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Written by The Tech Guy
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FatCow is cool. The folks over there have a slick package, and they back it up with the quality you would expect from a company that REALLY wants to keep you happy!
They offer site builders and analytics tools for managing your website, but they also offer some of the nicest technical support staff I've ever talked to. I've hosted with them for almost 2 months... but more about that later...
Theres a generous amount of bandwidth and storage, even for their most inexpensive plan, and unlimited emails and domains per account (although registration per domain isn't free, as offered by some of their competitors).
As for technical options available for developers: if your site uses EITHER PHP4 or PHP5, they have it covered. There's a thirty (30) day moneyback guarantee and free sixty (60) day trials for most of the commercial products for search engine optimization and email.
MySQL and Python are available on the basic plan, and a CUSTOMIZABLE control panel makes creating a dashboard of quick links super simple and time saving.
Load balancing of the servers (which isn't always available from most web hosting companies), ensures that your server is never bogged down by splitting the load inside of a cluster of machines. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 20 September 2008 )
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Written by The Tech Guy
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The technical support at FatCow includes something that I think should be REQUIRED of any web hosting company: an updated system notices board. This allows customers to receive updates about outages or maintenance that might be occurring on the servers.
Also, any updates to pricing policies or terms of service are posted in this relevant news section. This combined with the FatCow knowledge base (powered by an intuitive search method) makes getting my questions answered quickly straightforward, but if it ain't in the knowledge base, I can always just call them up! And like I said, I've been hosting with these guys for almost 2 months now, and I've had some really good service!
Granted, I don't have alot of needs for several of my sites, and after the initial setup theres not alot of technical support required. When I did have an issue, however, it was resolved IMMEDIATELY... and I mean while I was on the phone inside of 10 minutes. I was up and running and I haven't looked back. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 20 September 2008 )
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Written by The Tech Guy
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Online marketing tools for E-commerce or SEO include:
- ShopSite software for online stores
- PayPal shopping cart
- PowerPay
- Security through SSL
- Thirty (30) USD dollars of Google AdWords Credit
- Fifty (50) USD dollars of Yahoo Search Marketing Credit
- Sixty (60) days of cost-free RatePoint service for analytics
- HubSpot's Web Site Grader for SEO management and tracking
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 20 September 2008 )
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Written by The Tech Guy
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FatCow believes that your hosted web site is a valuable marketing tool, the question is: are you taking advantage of it?
Promote your website everywhere by leveraging your domain name! If you're not including your Web site address on your business cards, e-mail signature, stationery, flyers, brochures, advertisements; basically anything and everything you create for your business then you are missing out on valuable opportunities for potential customers!
Are you using an e-mail address at your domain, or does your return address promote a third party email hosting provider instead?
What other branding opportunities are out there for customers to learn more about you and your business? You may want to consider search engine marketing (SEM), which FatCow can help develop with you. Using certain techniques, FatCow can help your content to reach a very targeted audience. It takes some money to establish a presence, but FatCow hosting plans include free credits for some of the major online search engines: $50 for Yahoo! Search, $30 for Google AdWords, and a 90-day trial for the Best of the Web directory! They're free to try, so see if one or more of them work for your business, and if so, use them to get some additional momentum behind your brand.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 20 September 2008 )
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