AUSTRALIAN WEB HOSTING REVOLUTION.

A simple matter of using plain English, demystifying web hosting and answering the questions that people have about web hosting while continuing to provide the service we were already providing that was so far above the industry standard.
We started the year with a complete overhaul of the website, which continues to be a work in progress as we attempt to revolutionise Australian web hosting, with continuous updates and information added to our knowledge base.

Of course this isn’t enough, and we continue to try and find new ways to communicate our message to the world; Ingenuity Hosting is the mate who fixes your email, finds you a web developer, puts you in touch with someone to fix your PC and if you have a business; Ingenuity Hosting is Your Online Tech Department.

Help us get our message out there and follow this link  to our Facebook page and hit that like button and you will go in the draw to win 2 tickets valued at $270 to FBall – Riverfire Cocktail Ball to be held on the banks of the Brisbane River at Riverlife Function Centre, Kangaroo Point on Saturday 3 September. For all the details go to www.fball.com.au.

In the last post we talked about our re-branding and the new-look logo and website. In the next few posts we’ll tell you all about some of our upgrades to existing services like our webmail interface as well as our new tools to help you manage existing services like emails, databases and domain names.

It’s now the new financial year and we have a bunch of new web hosting products and services to share with everyone.

Let’s start with our new Hosting Exchange email services:

If you’ve worked in any corporate environment your emails were most likely setup on a Microsoft Exchange Server. It’s the most common setup for large organisations, and provides some fantastic features such as shared calendars, public folders, contact lists, tasks and full, real-time synchronisation with portable devices. But for something like this, you normally require a dedicated server to run the Exchange software and an IT Department to maintain and administer the service for you.

For slightly smaller organisation that didn’t have the budget for a server, software licensing and a team of geeks to look after it all, an email system like this just wasn’t a possibility… until NOW with Ingenuity’s new Hosted Exchange Email Service!

With our Hosted Exchange offering, you gain all the benefits of a corporate email service such as the shared calendars, contacts lists, tasks, public folders and all the other stuff mentioned above but most importantly full synchronisation with of all emails – including sent items, on your portable devices like your iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Android smartphones.

What’s even better is that all your emails are stored in ‘the cloud’ so you can access them from anywhere and know they are safe and backed-up if anything ever happens to your computer.

More specific information about our Hosted Exchange Services here.

On the topic of Cloud services and back-up’s – don’t forget we do that too. Click here for more info about our:  Cloud Servers and Cloud Hosting Solutions, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Dedicated Servers and Server Colocation as well as Offsite Back-ups.

The other brand new service that we’ve just launched is our iMicro plan – a micro-site hosting solution!

One of the most common online marketing strategies used by the big brands are micro-sites. Have you ever been to a large corporate site that sells a wide range of products or services and when you’ve clicked on one of them, it’s taken you to a smaller site specifically designed to promote that service, product range, make or model?

These smaller sites appeal to both users and search engines because they condense all the relevant info into a few pages so you don’t have to wade through a huge, confusing corporate website with thousands of different products just to find the info you need.

We’ve also found that more people are blogging than ever before (some even taking advantage of our $50 WordPress Install offer mentioned on our homepage) and a lot of our clients are now setting-up small corporate blogs to associate with their main company website.

So to accommodate the uptake of these small niche marketing sites and low-traffic corporate blogs, we’ve launched our iMicro hosting plan.

With this package you’ll get 20Mb of webspace and 5Gb monthly website traffic all for just $9.95 per month.

This package is available to anyone with a main website setup on iBiz plan (or above). So if you’ve been thinking of adding a blog or want to promote a product to attract the attention of the search engines but didn’t want to pay for a full hosting account – then this is the plan might just be what you’re looking for.

If you’d like more details on our iMicro hosting or are interested in setting-up a Hosted Exchange email service – give us a call on 1300 664 643 or email sales@ingenuity.net.au

For all our latest updates, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Drum roll please . . . introducing, new and improved:

i-Lite with double the amount of web space now 100Mb and 5 times the monthly traffic now 10Gb, 20 mailboxes and like all our plans it has Email Autoresponders UNLIMITED Email Aliases and Detailed Website Statistics. It is clear to see why our most affordable package is our most popular.

i-Biz has to be our best value product for small business. With a higher capability than i-Lite it features MySQL Database and Shared SSL Certificate. It now comes with 3 times the amount of web space and monthly traffic, up to 300Mb and 15Gb respectively.

Often overlooked, but brilliant if you have a busy website and don’t want to restrict your content and capabilities are our:

i-Corp with 500Mb of web space and 20Gb of monthly traffic
i-Prem with 1Gb web space and 40Gb of monthly traffic
i-Gig with 2Gb of web space and 60Gb of monthly traffic.

The advantage of upgrading your plan is avoiding running out of web space or exceeding your current traffic quota. If this happens, your site could incur additional charges or be temporarily disabled . . . never a good thing, especially if the reason your quota was exceeded was due to a lot of visitors! And with over 79% of Australians with broadband, more people are trying to access your website faster than ever before, meaning your site could potentially be reaching its traffic quota and you may not even know it.

You’re ok with the ads: Free web hosts make their money using the ads they place on your site. They’re sometimes irritating to your visitors, especially if they’re in the form of annoying pop-ups that jump up every time they open or close a page. Other ads may be in the form of banners or frames, so unless the sponsored links are unobtrusive, there’s no use of signing up with a free provider.

You don’t plan to expand: Free web hosts give you limited storage, which is ok if you’re starting out. But if your site picks up and needs to expand, you’re going to have to move to a paid host who offers more storage space and more email ids. Some hosts also limit the size of files that you’re allowed to upload, so if you have large pictures or other graphical images and videos, you may find yourself unable to put them up.

You don’t require speed: When your site is hosted by a free web host, it’s usually one among thousands on the same server. So it is slow to load, especially during peak traffic hours when most other sites on the same server are also being accessed. This could cause your readers to see a link that the site is unavailable at the moment, and if they’re not particularly looking for your site, they move on to the next one on their search list. Free hosting is ok if you’re not expecting too many visitors, but then again, if you’re not looking to attract traffic to your site, what’s the use of being online in the first place?

You don’t need too much bandwidth: If your site is heavy and takes time to load or if it has too many graphical images, you may find yourself being asked to pay for the use of your web server. Yes, you did sign up for a free web host, but there are some providers who charge if they find that you’re uploading and downloading more than the norm.

You don’t need FTP access: With a free web host, you’re only allowed to upload content using your service provider’s builder, so if you need access through email or via any browser of your choice, free is not the way to go.

Some people prefer to start out with a free host, and as their requirements grow, they migrate to one who must be paid. Changing hosts is a complicated task, especially because your site has to undergo downtime, so if your traffic is going to be adversely affected because of this, it’s best to go with a paid host right from the beginning. The choice of a web host must be made with care, because sticking to the same provider will pay off in the long run. Costs must be weighed against benefits, and adequate research must be done before you choose a web host that’s right for your needs.

This guest post is contributed by Barbara Williams, she writes on the topic of Computer Technician Schools . Email her at: barbara.williams07@gmail.com .