ANHosting
Review
A Single Plan And A Single Price?
The first thing to strike you when looking at the AN
Hosting website is that they only offer one service
plan. AN Hosting offers what they describe as
all-inclusive hosting through the mega plan hosting
account.
This is because they claim to offer a
single package that fits every webmasters needs and
every budget. In reality, though, AN hosting do
actually offer other plans with further bonuses but
it can take a lot of digging around to find the
other all-inclusive hosting plans that they do
offer.
Introducing The Mega Plan
The Mega Plan is reasonably priced for the amount of
features you receive with no
setup costs and no hidden charges. You also have
the bonus of being able to host as many as ten
domains through this one account making the price
seem even more reasonable. Unlimited sub domains and
unlimited MySQL databases mean that you won’t
struggle to add interactivity or a good site
hierarchy to as many domains as you choose to use.
Email Features
To give your online presence a little extra credence
you receive unlimited domain email accounts with
full POP3, SMTP, and IMAP support. If you prefer you
can also access your emails via the webmail system.
One quite unusual feature of a bargain hosting
account like this is the unlimited number of auto
responders that are offered with your email
allowance. Every email account includes protection
from spam using the powerful spam assassin program.
Developmental Features
A good collection of features and functions is
available for the first time or inexperienced user
and developer. Fantastico is used by a number of
hosting accounts because it offers a large number of
free scripts that enable you to add various
interactive features to the pages of your site. The
WYSIWYG site builder is a blessed relief for those
with no HTML knowledge and allows for the quick
design and assembly of web pages. Wordpress and
Mambo are two of the most popular content and blogging tools on the Internet. This is because of
the interactivity and rich features offered. Both
are included in the price of the AN Hosting Mega
Plan.
Further web addition features include a guestbook
that is simple to configure and easily added to your
site, Formmail that allows for the easy collection
and reporting of web forms, and an image gallery.
The PHP bulletin board can be added quickly and
effortlessly allowing your site visitors to get
involved in the community feeling of your site.
E-Commerce Features
If you’re looking for an e-commerce website then you
will know that shopping carts and security
certificates are vital to your online success. AN
Hosting provides the choice of OS Commerce, Agora,
Cube Cart, or Zen Cart shopping carts all easy to
personalize and add to your site. You also receive
free SSL certificates and stats for all your domains
and sub domains.
Get A Little Extra With The Mega Plan Plus
For a little extra you can opt for the Mega Plan
Plus, which offers a little more in the way of power and
features. You can also host 20 domains on one
account, double the allowance with the standard
package.
Free Advertising
Both packages offer $70 in free advertising credit.
Planning, designing, building, and managing a site
is only part of the challenge of having a successful
website. You will also need to effectively market it
to ensure that you receive traffic and convert that
traffic into paying customers. The $70 advertising
credit will help you to establish a client base that
you should be able to effectively build on.
The MidPhase Control Panel
All hosting packages use the midPhase control panel
that offers an extensive online resource. The
control panel is good looking and effective with
options broken down into specific categories making
it easy to navigate and very easy to manage your
account. The account overview section unsurprisingly
includes all information pertaining to your account.
This is also the section that includes a link to
your site manager and fairly extensive tutorials
pertaining to the use of the site studio.
Support
Support includes the ability to add extra features
to your hosting account, or submit a help ticket.
Help tickets are a reasonably good form of supplying
information although may not be the ideal solution
for every occasion. Fortunately, there is also a
support email and telephone number. The
knowledgebase is an extensive resource that contains
excellently informative content that will provide
invaluable in the majority of cases. The midPhase
talk community is a community forum that provides
help primarily with using the control panel.
Registered users are generally people that regularly
use the control panel so provide accurate help.
Further Control Panel Features
Also accessed from your control panel is your
webmail, web analytics and statistics, domain
management features, advanced tools, and the
expansive scripts library. The control panel really
is very large and includes everything you will need
when managing your account.
AN Hosting Guarantees
AN Hosting provide certain guarantees to every one
of their customers. A 30-day full money back
guarantee ensures that you are completely satisfied
with every aspect of your account otherwise you
receive a full refund of the money you’ve paid. The
network carries a 99.9% guaranteed uptime and the
price is all-inclusive with no set up charges and no
hidden costs anywhere.
AN Hosting Conclusion
In all honesty, AN Hosting doesn’t provide anything
that is particularly out of the ordinary. However,
what it does provide is a feature rich package that
is ideal for the first time Webmaster. The ability
to manage ten domains through one inexpensive
account is a definite advantage although after time,
when any of your sites become too busy or full, you
may have to consider giving it its very own account.
The other positive factor is that the price is very
reasonable for the number of features that you do
receive. If are looking for anything that is out of
the ordinary then you may be better looking at
another host, however, for $6.95 per month you
really can’t go wrong for effective hosting.
