Microsoft Server side script engine) support is built in for free in Windows hosting plan but for Linux hosting plans, $2.95 per domain or subdomain is needed.

- Support for addition of dedicated IP address at $ 2.95 per month. Dedicated IP is commonly needed for dedicated SSL certificate and anonymous FTP access. Dedicated Basic SSL certificate is provided at $ 99 per year.

- Addition of JSP (Java Server Pages) at $ 4.95 per month per domain or subdomain.

- Apache 1.3 (available by default) Or Apache 2  addition (upon request)

- Shell access to the account at an extra fee of $2 per month

- Premium Restore Service at $ 1.50 per month (In case of accidental deletion of any of files at yours Lunarpages basic hosting account, Lunarpages will restore the files if you are a Premium Restore service member. Restoration of files dated up to 3 days previously).

- Supports upgradability and scalability with addition of new features

* Prices written are applicable at the time of writing this post
* For server resources monitoring, i.e. point 3, unfortunately there is no accurate monitoring tool. However, you can request Lunarpages support to monitor your site and warn you in advance if you are reaching the basic hosting plan server resources limit!

These separate payment options mean you only end up paying an extra amount for the features that you need. As most of the sites don’t need all of these features, the charges remain reasonable.

Kindly note that Videos and Images hosting sites demand huge server resources (depending on the volume of traffic). Lunar pages basic or shared hosting is not designed to suit these type of sites, as with other providers. If you are anticipating high resource usage for your site, you should choose Lunarpages dedicated or VPS hosting plan.

Lunarpages has been hosting websites from 1998 and hosts over 1,50,000 sites. Their basic hosting pack provides all the features needed for small and medium sized sites.

If you have some queries related to Lunarpages basic hosting purchase, let me know. I would be glad to help!!!

Lunarpages Shared Hosting Plan Popular Email Features

The Lunarpages Basic Hosting Pack offers vital and valuable email features. These email features are real value for money when weighted for their usefulness for prospective as well as existing customers.

In this post, I am writing about the email facilities that you get when you buy the Basic Hosting pack from Lunarpages.

First, some explanation of email and why people take paid email accounts.

Email is certainly the most popular way of online communication nowadays. The reasons behind the popularity of email are – Ease of use (setup and usage), economical (almost no cost) and quickness (deliverability in few seconds if everything is fine). I have seen even small school going kids communicating via email. Using email is great! Isn’t it?

There are plenty of free webmail service providers, such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail etc. But, the real charm of having an email address is on your own domain as you can use any emailname@domainname.extension. While you might have to struggle to find the right domain name, but once you get it, you can easily configure the email usernames and their quotas etc. from the Hosting Control Panel.

The biggest reason why people go for paid email accounts from hosting companies is the professional look of the email addresses and their setup, control, management, and email account features.

Enough background of why it really pays to go for a paid email account from a hosting company. Now, I can sense that you are getting somewhat interested in a paid email account. If you are planning to run an online business Or you currently have one, then you must go for paid email accounts.

Let me now show you what is in store for you in terms of email features if you purchase a Lunarpages basic hosting plan (basic and shared hosting terms are the same in Lunarpages hosting terminology).

OK, here are the core email account highlights in the Lunarpages basic hosting plan, costing just $4.95/month at the time of writing, with some brief explanations of email features wherever needed:

- Email Account Creation By Plesk and Cpanel

Various email accounts for your Lunarpages domain can be created with ease by configuring mail name, password, mailbox quota, spam filtering and other settings via Plesk and Cpanel software provided via browser interface.

- Webmail Remote Access From Standard Browsers

The Email account can be accessed from web browsers – Microsoft IE, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Netscape Navigator etc. by using Horde or Sqirrelmail web mail clients. This allows you to access your mail from any location, anywhere in the world!

Examples of URL’s that can used for accessing webmail:

http://yourdomainname.com/webmail

http://yourdomainname.com:2095

https://yourdomainname.com:2096 (secure)

- Email Access Through Popular Email Clients

You can access your Lunarpages basic hosting domain account email through well known email software (also know as email clients). Some of the popular email clients supported are – Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Pine, Lotus Notes, Entourage for OS X, Mac Mail for OS X and KDE desktop for Linux.

These email clients can be configured to use POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3), IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and HTTP email server configuration. All email configuration details are provided by Lunarpages but sometimes you may have to use your ISP mail server settings.

IMAP will work for Linux hosted email accounts at Lunarpages but not for Windows servers.

Lunarpages email accounts can also be accessed from Blackberry and the iphone.

- Number Of Email Addresses Creation And Message Storage

Unlimited email addresses can be created. After you purchase basic hosting and login to cpanel, don’t feel cheated if you see 999 as the email account limit, as it’s due to display restrictions by the server. I repeat, unlimited email accounts can be created, just contact Lunarpages support if you need more than 999 email addresses. BTW – 999 is still a lot of email accounts, and it’s very unlikely that you will go over that limit.

There are no limits on the number of email messages you can store, however, you have to use the email storage for your own setup only and not for others (no reselling). Kindly note that disk quota limit can be set to a higher limit if you are getting mail box full error messages, but you should not set the mailbox quota to unlimited megabytes, set it above the reasonable limit that you can think of.

- Message Sending Limit

10 MB (megabyte) is the sending limit on the outgoing email including the header, body and attachment. The limit on the number of emails to be sent in one hour is 200-300 and 20 per minute.

To manage the email sending limits well, mailing list programs – DadaMail and PHPList are supported.

- Message Receiving Limit

The maximum size of a received email (including header, message and attachment) is 50 Megabytes, 5 times greater than the sending limit.

There is no limit on receiving the number of emails but the total size of the emails mustn’t cross your inbox quota.

- Autoresponses Setup

On vacation auto email messages can be configured by using Autoresponder feature in cpanel.

- Email Filters

Via Cpanel backup, filter file can be edited to block messages having attachment of one or more particular extension, for example .exe.

- Email Forwarding and Email Aliases

Emails can be forwarded to single or multiple addresses on another host or ISP. The feature of either keeping a copy of the forwarded email or not keeping it is also supported.

Email aliases are forwarding email addresses often used for long or hard to remember email addresses. Multiple email aliases are supported with the replies always received at the real email account.

- Spam Blocking By SpamAssassin And Spam Box

Unsolicited message or Spam can be stopped by enabling Spam Assasin and Spam Box. Spam box keeps the flagged email so that false positives (wrongly judged as spam) can be moved to the Inbox.

- Mailing Lists Support

Mailing list is valuable in contacting several email addresses at once, example a newsletter. One mailing list is provided by default in the basic hosting and you can buy more at $2.95 per mailing list. (at the time of writing)

- NMS Scripts For Email Forms

Free NMS HTML or Perl form scripts can be used to receive email messages from site visitors by getting details filled in using a contact form.

- Addition Of Customized MX Records

For customers interested in setting up their own email servers, the required Mail Exchanger (MX) records can be added by the Lunarpages hosting team in their DNS server.

And much more…..

Frankly, there are so many email features included that I could fill another blog post writing about them all, but I think I’ve covered the main ones for you! At $4.95 per month, the basic email features coupled with the hosting features – unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space etc. it’s an excellent deal!

I hope that this post discussing the Lunarpages basic hosting email features was as useful as the earlier ones!

If you decide to go for Lunarpages basic hosting after seeing the above email features, then please do make use of the discount links in the box below. To Your Success!