Sunday, 13 January 2013

What features you should look for in an email hosting solution?


Like many business criteria’s, making a decision on which email hosting company to select could prove tough. With many web hosting companies offering unlimited resources and maximum uptime, it becomes difficult for enterprises make a proper decision. Most reputable email server hosting programs offer service guarantees that give the hosting firm incentive to keep their servers running all time. With a lot of competition out there for hosting businesses it is important to make a wise decision before opting for one. The following article highlights the important areas in evaluating a good web host.

The key features in identifying a web host are:

1. Uptime: A reliable email solutions provider will have an uptime of over 99.5 percent.
  • It is advisable to select a host that offers a refund or a discount in an event if their services below percentage.
2. Price: Pricing is the key aspect when selecting web hosting provider.
  • Jumping on the cheapest offer should be avoided.
  • Quality hardware and non-outsources support cost quite a bit and a hosting company offering services at cheaper price will most likely not include the two above mentioned features.  
3. Bandwidth: A good email hosting services provider offers unlimited bandwidth. Hosting companies should be able to provide clients with speed validation and performance claims.

4. Technical Support: Technical support is generally provided 24/7. Just like the connectivity speed, response speed should also be equally competent.

The different kinds of technical support offered by a hosting company include email, chat and toll-free phone.

5.     Database Support: Businesses should be sure about the type of database they are comfortable with. Most hosting companies offer MySQL, SQL server, and Oracle.

6.     Stability: Stability is a key factor in a reliable email server hosting service provider.
  • A business should ensure that the host will stick around for many years.
  • Selecting a host that has done better business in the past would prove a reliable choice.
  • Business should work with the hosting company directly and not through a reseller.
  • Check for the track record and level of service of the host before opting one.
7.     Control Panel: A good host will allow a business to manage the different  aspects of its web account.
  • A business will be able to add, delete and manage its email address and change passwords. 
  • A hosting company will ensure proper maintenance of the email accounts of clients.
8.     Number of Domains and Subdomains: Organizations may require two or even three domains for various purposes. Before opting for a web host, ensure that the host accommodates more domains.

9.     Add-ons: Most email solutions provider offers additional features to show them more attractive. Some of the additional features include:
  • Multiple data centers
  • Energy saving practices
  • Free domain privacy
  • Regular data backups to name a few
10.   Scalability: A good hosting company should draw adequate traffic to a business site.
As businesses eye their own growth, the above mentioned factors will help in deciding a suitable web host.

Friday, 11 January 2013

It is easy to migrate from Linux to Windows hosting platform?

Web Hosting Services
Web Hosting Services

Linux and Windows are two operating systems which sever different intended purposes. There are many versions of the Linux and Windows. When you decide for website hosting services the service provider may offer you both the operating system and you may choose any one of them depending on your needs. Even if you are working on Windows on your PC it makes no difference which hosting plan you choose- you can choose a Linux hosting also. Your decision should be based on two factors- one , what are the objectives of your website and two, what tools you have to build your website. Both the operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages before we know whether migrating from Linux hosting to Windows hosting would be easy or not.

Linux platform
It is an open source version of the Unix and has been extremely popular with the corporate because it is reliable, cost effective and stable. Many applications and utilities are available to be used free on Linux platform. The languages like PHP, Python and Perl etc. Can be used free of cost. It also supports Postgres and MySQL databases. If you do not want to use Windows based applications it is always better to use Linux. Most web hosting services charge less for Linux in comparison to the Windows hosting.

Windows platform
It is the platform and the costs are involved to host your website on this platform. Not only the operating system but almost all the other applications are not free to use and you have to the fee to use them. This makes the platform costly. But it is increasingly becoming popular with the corporate it is gaining more reliability and is now considered very stable also. It is a commercial product and supports .Net, ASP and SQL databases which can run only on this platform. But these applications are very user friendly and the programs can be developed in less time by using these applications. Looking to the various advantages of the applications that the applications associated with the Winos provide to the host more and more people are migrating from Linux to Windows. Of course there are some who still want to migrate to Linux from Windows but they should understand that migrating from Windows to Linux is not easy.

Migrating from Linux hosting to Windows hosting is easy
However migrating from Linux to windows hosting is not very difficult. The slight difference between the two is that in Linux the file names and the directory names are case sensitive while in Windows they are not case sensitive. Moreover, the Linux tools are open source and can support multiple platforms. So, most of the dynamic content can also be moved from the Linux platform to the Windows platform without great difficulty.

The Plesk backup can be used to migrate from the Linux to Windows. The best way to start work is to begin creating the domains one by one in the control panel and then copy the files in the http docs folder on the new server from the old one. You may have to make the changes in the coding depending on the language used in your website. You have also to change the permissions for your files and directories.

Wednesday, 9 January 2013

How is email archival solution beneficial for my business?

Email Solutions
Email Solutions

Over the past decade, electronic mail or email has become an inevitable part of the business workflow. Everything of an enterprise’s business survives somewhere in the email. The growth of email has raised concerns pertaining to security and storage of data and further, businesses are under obligation to maintain email records for years together. Today, a large number of business organizations are opting for email archival solutions to address issues such as legal and storage management issues. More businesses are now using archiving for disaster recovery and for monitoring employee communication. The following article explores the benefits archival email hosting and why it is important for organizations.

Benefits of Archiving Email:
There are many reasons to why an enterprise archives email messages. The reason could range from regulatory compliance to business benefits, from litigation support to knowledge management.

Compliance: The major drivers behind the increasing demand for email archiving are the various state and federal regulations.

  • Some of the regulatory acts include the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
  • Today, more than 10,000 regulations exist in the world.
  • Businesses are compelled to retain their email records like any other corporate records.
  • Failing to keep with the regulations, a business could face severe penalties including enormous fines or even criminal charges.
  • For example, in 2006, Morgan Stanley, a leading global financial services provider, was fined $15 million for failing to produce emails to the Securities and Exchange Commission and for misleading the SEC investigators.
  • With a regulated archiving system in place, emails can be checked for compliance and retained for a long time based on the email content.
  • These regulations reduce the risk of exchanging inappropriate content.

Litigation: Litigation process involves data retrieval for issues such as human resource concerns, regulatory compliance, and client correspondence validation to name a few.

  • An enterprise that fails to submit the requested information can be found guilty of spoiling data.
  • According to a recent data, nearly 66 percent of IT companies have referred email archives to support their firms in legal cases.
  • In addition, 63 percent of IT companies have been ordered to produce employee emails by a regulatory body.
  • Storage and Optimization: Email archiving provides an effective and permanent solution to email messages while clearing up resources on important servers.

Backup and Disaster Recovery: Loss in large volumes of emails is a business disaster. To protect against severe loss of email, email archival solutions enable enterprises to restore their email systems.

Storage Management: Storage management has always been a major issue with organizations.

  • Corporate email traffic doubled between 2005 and 2009, messages increased from 65 billion to 120 billion.
  • An archiving system automatically offloads data and improves server efficiency.

Knowledge Management: Vital content of an employee is maintained even when the employee leaves the firm.

Email hosting solutions have become the best record keeping format for electronic communication which organizations now find invaluable.

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Factors to Consider While Picking a Web Host

Factors to be evalued before choosing hosting services

Hosting Solutions
Hosting Solutions
Similar to many other things selecting a web hosting company is also a very tough task. Out of many companies almost each company promises to have 99 percent uptime, knowledgeable technical support and unlimited resources. But there has to be a way to cut through the jargon and make an informed decision.

Guide for choosing best hosting solutions 
By following the below guidelines you will be able to decide that which hosting service company and package best suits your requirements.

1. Price: This is the most important factor when selecting a hosting provider but it should not be the deciding factor. Going with the cheapest offer you see in the market is not always the best idea particularly if you rely on your site to earn money. Remember the very old saying that we get what we pay for. Take a deep look at the features that different hosting services offers, and then only compare prices.

2. Area of specialties: It is true that for different kinds of customers not all web hosting services are right. Some hosts offer great plans but do not have the solutions that are good for growing businesses, whereas others have great enterprise way outs but are not the right choice for someone with a very small recipe blog. Therefore it is always advisable that before buying you should always verify the specialty of the company and its area of expertise. You can Google to find the reviews and recommendations.

3. Technical Limitations: Figure out what you exactly want you want to do with your website. If you are looking to host a blog, rich content, e-commerce, videos then you should try to find out the best web hosting company or hosting package.

4. Technical Support: In most people’s views, this is the biggest one. When my website, for some unidentified reason, goes down, can I call up and get a real, live technical person on the phone? And, more than that, can they figure out what’s incorrect and fix it, or at least tell me what I need to do to get my website back online? Before going with hosting solutions always look into their reputation for customer support.

5. Features and Add-ons: This area of concern comes down to the following queries – What makes this web hosting company extraordinary? What additional incentive do they offer to make hosting your website with them just a touch additionally more nice-looking? Whether it is an energy-saving performance, various data centres or extra features such as standard data backups or hosting companies often provide other than just servers. If you observe one that give something you require or find vital, that can be a first-rate pointer that you should look into using that particular company.

6. Customer Reviews: This is one of the best factors that you’ll have to get a little creative to get the real story on. Do a Google Blog search for a particular hosting company and find out what former customers are saying about them.

Mistakes To Avoid While Building Your Own Website

Create a Website
Create a Website
While undertaking website building, some mistakes are made due to which visitors leave the site and go to other sites. Visitors need to find the right kind of information they are looking for. Lots of time is wasted by visitors if navigation is difficult due to which there is frustration leading to loss of money, visitors and productivity.

The ecommerce website design should be easy to navigate, so that a large number of visitors can get attracted to the website without having to waste too much time. Navigation that is designed badly can prove to be harmful to the site. A lot depends on the website design. The common mistake web designers make is not having relevant and adequate content on the site. Use the site builder that will appeal to you as a user.

No Updated Content and Complex Web Design
At times there is outdated content which has no place in the technological advancement taking place at rapid speed on the internet. If there is no updated content, it is an indication that the website owner hardly cares for its visitors or those reading the information. Hence you will need to ensure that only updated content is published on a regular basis to keep visitors attracted to the website.

One of the commonest mistakes is having a site with complex web design. The site turns out to be a slow site due to difficult designs. Visitors do not want to wait if uploading time is too much. They prefer to visit sites that have web pages that upload in just a few seconds and have access to relevant content they are looking for.

Using Flash, Pop Ups and Sounds
Some of the sites are based on Flash. This is also one common mistake in a web design. When Flash is used, indexing is not properly done by the search engines. Textual content is indexed on the search engines to ensure search engine ranking. At times the arrangement of the navigation bar is poor, at times too big or too small which cannot be read or is positioned wrongly leading to inconvenience to the website visitor. People generally prefer web applications that allow easy usage and hence you will need to identify a web design that is not puzzling.

The other common mistake is having pop ups and auto sound which can be annoying to the visitor. The pop ups, increase the loading time of web pages, due to which visitors want to move to another site for browsing. Even sounds and videos increase loading time.

Using Broken Links, Graphics and Videos
Another common mistake is not looking into issues related to broken links and slower time for loading. Visitors want to save time too and hence will not keep waiting to get through a link or for a page to upload. Usage of photos, images or graphic can lead to slower loading of sites.

The other mistake that is common is usage of tiny text and errors and typos. There could be other mistakes too which give the impression that the site is not professional. Usage of fonts has to be professional which can have a better impact on the visitor. If all the above mistakes are avoided while creating website online then the chances of increasing the number of visitors and sales will increase, overall.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/web-design-articles/mistakes-to-avoid-while-building-your-own-website-6132322.html

Monday, 7 January 2013

Mobile Email Will Overtake Webmail And Desktop Email

Webmail Hosting
Webmail Hosting
Studies indicate that mobile email will overtake webmail and desktop email by June 2012. As compared to webmail clients and the desktop computer, it is indicated that mobile devices will be used extensively for reading emails. A lot of people are also are already making extensive use of ipads to view emails.

This is due to the surge in usage of mobile devices. The number of people using the Smartphone has tripled. It has been found that an approximate 87% of people use their mobiles daily to check emails. This is just an indication for email providers, manufacturers of mobile phones, the Smartphone and ipads that the brands created by them should be optimized well for viewing emails on mobiles.

Optimizing Mobile Presence
In fact the web presence of the mobile should be optimized extensively as stated by the experts. Optimization of websites will help greatly to view the websites with great ease on mobile devices and it is commonplace understanding that if this does not happen they will not want to visit the website!

The operating systems for mobiles and the browsers unfortunately prove to be detrimental for the brands to make any kind of investments right away. It becomes essential for the brands to maintain cognizant attitude about rendering effective webmail hosting, images as well as text on devices like mobile phones, the Smartphone and ipads.

Role Of Designers And Marketers
For profiles of different kinds and email messages being viewed on mobiles, the brands will also need to account for applications. To do this, adequate resources will be needed. Across platforms of different kinds, the websites and emails will need to be optimized by the email service providers. This needs to be kept in mind by marketers and designers who are already have extra burden of designing sites and emails.

Besides this, the marketers also have a lot work to do in this respect including optimizing email servers. The experts are of the belief that that the whole industry of mobile devices, needs to adopt standards. Extensive collaboration will be needed by a number of platform providers including Microsoft, Apple and Google and many others.

Push From Certain Organizations
Amongst many of these companies there already exists power play. However for creating one of the best standards a lot of effort will be put in by the marketers, as stated by experts. Some push has been offered by organizations like DMA and the EEC or the Email Experience Council. A lot is being expected the world over.

In some of the elements of standardization, documents that are web based are visually presented in the Cascading Style Sheet new version called the CSS3. The mobile emailing uptake is already significantly in use by a number of noted brands since the past few months. With this in mind there are increased chances of the mobile email overtaking the desktop email and webmail, very soon.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/email-articles/mobile-email-will-overtake-webmail-and-desktop-email-6106428.html