Although it is certainly cheaper than starting up a brick and mortar store, there are still several costs involved with running a successful website or blog. Two things that you will definitely need before you get started are domain registration and web hosting. The problem (or the blessing, depending on your perspective) is that there are so many different hosts with so many different plans out there. How are you supposed to choose?
Free Rider Web Hosting ordered up this review to promote their web hosting packages, hoping that they can provide the best value for an up-and-coming blogger. They’ve also got dedicated servers for any John Chows in the audience.
No Such Thing as a Free Ride
Despite what their name may lead you to believe, Free Rider Web Hosting is not about to give you a free ride on their servers. Instead, they appear to be a pretty conventional web host with pricing that’s in line with most of the competition. On the downside, I found that the aesthetics of their site weren’t so pleasing.
Am I the only one who thinks this looks a little amateur-ish? The least they could have done is create some sort of custom header image (maybe exploiting the concept of a free rider), but instead all they created with some simple text. That’s not to say that the site is hard to navigate, but I automatically feel that Free Rider is on the cheaper and/or sketchier side of things. Getting a professional design can go a long way in improving a company’s legitimacy.
GoDaddy, Is That You?
Speaking of legitimacy, you’ll find that when you navigate anywhere other than the homepage, you will be directed toward a domain other than that of Free Rider Web Hosting (frwh.net). For example, hitting up the Domain Names section sends you to securepaynet.net. As far as I can tell, Free Rider is a reseller and does not have any hosting of their own.
No, that’s not a screenshot from GoDaddy. That’s actually how the domain name search page looks on Free Rider. I don’t have an account with GoDaddy, so I wasn’t able to see if my username and password would work. At least you have access too all sorts of TLDs, ranging from the usual dot com and dot net, right up to more obscure offerings like dot jobs and dot name.
Web Hosting Options
Naturally, the key product in Free Rider’s lineup is their web hosting. Because this review is supposed to be catered to bloggers and non-mogul webmasters, they wanted us to pay particular attention to the shared hosting options.
As you can see, perhaps the best thing about Free Rider is that you don’t have to commit yourself long term to their hosting. If you look at their Deluxe or Premium plan, you can sign on for just a month. Even with the Economy plan, the minimum commitment is just two months. That said, you’re certainly motivated to stay with them longer, because it can result in a savings of up to 35%.
The pricing is more or less in line with other web hosts. The Economy plan, for example, comes with 5GB of space, 250GB of bandwidth, 500 email accounts, and 10 MySQL databases. The biggest downside, for me at least, is that these plans do not appear to allow for multiple domains on a single account. If you run more than one site/blog, Free Rider might not be for you.
Alternatively, you can look into Virtual Dedicated Servers (starting at $45 a month) and Dedicated Servers (starting at $90 a month). And yes, the entire interface for web hosting also bears a striking resemblance to GoDaddy.
Not the Cheapest, Not the Priciest
Although Free Rider Web Hosting says that they provide affordable, full service web hosting and server packages, they certainly aren’t the cheapest game in town. On the plus side, they guarantee a 99.9% uptime and they toss in free bonuses like a $20 Google AdWords credit and daily backups. On the downside, it seems that you’re limited to one domain per shared hosting plan and I feel a little uneasy about their legitimacy. Even so, how bad can it be if the minimum commitment is one month?
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These guys are GoDaddy (Wildwest) resellers. So your buying your service from GoDaddy and paying a comission to Free Ride (maybe they picked the name because they are getting a free ride?).
True that, at first I thought they were just Domain Name Resellers but I was wrong once I visited their site, they are simply resellers for everything.
Being a domain name reseller is kinda must unless you got some really big bucks to register yourself as ICANN registrar . But these guys have gone beyond the line.
Mr. Chow, could you please tell me what’s the cheapest web hosting and domain name service? I’m looking for the cheapest one but has good services and features. Thanks…
If you are just starting out I would suggest hostgator.
enter in the coupon: hgc25
and you can get the baby package for 1cent first month, this allows up to 5 domains from memory
Good luck!
Sorry to be commenting out of place here but I bought this hosting service recently at http://www.crystalaxis.biz. Its affordable and the servers are in US and UK. Check it out and see how you like it.
I feel safer trying this web hosting service, cause I know someone else has found it good..
Frankly, most of the websites or portals I have developed or worked on are hosted at their servers and since the data centers are in US and UK, I know for sure that I they will work no matter what and I have not experienced a down time ever! The prices are affordable too!
Hostgator and/or bluefur are good hosts.
I’ve worked with my share of hosts and have to say that LunarPages beats them hands down. My blog is hosted on one of their dedicated servers and I am extremely pleased since I have even been able to handle the digg effect without any kind of problems. I have to say that their price/quality ratio makes them an excellent choice.
Alan Johnson
I personally use HostGator and GoDaddy. They have both provided me with what I need and at a very affordable price to. HostGator offers a nice affiliate program to for you to earn some money.
well, that’s funny. As this webhosting is reseller, everything is more expensive than GoDaddy.
You can get the same feature at GoDaddy cheaper. I would take GoDaddy at any time with no long term commitment too.
This is Delux Plan at GoDaddy
Deluxe Plan
1 mo:$6.99/mo
12 mo: $6.64/mo SAVE 5%!
24 mo: $6.29/mo SAVE 10%!
36 mo: $5.94/mo
if you cant have more then one domain name, its a rip off
It looks like the Deluxe and Premium Plans allow you to host umlimited web sites. I would take that to mean domain names, but I would email them just to make sure.
Thats because, they are using Godaddy Reseller and the plans at godaddy don’t allow that…hence they want you to use the more expensive options
I have the deluxe godaddy and my hosting account is used for 13 websites (domain names)
I’ve just moved to Micfo.com and i”m very happy with the pricing, service and support i’ve been given.
@ Neil
I was happy with them also but now that they offered me a Dedicated for a cheap price (private negotiation) I must say I am not impressed at all. Just click my name and visit my blog…its been down for almost 16hours …. DNS Propogation my ass!!!
It does looks very reasonable.
John Cow uses there dedicated servers.
Very nice…. Some might consider a VPS solution too. Spry is awesome for that… great support, great servers, the whole nine yards. I guess it depends on what you need…
Great post John.
BetterValueWebhosting.com is cheaper with more features and no long term commitment.
Looks very interesting.
A couple of years ago Godaddy did a $250 adword coupon if you bought the reseller package for $2-$300. This is exactly what I got and I found the deal to be pretty crap for everyone involved.
These guys should take a good look at the competition and match or better the quality and service.
I heard godaddy has horrible web hosting..
They are great as a domain name registration company but there are a lot of better options as far as hosting is concerned.
Alan Johnson
I have been with them for a year now with no problems
It seems like GoDaddy is going the same way Google is lately. Nobody is saying anything good about them.
Everything about their interface says Godaddy. So, exactly who is your daddy?
I’m kind of surprised that Michael didn’t pick up on the fact that it’s a Wild West Domains reseller.
But if he doesn’t have a GoDaddy account, I guess that would be why he didn’t recognize that everything’s exactly the same as GoDaddy (just priced higher). What a waste of $450!
Yeah, the guy sure did waste the $450. Guess he needs to get a better reseller plan, design and make the site look more legit before trying to increase market share.
I find it amazing that, with all of the talented designers working at more than affordable rates out there, some people still end up neglecting design.
Alan Johnson
Meh I’m not too amazed by their services. and like you said, this looks super shady.
The site design sucks for sure…and the services they are offering can easily be beaten by any other reseller on the market just check out digitalpoint forums for 15yr old kids offering hosting for 50cents/month nevermind the low fees at bluefur or hostgator.
I lurk here often and am sorry I don’t post much, but this time I have to speak. I have several web hosting accounts with 4 different companies. Here is one I like the most:
$6.95 p/m web hosting with unlimited domain pointers (with cgi-bin and email for each domain), unlimited mysql, unlimited sub-domains, 20GB disk space, 1000GB data transfer, C-Panel/Fantastico control panel, dozens of pre-installed scripts and really fast support responses and fixes.
An unlimited domain account is a must if you have other activities (as we do). It really is handy to register a new domain and simply setup a squeeze page, a framed affiliate URL, or a quick content site straight away.
You can’t do everything on one domain.
Most often web hosting ads don’t match with what they really offer. I’ll need to ask someone who has used this service before.
Seems alright… There are some other great webhosts out there. Personally, I use midphase.
Looks very interesting.
I am sure it is Godaddy reseller program.
GoDaddy is a pretty good hosting company for $7/mo, unlimited domains BUT 25 SQL databases, which means 25 Wordpress instances.
They are pretty reliable, but their basic built-in Stats package sucks, so you will need to use pMetrics or Google Analytics. They do offer ‘enhanced’ stats at an extra cost.
I use MegaHosters for $9/mo, unlimited domains, 20 SQL databases but the bonus are all the Easy Apps installs including Wordpress, vTiger, SugarCRM, php OpenAds, Coppermine, and much better stats reporting.
You can install multiple Wordpress installations on one MySQL database.
Screw that… go over to asmallorange.com and get some real hosting for $5 a month. Use the coupon code ” freefive ” to get $5 off (first month free.
Thank your for the informations
Well, my GD login doesn’t work, but it’s definitely a GD reseller (aka WildWest).
Pretty sure you can completely customize the look of a reseller site, so this is a pretty weak offering.
They should have known that John was going to take their money and let the crowd throw tomatoes! Suckers!
PS – FreeRider, I will be available for redesigns soon, if you’d like to get in touch.
I saw free rider webhosting site. It has nothing that we can call as unique. just some run-of-the-mill stuff
Its just another godaddy reseller, Nothing unique there are many around
I love it when you said “Not the cheapest, Not the priciest” LOL
-Mike
Wow that is a sucky website (free rider).
My top five picks:
- LunarPages.com
- BlueHost.com
- HostGator.com
- HostMonster.com
- HostPapa.com (canadian web host)
I personally use DreamHost as my hosting provider. They charge $119 per year, and give a large amount of bandwidth (5 TB/mo) and disk space (500 GB) which grows every week. I was using GoDaddy at first, but dropped them after a month. They would be alright for a simple site, but I need to have some complicated shell scripts running as cron jobs, etc for a site I built. Dreamhost was a perfect match giving me shell access with my account at no extra charge that allowed me to do anything I needed. Plus, you can host an unlimited number of subdomains with their service. If you sign up for service with DreamHost, ensure you enter the promo code “MK52″. This will knock $50 off the price of your yearly hosting package!
Hope this information helps! Please take the time to visit my latest blog project: http://themoneykings.com
I also use Dreamhost. I think their draw for me was their friendly customer service and the ability to shell in via SSH and run everything from chmod to emacs to crontab.
Here’s a coupon code for $50 off if you decide to go with Dreamhost: “ww2db”.
I use HostGator and GoDaddy. I’m happy, and I started all this online money-making a year ago.