LunarPages Review

http://www.Lunarpages.com

LunarPages Site Screenshot

http://www.Lunarpages.com

Overview of LunarPages Plans

Basic
- 1,500,000 MB Disk Space
- 15,000 GB Bandwidth
- PHP, JSP, ASP, & PERL
- $6.95/month - More Info

Business
- unlimited Disk Space
- 15,000GB Bandwidth
- Shopping Cart
- e-commerce capabilities
- $21.95/month - More Info

Sample Site
Our sample site to test Lunarpages is http://www.webhostingjury.com . This site has been hosted on Lunarpages for over 3 years now (started hosting on LunarPages beginning of 2004). This site uses php and MySql for the main part of it. As with previous sites that we have hosted with Lunarpages the uptime has been great. In fact I only remember 1 downtime and that was when LunarPages was moving datacenters and we were informed weeks in advance of the downtime. The downtime was for a few hours and was unavoidable as the servers had to be physically moved from one datacenter to another. Lunarpages strongest point has been there reliability and constant maintainence of servers. I have not had any support issues at all and I have only submitted a few tickets which were submitted for the sole purpose of testing their support services. Most tickets submitted were answered within 4-12 hours. Although their response times are a bit longer than some other hosts the responses were very knowledgeable. In conclusion Lunarpages is certainly a host that you shouldn't overlook if you're in the market for a reliable yet affordable host.

About the Company

Lunarpages was founded in the summer of 2000 after the IT firm, the Add2Net Corporation, decided to expand its services to include shared hosting. Three years prior to this, the Add2Net Corporation had been providing large scale managed and unmanaged hosting. Building from an already large customer base, the growth was inevitable and thus, Lunarpages was born.

Lunarpages places their focus in two main areas: customer service and support. These are arguably the most important aspects of any service based organization and this hosting company is an expert in both. With a top-rated support staff as well as advanced programmers and system administrators on-hand, there is virtually nothing that is out of their scope of support.

Plans

Two plans are offered by Lunarpages: the Basic Plan, at $6.95 per month, and the Business Plan, at $21.95 per month.

The Basic Plan comes complete with no set up fee (but only if you sign up for a 12 month plan), up to 1,500 GB of data storage, 15,000GB of data transfer per month, 15 subdomains 1 MySQL database, FrontPage Extensions and Dreamweaver compatibility, unlimited POP3, SMTP, & IMAP email accounts, and an FTP account. What about scripting, you ask? This plan also comes equipped with support for PHP, Python, and Perl, a CGI-BIN, ASP, JSP, and servlets. Additionally, you are provided a shopping cart for e-commerce needs, Flash and Shockwave support, SSI, and multimedia streaming via Windows Media and Real Media formats.

The Business Plan comes with all of the above except for unlimited data storage with 15,000GB of data transfer per month, 5 MySQL databases, and 25 FTP accounts. Beyond that, you are also provided anonymous FTP and SSL. For an additional $15.00 per month, the number of upgrades seem hardly worth the extra cost; especially when comparing this hosting company to others out there. - More details about Voyager plan

Both plans also come equipped with the Fantastico Script Library. The following lists some of the included scripts in the Fantastico Script Library. For blogs there is Nucleus, pMachine Free, and WordPress. For CMS and portal sites there is Geeklog, Mambo Open Source, phpWebSite, and Post-Nuke, among others. The customer support scripts include Help Center Live, osTicket, and Support Logic Helpdesk. E-Commerce scripts such as OSCommerce and CubeCart are also provided in addition to phpBB2 for a discussion board. Upon further examination, image galleries, mailing lists, polls and surveys, and a bundle of additional scripts are all given to you with this library.

With the features offered with both of these plans, nearly any website can be completely set up and fully functional using just what is provided. Although a domain name is not included in the package, Lunarpages offers domain names for $8.95 per year. The only reservation a webmaster might have is the high increase in monthly cost for the Voyager Plan over the Shuttle Plan. Many plans offered by other hosting companies provide everything that the Voyager Plan does, and some offer more, at a much lower monthly cost.

Reliability

The Lunarpages data center is located in Los Angeles, CA and is built using the latest technology available. The highest quality hardware is used to provide Lunarpages clients with the best possible performance and the guaranteed 99.9% uptime that is so demanded in today’s e-business world.

Hardware in use includes Dell, Sun, and Cisco network devices. Their BGP4 routed Gigabit fiber network is multi-homed with over 150 carriers such as Mzima Networks, Level3, NTT/Verio, Global Crossing, SBC, Microsoft/MSN, AOL/Time Warner, and Japan Telecom.

Additionally, Lunarpages implements what they call their proprietary Active Response Protocol on all of their equipment. Active Response Protocol monitors the network for intrusions and outages, but it also continuously benchmarks the entire system for web, ftp, and email performance, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This unique system allows the internal support team to address problems before they become a problem to their clients. That is certainly a nice bit of security to provide a client.

Add all of this to the fact that Lunarpages was started by an already established IT company and it seems to be a pretty good choice in hosting companies; if you can get past the higher price for hosting. Then again, you often get what you pay for.

Support

Support is a big issue with any service based organization and Lunarpages has strived to create a strong and broad support base for their clients. The ‘Support’ section of their web site provides a myriad of options to the user.

A full FAQ page is provided outlining and answering the most frequently asked questions such as ‘Is 40GB of bandwidth enough for my site?’ and ‘How do I manage my FTP Accounts?’

Online tutorials are provided to visually show you how to administer your web page and account. Flash animations are provided in the tutorials to show you step by step how to perform tasks such as ‘Working with the CPanel’ and ‘Setting Up Your Email Client’. A manual for the Control Panel software is also provided.

Additionally, a full knowledge base is provided to look for solutions to problems which other users have experience and have been logged by the company. A user forum is also provided for users to help one another, an addition to seeking answers from the support staff if a problem does not need an immediate fix.

Need something taken care of right away? Just dial their toll-free telephone number 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and the company’s friendly support staff will walk you through everything from the largest problem to the smallest question.

Email support and a trouble-ticket system is also implemented to complete a full circle of support options.

Conclusion

Lunarpages, although not very diverse in terms of pricing, offers top-level support and a proactive administration team to help keep your web site online. The two plans offered make it easy to see which plan is the right plan for your needs and the high performance data center offers a peace of mind that many hosting providers cannot give.

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