Archives for February 2008

Guide to Online Data Backup Services

February 21, 2008 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

Guide to Online Data Backup Services

I have already mentioned offsite data storage a few times, but mainly from a business perspective. Today I want to shed some light on the benefits for us consumers and normal home users. It used to be the case that only mid-size or large businesses could afford disaster recovery services. But those days are gone and a couple of online backup service providers have customized their offers to meet the needs of consumers as well.

The idea of these services is mainly to provide an option to share data with others or to have pictures and documents available from anywhere. Less promoted is the fact that these services are great to protect consumers from data loss in case a natural disaster strikes or when a hard drive goes bad. With only little planning one can provide herself with a great disaster recovery option. Think Hurricane season or earthquake or wild fires. These natural forces have destroyed thousands of lifes – not only by destroying houses and businesses, but by also destroying birth certificates, financial information and other personal data.

Online backup services should compliment normal efforts to prevent loss of documents or digital data. The first step should be to lease a safety deposit box at a bank. You should store all your important documents there. This will prevent loss in case of fire or theft. The online backup option becomes critical when it comes to digital data. How important are your digital pictures to you? Gone are the days where you could grab the film and get it developed again to have a picture in your hands again. If a digital picture is gone, it is gone forever. When uploading pictures from your camera, it takes only a few clicks to upload them to an online backup service as well.

My personal strategy looks a little more complicated, but provides me with several layers of protection. First of all, all data in my house is centrally stored on a shared machine/hard drive. From there a nightly backup job transfers the data to an external hard drive. That external hard drive is rotated bi-monthly with one of the same kind. The second external hard drive is stored in my safety deposit box at a local bank. I also use an online data storage provider for some data – not everything though. Pictures and normal documents I don’t have a problem storing online. Critical data (financial data as an example) will always be stored on local storage and then in my bank’s safety deposit box.

Online backup services are extremely affordable. Prices often start below $10.00 per month for 5 GB of secure data storage. I recommend the services of Box.net and Mozy.com. Both providers offer great storage allowances and a very convenient way to upload your personal data. Free options are available as well.

Lunarpages now allows unlimited Domains

February 19, 2008 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

Lunarpages now allows unlimited Domains

Great news from one of the better web hosts out there. Lunarpages just announced that their basic web hosting package has now become even more attractive. The limit of 10 add-on domains has been removed and you can now host an unlimited number of add-on domains on your account. This is a huge deal considering that this could affect many webmasters. Domain names are so cheap that 10 is easily to reach. Let’s have a look at the current (new) package deal:

Price: $6.95 per month
Storage: 1,500 GB disk space (that is 1.5 Terabytes)
Bandwidth: 15,000 GB (can you say 15 Terabytes)

So, what does the change really mean? You can now host an UNLIMITED number of websites (all with different domains and content) from the same Basic or Business Hosting Plan. If you look at the allowances that come with the basic package already, it will be difficult to max out the allowances per account – no matter how many domains you add to the account. Add-on domains work as follows. You buy an additional domain name and use the add-on domain name feature to point it to a specific folder on your hosting account. Inside that folder you can host an entire website – totally different from what you are hosting on the main account. All you have to do then is to change the DNS server setting for the new domain name and point it to the same DNS servers as your main hosting account. That’s it. The easy to use catch-all email feature then allows you to use email almost the same way as if it would be a full-blown web hosting account you pay for. So, as all is combined into one cheap web hosting account, you can save a huge amount of money. Host your own websites for cheap or host websites for friends and family in addition to your own.

Visit Lunarpages Web Hosting

Remote Online Storage Service

February 18, 2008 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

Remote Online Storage Service

I am kind of paranoid when it comes to backing up my data – be it personal data or business related data. I’d rather have one backup too much than one critical piece of data missing. I even rotate some external hard drives at home and have one in a safety deposit box at my bank, but I am also using off site data storage providers online for my piece of mind. I recently ran into a service offered by Box.net which really impressed me. Unlike many other online data backup providers you do not need any client software to backup your digital images or business records. Everything is done through a web browser – across all operating systems. So, it does not matter if you use Safari from your Macbook Pro or Internet Explorer 7 from a Vista computer – you can backup and access your critical data from any web browser.

One concern with online data storage is security. Box.net has this addresses by offering 256-Bit encryption for your data uploads. They offer 99.99% uptime guarantee which makes sure I can access my data at any time. Even if I use a public network (Hot spot) like at Starbucks my data transfers to Box are safe.

Box offers different packages that go all the way up to Enterprise level. Enterprise in this case is probably targeted at small businesses who cannot afford services like Iron Mountain Data Storage or are looking for more convenient options.

Conclusion: if you are in the market for some offline storage for your critical data, box.net is a great option. The pricing for their services is extremely affordable and starts at less than $8.00 per month. That allows even small businesses of any size to protect themselves from disaster and provide disaster recovery when needed. Box.net is definitely worth being checked out by you. Rated: Top Buy by Web Hosting Resource Kit

The best Exchange Hosting for Small Business

February 13, 2008 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

The best Exchange Hosting for Small Business

A friend of mine owns a small business. Small is relative so to speak as his business is growing and he is already at employee #12. The employees are spread out over 3 different locations in Canada and the United States. I am doing the web hosting for their website and provided email services. He is a great customer – always pays on time, understands what services I am able to provide and trusts my advice. He recently asked me about group features for email. He meant stuff like Calendar Sharing, public folders, and the ability to accept meeting invites via Outlook and use all the features only Outlook and Exchange can provide. The size of his business does not justify a dedicated Exchange environment as it would be way too expensive to a) purchase and b) to maintain. He asked me for advice trusting me that I would not try to rip him off.

At a certain point you know that a customer will eventually move up to a provider that grow with his needs. I am not a full-time web host and administering Exchange would go beyond of what I want to provide. My strengths are in different areas. But I knew that if I help with finding a good solution that I a) would keep his website hosted with me and b) a happy customer will always recommend your services to others. And as I am mainly hosting small business websites that is a great way to advertise my business by word of mouth. One thing I always recommend: Drive customers to your site through a variety of online marketing solutions.

Anyway – I checked out a few Exchange web hosting providers and then decided to test drive 1 & 1 Exchange web hosting. These guys are pretty big and just celebrated their 20th anniversary. They currently have a special with 50% off for a few months. Their normal Exchange hosting costs $6.99 per month and comes with a ton of features. Now with the special the price came down to $3.50 per month per account. That price is pretty hard to beat in my opinion. The feature list includes a full version of MS Outlook 2007 with each account which makes the Exchange hosting virtually free of charge for over a year. Anything you would expect from an Exchange web host is included and they offer a full 1 GB of mailbox size. Outlook is able to connect from anywhere to your mailbox at 1&1 and so this would work great for the 12 employees. We tested this with 3 accounts and after a week my friend was sold on this solution.

If you are interested in using Exchange 2007 and to receive a free copy of Outlook 2007 at the same time, I would give 1 and 1 a try – especially now with the current prices slashed in half. They do offer a 90 day guarantee so that this is a risk free trial for anyone willing to upgrade to a real email account that offers more than just normal POP3 or so. Go to 1&1 Exchange Hosting’s web page now.