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#5 Web Hosting - LunarPages Review

"It's not the disk space or bandwidth that makes LunarPages a top hosting provider, but more so, the superior customer support. Lunar Pages is a great host for both newbie and experienced website owners. See their open community forum to see for yourself..."

$6.95/month (FREE Setup; 2 year plan)
(Just Upgraded!) 1,500 GB disk space, 15,000 GB Bandwidth

Significant Upgrades! (21 June 2008)

LunarPages has just announced their most recent upgrades, applying to both new customers and existing customers:

Bandwidth Upgrade - Increased to 15,000 GB/month (previously 5,000 GB)
Disk Space - Unlimited for the Business hosting plan.
MySQL Databases - Unlimited
Add-on Domain - Unlimited (previously 5). That means you can host unlimited websites with 1 hosting account.
Domain Pointers - Increased to Unlimited (previously 3)
Subdomains -Increased to Unlimited (previously 15)
FTP Accounts - Increased to Unlimited (previously 1)
Shared SSL - Now Included for Free.

You can Click Here for the complete details of this upgrade.

2 Special Offers From LunarPages!

#1 - Not happy with your current host?
If you are unhappy with your current web host and are looking to switch, then you may want to consider LunarPages. Move your website to LunarPages from another web host and sign up for a new annual plan. They will add the time remaining from your existing pre-paid web hosting account to your new LunarPages account (up to 6 months). And they'll even transfer your site for you! They even back this offer with a 30-day money back guarantee. Click Here for offer details.

#2 - FREE Domain Name For Life
LunarPages offers a free domain name with all basic hosting plans (4 free domains with the business packages). All new customers may register a new domain or transfer their existing domain to LunarPages at no additional charge.  The domain will be registered in the customer�s name and will be free for as long as the customer hosts with LunarPages. This offer is automated and no coupon code is required.

Overview

This site has been hosted by LunarPages under their $6.95 plan for more than 3 years. We also have another six websites hosted by LunarPages and are very satisfied with their service overall. The discussion below is based on our experience with LunarPages as one of their customers.

LunarPages serves over 200,000 clients (as of June 2008). It was founded in the summer of 2000 when a successful large scale hosting provider, Add2Net Corporation, expanded its hosting offerings to include shared hosting. Lunar Pages now offers eight different hosting plans - Basic Hosting, Business Hosting, LPQuicksite Hosting, Windows, Dedicated and Reseller Hosting, Linux Virtual Private Servers and Windows Virtual Private Servers. For what we are concerned with here, Basic Hosting and Business Hosting will be discussed.

Plan Size and Features

1,500 GB of disk space and 15,000 GB of bandwidth are a lot. With 3,000 MB of disk space, you can store more than 1,000,000 large size pictures! And with 15,000 GB/month bandwidth, this picture could be viewed more than 4,000,000 times a month! The most suitable words to describe 1,500 GB of disk space and 15,000 GB of bandwidth are "More Than Enough!". :-) However, if you absolutely require more disk space because of large multi-media files, Lunar Pages offers unlimited space with their Business Package, starting as low as $21.95/month.

We understand there are many hosts which offer large bandwidth, but keep in mind that these hosts might have funny restrictions such as file size limit, daily bandwidth limit, or even binary files bandwidth limit (pictures, MP3s, Flash ...). LunarPages does not have such restrictions with your disk space and bandwidth usage. Although highly improbable, you could upload a single 1,500 GB file if you wanted to or you could use up your 15,000 GB bandwidth in a single day. As the LunarPages founder and director, Maximiliam Andersen told us, "We actually allow people to use everything and we have no problem giving them more." In other words, don't worry too much about using up your bandwidth space at Lunar Pages. If it becomes a problem later, you can always upgrade or change hosts!

Customer Support

Lunar Pages offers superior customer support!

1. Email support - Simply email [email protected] and you will always get a useful reply, no matter if you are a current customer or you just need to ask some presale questions. Useful replies mean they will give you the exact answer you need. We suggest that you send them an email right now to see how effective they are. All email will automatically be tracked by the same ticket system used by the support help desk. This is our favorite method to request support, because it is fast, convenient and effective. Email support is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

2. Support Help Desk - You will send your inquiry through the use of an online form. All your inquires will be tracked and recorded using their ticket system. They even keep a history of all your issues so you can refer back to them anytime you want. There is also a knowledgebase of frequently asked questions in the help desk so you can find your answers without creating a support ticket.

3. Toll-Free Support - Just call 1-877-LUNARPAGES if you need phone support for USA and Canada. For the United Kingdom, call 0800-072-9150 instead. If you live outside of these countries, you cannot dial the toll free number. They provide another support line for their international customers: 1-714-521-8150. We have called them several times and they actually answer the phone very well!

4. Lunar Forums (LunarForums.com)- LunarPages provides forums to let their customers communicate and help one other. Many answers to questions can be found here. Remember only hosts that are confident with their services and have many satisfied customers dare to set up an open forum. Currently, the forum has more than 13,000 registered users.

5. Live Chat - This is not the normal 1 on 1 live chat, but a chat room. Instead of chatting with only 1 person, you can actually chat with a few support staff members that are available in the chat room! Not only will the support staff hang around in the chat room, but also some of the LunarPages members who you can inquire with as well. The live chat is accessible by clicking on the "Click Here for Live Chat" link on top of Lunar Forums.

We rate their customer support 10 out of 10, or 11 out of 10 if we could :-) Lunar Pages' customer satisfaction speaks for itself. We always stress to our visitors who write to us that if they are a web hosting newbie requiring a lot of attention and support, they should strongly consider LunarPages. This ensures they will be fully taken care of in their "early age".

If you have read other reviews we've posted, you will notice that we will state that if you have any unresolved issues with the host, you can always forward them to us and we will take them directly to the officers. A while back, we submitted a possible SPAM issue to Lunar Pages. To our surprise, not only that they reply to our email but they also called us and left a voice message!

Important Highlights

Up to Date Software
Compared to other hosts in the top 10, LunarPages is one of the most effective in keeping their software up to date. Software that we are referring to includes PHP, PHPMyAdmin, MySQL, Perl, Linux Kernel and others. This is one of the reasons why we rank them so high. It is very frustrating when you realize that your host is not updating their software. Tsh! Tsh!

CPanel Control Panel
LunarPages uses CPanel as the web site control panel. Another popular control panel is Plesk. But from our experience, CPanel is far more user friendly and powerful then Plesk. It allows you to control a lot of things, including email accounts, MySQL databases, custom error messages, password protected directories, setting up forums, shopping carts, chat rooms, cron jobs, sub domains, MIME types, apache handlers, search engine submission, free CGI scripts and many more. You can even upload and manage your files with its powerful file manager. What we really want you to know is that you can do a lot with CPanel and have a lot of fun with it. There are no such things as setting up forums or cron jobs in Plesk. Plesk control panel is also very slow to load even with a broadband Internet connection.

Fantastico Scripts Library
You can install 37 different scripts to your website INSTANTLY with a few clicks! No installation or programming language required. These scripts include blogs, discussion forums, portals, website templates, image galleries, polls, surveys, customer support scripts and a lot more.

Transfer Your Website Easily!
Transferring a website to another host can be stressful and time consuming. Now you can ask LunarPages to transfer your existing site for you! A customer service representative will contact you to obtain your previous account information and within 24 hours will move your site to their servers as well as make all necessary changes to your domain name.

Sub-Domains and Domain Pointers
You can create Unlimited sub-domains and Unlimited domain pointers (domain alias/parking) for FREE. For example, we could create the sub domain webdesigners.webhostingpal.com to serve as a web designers directory attachment to our hosting website. The "webdesigners" part of the domain (before the dot) is the sub-domain. A domain pointer/alias is merely a second name for your website. Both domains point to the same website. For example, we could have the website websitehosting.biz serve as a domain pointer to direct traffic to this website.

Multiple Domain Hosting (Unlimited add-on domains)
LunarPages offers unlimited free add-on domains with all their hosting plans. That means you can host several websites with 1 hosting account. An add-on domain is actually a second website altogether. The original domain and add-on domain point to 2 different websites while sharing the same resources in one hosting account. Of course, you will have to purchase your domains separately, but not before Lunar Pages gives you one free domain name for life in the basic hosting package and four free domain names for life in the business package...an incredible value!

Web Statistics Referrals
Referrals allow you to know where your visitors come from (i.e. which site or search engine sent them to your site). Lunar Pages configues their web stats to show up to 250 of your web site referrals. More referrals mean more information. Almost all other web hosts configure their stats program to list only the top 30 referrals.

Flash Video Tutorials
You can enjoy learning by watching video tutorials instead of reading boring text tutorials. These tutorials include changing nameservers, working with CPanel, setting up your email client, uploading your site with FTP, using Dreamweaver MX, using Macromedia Flash and using Microsoft FrontPage.

Free Bonus
For both the Basic and Business hosting plans Lunar Pages is offering a $775 Bonus. For a limited time, every hosting package comes with a full registered version of Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux, WinSettings and Photo TurboBackup, Logo Creator Entertainment, $100 in free advertising credits at LinkWorth, $20 in Bidvertiser clicks, three free months of VisitorVille web stats service and much more. The total bonus package has a retail value of $775.

PHP & MySQL Platform

LunarPages offers a very good platform for PHP and MySQL. They do a great job at keeping both software's up to date. With PHPMyAdmin pre-installed, you can manipulate your MySQL database easily through the web-based interface. As you can see, we use PHP and MySQL extensively in our site. We use MySQL to store all the information about the web hosting plans. We use PHP to write scripts that search the database, compare plans and display the plan information. You are even allowed to connect to LunarPages MySQL server remotely using MySQL monitor or other MySQL remote connect tools, or even a self-written PHP script on your local computer!

Server Information

LunarPages has more than 200 live servers for web hosting. Every month, Lunar adds around 5 new servers to their server farm. New customers will most likely be placed on the new servers because they have the most resources. They are using Dell PowerEdge 2850 servers powered by dual Intel Xeon 3.2Ghz hyper-threaded processors, 4GB of memory and 5 x 73 gig hard drives in Raid 5 configuration. Each server cost more than $10,000! Backup of all servers is performed on a daily basis.

Our Final Advice

If you need a host that will be there to help you step-by-step, then LunarPages is an excellent choice. Both the basic and business hosting packages are adequate for setting up a fully functioning eCommerce website, while the Business package offers even more disk space (perfect for websites numerous audio, photo and video files). It's the customer service and forum support that make Lunar a top choice.