With so many web hosting companies in market, choosing a right web host for any webmaster can be quite difficult. To help with this there are many web hosting review websites in the market providing you with the reviews and ratings for different web hosting companies. But not all these review sites are as reliable as they claim.

Most of the times these review sites are nothing but the mere advertising sites created by that particular host itself. Others may be affiliated to that particular web host. So, they rate their web hosting as the best and way ahead of other competitors. You can imagine what will be standard of any web hosting company resorting to such practice. But there are a few honest and reliable web hosting review sites, which provide you with an honest review for any web hosting company.

The most trustworthy of these web hosting review sites is WebHostingGeeks. The expert team at WebHostingGeeks, provides you with all you need to know about web hosting. They provide you with Web Hosting rating and awards in different categories. They help you choose the best shared server hosting and also the best dedicated server hosting in market. At WebHostingGeeks, they provide a detailed star-rating for various aspects that one shall look for while choosing a web host. They provide you with the most salient features offered exclusively by that web host. In addition to reviews by the WebHostingGeeks team, they also provide user reviews which makes them more unbiased.

They also provide you rating and reviews about the Green Hosting, which rarely seen with other such review sites. With increasing awareness about environment and need to preserve it, many webmasters prefer eco-friendly web hosts, referred to as Green Hosts. If you are the one, who loves nature nature and want to help preserve it, go for Green Hosts.

In addition to these, they also provide very useful articles related to various aspects of web hosting. So, even if you are a complete beginner, you can check out these articles and get a basic idea of what to look for in your web host.

Hence, if you are looking for a good, honest, reliable and useful web hosting review site, there is none better than WebHostingGeeks.

We have used a wide variety of sources from around the Web. A full list of source references is available at the bottom of the post for those interested. We here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get even more numbers to show you.

Email

* 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
* 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
* 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
* 100 million – New email users since the year before.
* 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
* 92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
* 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
* 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

Websites

* 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
* 47 million – Added websites in 2009.

Web servers

* 13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
* -22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
* 35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
* 384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
* -72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names

* 81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
* 12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
* 7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
* 76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
* 187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
* 8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users

* 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
* 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
* 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
* 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
* 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
* 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
* 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
* 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social media

* 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
* 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
* 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
* 4.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user).
* 350 million – People on Facebook.
* 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
* 500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Images

* 4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
* 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
* 30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos

* 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
* 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
* 924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
* 182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
* 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
* 39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
* 81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Web browsers

* 62.7% – Internet Explorer
* 24.6% – Firefox
* 4.6% – Chrome
* 4.5% – Safari
* 2.4% – Opera
* 1.2% – Other

Malicious software

* 148,000 – New zombie computers created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc.)
* 2.6 million – Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc.)
* 921,143 – The number of new malicious code signatures added by Symantec in Q4 2009.

About the Author: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Email stats from Radicati Group. Spam stats from McAfee. Malware stats from Symantec (and here) and McAfee. Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube. Photo stats from Flickr and Facebook. Social media stats from BlogPulse, Pingdom (here and here), Twittercounter, Facebook and GigaOm.

Source: http://www.entireweb.com/

The hosting industry is one of the few profitable sectors of the Internet. As such, large corporations such Yahoo are offering Web hosting services. You, too, can join this highly profitable business and reap the financial awards — but only if you do it right.

To build a successful Web hosting company, I offer the following two time-tested and proven rules: Focus on offering high-quality services in a tiered pricing schedule.

In addition, it is essential an automated infrastructure to create self-sufficient customers. For marketing, it is crucial to maximize intelligent marketing opportunities.

Automation will create a self-sufficient client-base and reduce your expenses down the road. In order to provide the best-possible service, you’ll want a minimum of the following processes automated: order forms (for new customer account set up or existing customer updates), billing system, administration system, end-user control panel, and technical support interface.

Order Forms

The front end of your order form should serve an minimum of these four key functions: 1) verify domain information for registration purposes, 2) validate entered results, 3) process the customer’s credit card or create an invoice, 4) enter the customer’s information into billing database for future use.

The backend of the order form must process the domain registration (if customer needs to register one) and generate the Web hosting account.

Administration System

The administration system is necessary to manage ordered accounts. You may wish to manually add or remove new domains, change passwords, etc.

End-User Control Panel

The end-user control panel is necessary for allowing your customers to manage their accounts. At the very least, customers should be able to set up their own e-mail accounts, view Website statistics, and manage their files.

Billing System

An automated billing system is an absolute must! The billing system should e-mail invoices, charge credit cards, and suspend overdue accounts. The system should also allow the you to issue credit or discounts as needed.

Technical Support Interface

By technical support interface, I’m not referring to a system that merely generates trouble tickets. An effective tech-support interface automatically generates an FAQ-interface that customers can search before submitting trouble tickets. These interfaces can reduce technical support requests by a factor of 10!

In addition, be sure that the company you go with offers the option of taking care of technical support on your behalf but branded with your brand. You can then focus your energy on your core competencies and growing your business.

Maximize intelligent marketing opportunities

You know what platform you want to use, you’ve figured out what packages to offer, and set up a tiered pricing schedule and automated systems. So how do you get the word out about your new hosting service?

Pay per Click

Pay per Click can potentially allow you to reach large numbers of customers. Although you don’t pay to list your site, you do pay when a user clicks on your listing and connects to your site. How, then, do you get your site high on the results lists? You must engage in a bidding war over how much you’re willing to pay for each person who clicks through to your site. The stakes have recently grown pretty high, so be careful about bidding too high. Just because someone clicks through to your Web hosting site, doesn’t mean they’ll convert into a new account. Also be sure to select targeted keywords not competing with everyone else for the same keywords. That is a very difficult game to win. Find your niche.

Hosting Directory Sites

There are numerous Web sites known as hosting directories — that attract Web hosting customers. These hosting directories are an excellent place to advertise, but be selective in your placement. Many offer banner placement, spotlights, search enhancements, and other forms of advertisement. As a general rule keep in mind that banner ads are better for creating brand recognition than generating new accounts, so advertise based on your budget, not on your expectation of new clientele.

Leverage Your Current Client Base

If you run an established Web design firm, information portal, or domain registration service, you can immediately begin marketing to your current clients. A simple e-mail to your customer base can instantly generate a large number of accounts.

Offer New Products and Services

Keep in mind, once you acquire a solid customer base, you can consider developing new products and services to keep your customers happy and to generate additional revenue. But always remember: Quality is key!