Why should I go with PowerWebsites.com? What makes Cloud Hosting so special?
Utter simplicity. Period.
For the first time in the history of web building, there’s finally an easy way to run your applications. Code it and load it. PowerWebsites.com takes care of the rest – monitoring, patching, configuration, security, scaling…
There’s nothing else out there like it. Cloud Hosting is an advanced, enterprise-level platform that lets you focus on what you’re good at: developing in the technology you love. All the headache of server administration is our responsibility.
MasterHybrid Hosting Technology
What is TrueHybrid™ Hosting? What can it do for me?
PowerWebsites.com TrueHybrid technology seamlessly combines Linux and Windows technologies—even on the same website.
You've probably seen other companies offer the option of hosting sites on Linux or Windows servers. PowerWebsites.com takes it a step further. With our TrueHybrid technology, you can upload your .Net and PHP files to your website—gasp!—right in the same folder! In a rare display of cooperation, you'll see both ASP and PHP pages working flawlessly, side by side, on the same website. And here's the best part: it's not just that both files work. It's that both files work natively and automatically. Intelligent load balancing routes each file to server clusters optimized for either IIS or Apache. For a bit extra, you can add Ruby as well.
Can't all of this be accomplished by just emulating one operating system?
Sure, it's possible for Linux and Windows servers to sort of act like each other through clunky and unreliable emulation, but we have strong feelings about that: it's a hack and it's cheating. The fact is any technology always works best in its native environment. And providing multiple, native environments is one area where the enterprise cluster powering Cloud Hosting really shines. No matter what technologies you use to build your site—ASP.net, PHP 4, PHP 5, Perl, Python, Ruby, or a combination of all of them—rest assured that your site will have impressive, reliable, and native performance.
Is Powerwebsites.com redundant? What if one of your servers goes down?
Technologists would say that common hosting setups are riddled with Single Points of Failure or (SPFs). One failure anywhere can wreak havoc on the entire system.
To tackle this problem, we use a radically different approach to hosting, a truly enterprise-level architecture designed from the ground up to be reliable, redundant, and secure. Proprietary technology deploys each website across entire clusters of servers, all working intelligently together, all poised and ready to instantly reroute web traffic should any component experience failure. That means when a server crashes or a hard drive fails, the other servers in the cluster automatically pick up the load.
Cloud Hosting
What does PowerWebsites.com use for a storage system? Have you done anything there to make it redundant?
Nothing as important as your website should be served from a single hard drive, but you'd be surprised by how many web hosts have little more redundancy than a pair of crossed fingers. We're different—and for good reason. The advanced architecture powering our hosting solution uses groups of high-performance, network attached storage devices to reliably serve every web page, image, and email. Inside each storage device, drives are mirrored to each other in a RAID configuration to create a first level of redundancy. And, as a final precautionary measure, all data on the system is automatically backed up on a repeating schedule.
How often does PowerWebsites.com backup information on the Cloud?
PowerWebsites.com backups of your data on a nightly basis. However, its purpose is for disaster recovery on the server side. If for any reason a storage node on our side were to crash, our backups will be there to replace any lost data. That should give you peace of mind.
With that said, we recommend that you make periodic backups of you site and data to your local computer since we are unable to extract an individual site's data from the nightly backups. If you need a backup of your MySQL or MS SQL databases, they can be made available for a minimal fee.
What version of Linux does Cloud Hosting run? What about for Windows?
The Linux side of our platform is built on Debian 3.1 (Sarge) and Red Hat Enterprise Server. On the other side of the fence, The Windows platform runs on Windows 2008 and IIS 7.
I've had shell access in the past. Why isn't it offered on PowerWebsites.com?
Primarily for security purposes shell access is not offered at this time. We know that shell access has its benefits and we expect to have some level of access available for our customers at some point in the future.
Pricing and Scaling
What is included for $14.95?
We have included enough resources in Cloud Hosting base package to power most business needs. You get 5GB of high performance storage as well as 50GB of outgoing bandwidth per month (incoming is not included in your calculation). In addition, Cloud Hosting uses Compute Cycles to monitor your computing usage. You get 1,000 Compute Cycles per month across all your sites and applications. Unlike many hosters, we will never cut you off for using what we sell you.
What happens if I exceed the included amount?
While most customers will fall well below the included amount in The Hosting Cloud, we have created fair and simple pricing beyond the base amount that means you pay ONLY for what you use and nothing more. There are no onerous penalties for exceeding the included plan amounts. The key items include 0.40/GB for outgoing bandwidth, 0.80/GB for storage and 0.03 per compute cycle. For super heavy users over 50 million page views, special pricing may be available.
How far can I really scale?
In truth, there are no limits. The Cloud currently has users pushing hundreds of millions of requests on single domains. The most important issue is whether your site will be compatible with the Cloud. Please refer to our technology section to ensure you can run your applications successfully on the Cloud.
About Compute Cycles
What are compute cycles?
Compute cycles measure how much processing time your applications require on the Hosting cloud. Using 10,000 compute cycles in a month is roughly equivalent to running a server with a 1.2 GHz modern processor for the same period of time.
How many compute cycles will my applications use?
Since web applications vary so greatly, it's hard to make a perfect guess. However, there are some guidelines that can help. First, you can think of 10,000 compute cycles as being about the same processing power as you would get from a decent dedicated server or Amazon EC2 instance. For example 10,000 compute cycles would power:
- about 2.1 million page views using a database-driven content management system
- about 8 million page views of PowerWebsites.com
- about 25 million requests for a static 15KB image
How do I track my compute cycle usage?
The compute cycles you use are presented in your control panel in near real time.
What goes in to calculating a compute cycle?
Mostly, CPU processing time. However, compute cycles also account for the disk I/O your application's operations consume. For example, a page with heavy database queries will consume more compute cycles in part due to the larger volume of disk I/O it requires.
Control Panel
I don't recognize the control panel?
The client control panel was developed to take advantage of all the performance features of Cloud Hosting. This allows us a great deal of flexibility to make improvements in all pieces of the interface.
I'm familiar with other control panels like Plesk, Ensim and Cpanel. Can I use one of those control panels with The Cloud Hosting?
The short answer is “No.” Switching control panel software can be a hassle. They all seem to do virtually the same thing, but in just different enough ways to leave you dazed and confused. The management software is different because it focuses on tasks like creating email accounts rather than server administration.
Can I buy just the control panel software and load it on my own dedicated server?
Nope, that's the beauty of the proprietary control panel software—it's was built and designed specifically for managing your applications that are deployed across the Cloud data centers and clustered servers.
DNS and IP's
How does the Cloud Hosting handle IP addresses? Do I have to request multiple IP's?
PowerWebsites.com is all about making your life easier. One way we do that is handling all of the IP address hassles behind the scenes. Cloud Hosting actually hosts your website on multiple IP addresses on multiple servers—so you don't have one unique IP address tied to your website. This logic is built right into our load balancing layer and ensures that if a server with a particular IP address fails, any one of the other servers is able to serve out your website content.
Do you provide the IP addresses or do I have to provide them?
We've got you covered! You bring the sites and we'll handle the IP space.
I'm used to running my own DNS. Can I do it on PowerWebsites.com?
That's another great thing about Cloud Hosting... you have the flexibility to do most things you would do on a dedicated server. If you'd like to run your own DNS, go right ahead. But know that it is recommended to use the built-in DNS on your PowerWebsite.com account. If you decide to go it alone you'll be missing out on the unlimited access to the Hosting Cloud's clustered, geographical redundant domain name system, which is all included in your account.
I'm an email junkie—I have to check my mail all of the time. Please tell me that Powerwebsites.com offers webmail services.
PowerWebsites.com runs a customized mail environment with one of the best webmail interfaces on the planet. (It's a modern ajax-powered application, so you can drag and drop to your heart's content. It works so well that some people use it as their primary means of checking email.) There's even a mobile view formatted for cell phones and PDAs. Finally, you can check mail in desktop clients using standard IMAP or POP protocols.
I'm worried about getting a virus. Do you offer any anti-virus protection? If so, what programs do you use?
Antivirus Protection is set up and enabled for all of your email accounts. Our email gateways filter incoming e-mail into two stages using two different software technologies. The software will automatically delete any suspected virus, and then deliver the message. Virus definitions are rapidly synced with the latest updates, and we have the capacity to handle large virus outbreaks without slowing down email delivery.
What about spam protection?
Our advanced email platform utilizes multiple levels of anti-spam protection. The spam filtering system protects your mailbox by gathering real-time spam intelligence from a number of sources and then actively using this intelligence to block spam. Tens of thousands of recent spam email characteristics are tracked, which alone identify the majority of spam. In addition, a number of third-party spam databases, several DNS checks, and several message-formatting tests are used when analyzing every email that comes in.
Also, you and your customers can control personal safe lists and blacklists to further keep your inboxes clean. Safe lists allow certain senders (email addresses, domains, or mail server IP addresses) to bypass the anti-spam system. Conversely, blacklists allow customers to block mail from certain senders. Customers can also control what to do with spam once it has been identified.
We aggregate all of this data into a collection of several thousand constantly improving spam tests, which are performed on every email that enters the email hosting system. The results of these tests are combined together to identify almost all spam with virtually zero false-positives.
Software Applications and other Features
Are there any applications installed by default onto my account?
Nope. We prefer to think of your account as a blank canvas for you to install the scripts and programs you need. We do have some cool new features in the works—of which all the details can't be made public just yet—that will make setting up some of the more popular Web applications quick and easy.
Can most programs be loaded onto The Hosting Cloud?
Just about any Web application should run well on our clusters as long as the script meets standard server requirements. Generally, you just load an application onto Cloud Hosting and it should run unmodified. If you have questions about a specific application, just ask.
Do you offer any tools to aid in the creation of my websites?
We have talented professionals who do web design for a living. We also have other Ecommerce and Website Hosting solutions off the Cloud Hosting network that have built in tools to help rapidly deploy any website.
Yes! We offer Ruby on Rails. We power Ruby sites with the LiteSpeed webserver and provide from 2 to 8 processes per site coupled with 128 to 512 megabytes of memory. Learn more about our Ruby features and pricing
I see that PoweWebsites.com supports .NET. Which versions do you support?
PowerWebsites.com supports .NET 2.0, .NET 3, and .NET 3.5 frameworks.
What about other add-ons like shopping carts, e-commerce applications, or SSL certificates?
You are welcome to install any shopping carts or other web applications you'd like to your Cloud Hosting account. SSL services are now available. For a small additional monthly fee, you can also enable SSL your site. We also have dedicated websites with advanced shopping cart features that can be quickly deployed and require no technical expertise to setup. Learn more about our shopping carts
I'd really like to add streaming video to my site. Does PowerWebsites.com offer anything to make it easy for me?
Although we currently do not offer streaming video to our customers, this is one of the major development projects we're working to roll out. Stay in touch and we'll let you know when our streaming media offering is ready for prime time.
Support
What's Powerwebsites.com support like?
Unlike most discount hosting offerings, Our support team is available through online email and by phone with a live person. That means they can always get you the urgent help you need.
How can I contact support? Am I limited to a certain number of incidents or credits? And what does all of this cost?
As a customer of PowerWebsites.com, you have our full attention. We are only a phone call away!
What level of support should I expect?
PowerWebsites.com support team will assist you with all aspects of the control panel, general connectivity issues (i.e. web, mail, webmail, ftp, and database) and basic website troubleshooting concerns. The support team members, however, will be unable to assist you in the installation of paid, open source, or custom code (PHP, ASP, .NET, etc.).
What hours is support available?
We're staffed 8:00am-5:00pm Mon-Fri and Sat 9:00am-3:00pm PST, so when call there will be a friendly support representative ready to assist you.
Billing
How does PowerWebsites.com bill me?
PowerWebsites.com bills you every Month on the 1st day of the month. The day you sign up your bill will be prorated so you only pay for the days left in the current month for the service. Your credit card will be charged for your monthly hosting fee on the first day of each month thereafter. The exact charge will be based on recurring charges in addition to whatever additional fees you may have incurred during that previous month.
What will appear on my credit card invoice?
You will see “Leecorp Business Services” on your credit card statement. This is the company that runs PowerWebsites.com
What forms of payment does Powerwebsites.com accept?
At this time, We only accepts credit card payments. We allow payment by Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express.
How do you close an account?
To close your account, please contact at 707-442-1311. You will then be able to guide you through the cancellation process.
Is there a referral bonus or any discounts available?
There is not a referral offer in place at this time, but please stay tuned for any news on when this type of program could be offered.
Is there a solution partner program?
No, Powedoes not currently have a solution partner program.
Will there be a discount if I prepay for a full year?
We currently only offer month-to-month billing terms only. We earn your business every month.
