Ping: online business owners

[Runtheball]

Looking for recommendations for Web hosting services and credit card service providers.

Any companies that you'd speak positively or negatively about?

Appreciated.

[Simms]

I still use Site 5 (http://www.site5.com) for shared hosting (been with them about 2.5 years), but recently signed up for a VPS with Liquid Web (http://www.liquidweb.com) as well. Both companies have been fantastic (and I went through 5 different hosts in 3 years before that). Liquid Web's support, in particular, is exceptional.

For the latter...do you mean an online payment processor? I've had a few clients that use Authorize.net with no complaints. Depending on your expected volume (ie, if it will be light), using one of PayPal's merchant services options works perfectly fine.

[Icy]

Hosting:

If you care about security and performance, i can recomend
www.swiftwill.com These guys are security freaks, I have been working with hossting companies since 1998 and never found techs like them.

They are not cheap, but i have 3 dedicated servers with them in their New York datacenter and can't be more happy. No issues in 2 years. 24/7 support by phone, online chat etc.

I have a 4th server with www.webair.com and they are good too. Webair has datacenters in USA and Europe (Amsterdam, Holland). I have my server in the Amsterdam datacenter, no issues either, 24/7 support by phone, online chat etc.

Again there are cheaper options, specially if you don't burn a lot of bandwith, every hosting provider will offer you way batter priced than the ones listed in their websites if you are going to use a lot of bandwith.

Be more explicit if you can, what kind of project, bandwith you will need, etc etc. I'm talking you about high performance hosting providers where to rent full servers, if you are just looking to host a small company website then for sure you can find way cheaper options.

The same about the credit cards, what are you looking for? a company that can setup credit card billing for you? If so, it depends on the business as not all companies deal with all kind of products.

Anyway feel free to PM me if you don't want to discuss it in public.

[Runtheball]

I'm planning an business that will not eat much bandwidth at all. The low end of what is offered will (I'm sure) be fine. My storage needs would be pretty small as well. I'd be fine with just a few GB at first, and the need is not likely to grow much beyond that.
As for the credit card processing, I imagine that I'd be doing a very low volume and low $ amount transactions. If it was over $1000/month I'd be thrilled. But I do want an online payment processor that allows me to accept credit card payments and hosts the order page on their servers. I don't need any equipment, as everything will be online. Security would be a big concern of course.

[Icy]

I'm planning an business that will not eat much bandwidth at all. The low end of what is offered will (I'm sure) be fine. My storage needs would be pretty small as well. I'd be fine with just a few GB at first, and the need is not likely to grow much beyond that.
As for the credit card processing, I imagine that I'd be doing a very low volume and low $ amount transactions. If it was over $1000/month I'd be thrilled. But I do want an online payment processor that allows me to accept credit card payments and hosts the order page on their servers. I don't need any equipment, as everything will be online. Security would be a big concern of course.

For credit card processor i would go with paypal that is the standard in most of the sites, just make sure that the products/services you are going to process through them are into their allowed ones.

[Runtheball]

I've had a bad experience with Paypal awhile back, and would prefer to look elsewhere.
When hosts provide a shopping cart, does the shopping cart typically provide for credit card payment processing? Or do I need to find my own payment processor?

[vtbub]

If you aren't going to use PayPal or Google, you would be much better off to have a merchant's account.

Good luck.

[Icy]

If you aren't going to use PayPal or Google, you would be much better off to have a merchant's account.

Good luck.

For sure way better option than paypal or google if you want to go serious, but if he is going have less than $1000 per month on sales, i doubt he will be able to get and afford one.

Another option is to ask your bank, for small shops or online transactions, at least in Spain, 90% of banks can offer you their own online sopping system for a small fee, the fee is usually smaller than google or paypal ones.

[Runtheball]

For sure way better option than paypal or google if you want to go serious, but if he is going have less than $1000 per month on sales, i doubt he will be able to get and afford one.

I've been looking into merchant accounts, and yeah they seem pretty expensive considering the low $ value of the things I'm selling. I had never heard of Google checkout until mentioned above. Sounds like a great idea, but would require all my customers to sign-up to Google checkout, and I doubt that most would be willing to do that to complete the transaction with me. I'd need to have another option in addition to Google.

Another option is to ask your bank, for small shops or online transactions, at least in Spain, 90% of banks can offer you their own online sopping system for a small fee, the fee is usually smaller than google or paypal ones.

I'll look into that also. Thanks!

[Runtheball]

This is much more confusing than I expected. I guess I need a crash course on web hosting. I've looked at several sites for web hosts (thanks for the recommendations), and realize I don't understand the difference between shared and dedicated hosting. The "pointer" thing adds another layer of confusion. I just started this research yesterday, so have no background at all in this stuff.

I'll ultimately have two (maybe 3) websites with separate domain names. The first one I want to establish will have multiple pages within one domain. It will have a homepage to introduce the product line, then several pages of examples to choose from, and then a shopping cart/ordering page. The other web pages/domains I need are several months off, but I'd like to know that I have that capability to expand within the plan I choose. As I stated above, this will be a low $ volume business with low bandwidth and low storage needs. My main concern is not capacity but security for the site and the transactions generated there. Considering the income I expect, I can't pay for top of the line security solutions.

Since I'll ultimately need 2-3 domains, would I be better off using shared hosting or dedicated? Shared sounds less secure, but I assume there are appropriate safeguards. I really need a crash course on the terminology here, and an opinion on which would be a better route to look into.

[Icy]

1) Shared hosting or Virtual hosting: The same server (computer) is used by more customers. Of course all is kept separated and nobody will have access to your stuff and you won't be able to touch other customers sites, in fact you won't notice that the server is shared.

- Pros: Cheap

- Cons: Performance mainly, but it depends on how honest is the hosting company, if they setup a lot of customers in the same server, the server could be overloaded and everything will have performance issues. Also if another customer hosted in the same shared server does something wrong and freezes the server, all the customers in the same shared server will have the same problem.

2) Dedicated server: The server is only used by you.

- Pros: No overload problems caused by too much customers hosted in the same server or doing something wrong.

- Cons: More expensive.


1) Is for the majority of companies or persons who just want to have some sites online, not caring a lot about performance or even about being some hours offline if something happens.

2) Is for more serious companies/persons who doesn't mid to expend a bit more to avoid problems sharing the server. If you can afford it, go with the Dedicated, else the virtual will be fine too at least to start with.

[Runtheball]

That was great Icy. Thanks!

[DanGarion]

I'd recommend Dreamhost but if I did, I might have someone complain. So I will just suggest to click on my link on my website I have listed in my signature if you are interested in the host that the RWBL, Smart Guys Sports, and In the Bleachers, uses for their webhosting.

[lordscarlet]

I'd recommend Dreamhost but if I did, I might have someone complain. So I will just suggest to click on my link on my website I have listed in my signature if you are interested in the host that the RWBL, Smart Guys Sports, and In the Bleachers, uses for their webhosting.

DH is who I use as well. They're very cheap for what you get. They seem "good enough".

[DanGarion]

I'd recommend Dreamhost but if I did, I might have someone complain. So I will just suggest to click on my link on my website I have listed in my signature if you are interested in the host that the RWBL, Smart Guys Sports, and In the Bleachers, uses for their webhosting.

And yes I'm calling out the little bitch that had to complain to the mods. Get a life.

[Icy]

And yes I'm calling out the little bitch that had to complain to the mods. Get a life.

Why would anybody complain? what did you do?

[DanGarion]

Why would anybody complain? what did you do?
I guess they felt it was bad for me to have a reward link to Dreamhost in my signature. The same link I'd had it in for over a year. That's why I changed it recently. :)