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Like most things in life, you get what you pay for in the Web hosting world; with Hostway, you pay more, but you get more, too. The company sells several hosting packages with varying degrees of storage and bandwidth. Each comes with Hostway's comprehensive site-design tool, and all but the most basic bundle offers an e-commerce option. Though Hostway's packages cost a few bucks more per month (and provide a bit less storage and bandwidth) than those of its low-cost and no-cost competitors, such as Brinkster and EarthLink, the added features and the excellent service and support make sense for those who want more than a mere warehouse for their site.
Hostway offers four different flavors of its shared Web hosting packages. The first, Personal, costs $8.95 per month (and you must commit to at least 12 months) for 150MB of storage, 10GB of bandwidth, 5 e-mail accounts, and SiteBlog blogging software. The next step up is Gold, which goes for $15.95 if you pay per month or $13.95 per month if you sign up for a year. The Gold plan consists of 600MB of storage, 50GB of bandwidth, and 25 e-mail addresses. Third in line, at $21.95 per month or $19.95 per month for 12 months, is Gold Plus, which features 800MB of storage, 100GB of bandwidth, and 60 e-mail addresses. Lastly, the Platinum plan gives you unlimited bandwidth plus 1.2GB of storage and 200 e-mail accounts for $26.95 per month, based on a yearlong term. All but the Personal plan supply an e-commerce option and the opportunity to host your site on a Windows server (at an additional cost). Moreover, the Gold Plus and Platinum plans offer a MySQL database and PHP support. For companies with heavy-duty data-storage and bandwidth needs, Hostway also offers dedicated hosting (that is, hosting where your content resides on its own server).
| Hostway | ||||
| Personal | Gold | Gold Plus | Platinum | |
| Monthly fee* | $8.95 | $13.95 | $19.95 | $26.95 |
| Domain registration included | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Subdomains | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 |
| E-mail accounts | 5 | 25 | 500 | 200 |
| Data transfer per month | 10GB | 30GB | 100GB | Unlimited |
| Disk space | 150MB | 600MB | 800MB | 1.2GB |
| FTP access | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Site backups | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Phone and e-mail support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The Hostway site-design tool, SiteBuilder, impressed us with plenty of feature and design choices in an easy-to-understand format. You start by picking a template from the dozens available, which are all categorized by industry, such as auto, travel, and art. You then alter the template's color, graphics, text, and arrangement of items. Finally, you can choose several bonus features for your site, such as a flash intro page, a guestbook, and a photo album. More expensive packages include an even more full-featured version of SiteBuilder, which lets you build user forums, maps, and other elements into your site. Hostway protects your finished masterpiece with e-mail aliases and automatic backups.
