Green Hosting Reduces Environmental Issues

Today is World Environment Day, an occasion to give some thought on what we personally can do to reduce our impact on the environment. There’s a temptation to wince when we hear such talk because the next thing you expect to hear is how much you are supposed to give up. What if you don’t have to give up anything? What if you could get more at the same time that you are helping to alleviate environmental issues? Isn’t that the kind of “green” program that you could get behind?

Of course it is. Everybody wants more for less. Why, we absolutely salivate at the thought. Fortunately for us, there are opportunities to get just that by carefully selecting our vendors. Some care about the environment, some don’t. Just because they don’t doesn’t mean they are going to give us the best deal. In fact, some of the most responsible companies want to include us in the cost savings they achieve through efficiency.

HostPapa is one of those clever technology companies that offers green services at the same or lower cost than non-green. Their service is web hosting. Let me ask you this: “Are you paying more than $3.95 a month to host your website?”

I’ll bet most of you have to say “yes” to that question. Even the budget hosting companies that give you the bare minimum of resources charge more than that. This is no low-end hosting service, however. It’s 100% green hosting with the performance you need to host your site or blog successfully.

Here’s what’s in the HostPapa plan for $3.95 a month. First off, you get a free domain name for life. That’s gotta save you the equivalent of several months of hosting each year all by itself. Next you get unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. While a personal site might never strain most servers, sudden viral success or commercial popularity can run you out of resources at the worst possible time. Think of the holiday season when everybody is visiting your site, perhaps shopping for gifts. Is that the time you want to run out of bandwidth or find that too many comments have used up all your disk space?

By the way, you get 1 domain name for free, but if you want to add-on other domains to your hosting plan you can do that. Host as many as you have at no extra cost. Many hosting companies make you buy a separate plan for every domain. That includes sub-domains and domain forwarding too. All are included in your plan.

What about other resources like Email? You get unlimited email accounts, POP3/IMAP and Webmail, email forwarding, email autoresponders, email alias, virus scanning, catch all accounts and SMTP with your account. The same is true for databases. This account includes unlimited MySQL 5.1 databases.

You account is controlled by cPanel, the most popular control panel for Linux servers. You’ll have PHP 5 support, web statistics, error logs, 24/7 live support by telephone and chat in multiple languages, plus an online knowledge base and video tutorials.

All of this, and green too. HostPapa purchases 100% green renewable energy, such as solar and wind, to power their data centers, web servers and office power. This is done through green energy tabs or certificates from a certified green energy supplier. By offsetting their carbon footprint by purchasing green energy, HostPapa doesn’t contribute to environmental issues. Wouldn’t you like to join them?

Go ahead and check out the HostPapa $3.95 a month green hosting plan. It’s a 3 year plan that includes one domain name free. You’ll get hosting that you can feel good about, likely with a cost savings over what you current spend for web hosting services.

Green Hosting Free Domain Name

A lot of people like the idea of helping the environment, but they like the idea of cheap hosting prices and free domain names even more. What if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could get an environmentally responsible hosting plan with the features you need at a bargain price with a free domain name included? Say hello to GreenGeeks green hosting with free domain name for life .

Just what do you get with this green web hosting? How about unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth for data transfer, the ability to host unlimited domains on one account, unlimited email accounts and unlimited MySQL Databases.

Now let’s look at what’s free that other hosting providers nickel and dime you for. You domain name is free for as long as you are using the hosting service. It’s easy to move your existing site with free site migration. There are free marketing credits to help you boost your traffic and a free web site builder and templates to help you create a site from scratch in no time at all. You’ll have an auto-installer for 150+ free apps for all the functionality you need to compete in today’s marketplace.

All of this comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, no hidden costs, super fast activation, North American support anytime and a 30 day money back guarantee.

So, just how low is this low cost green hosting? Under five bucks a month. Actually, $4.95 a month. Cheap enough to get you interested? Wait no longer, get started right now.

You might think that at such a low price you’ll be getting some stripped down hosting service. Not so. GreenGeeks runs the Linux operating system with a high performance MySQL backend running on dual quad core frontend servers connected to the Internet by multi-gigabit bandwidth. The entire system is monitored 24/7, every 10 seconds. Courtesy nightly backups protect your data.

Well, that sounds like a good deal on hosting but what about the green aspects. Does this service really earn the title “green”?

GreenGeeks certain has earned its green stripes. A lot of companies buy energy credits to offset their power draw. Green Geeks goes them three times better. That’s right, they replace with wind power 3x the amount of power they draw from the grid to operate their web servers. That not only covers their carbon footprint, but the carbon footprints of two other companies that don’t care enough to contribute.

GreenGeeks goes beyond simply purchasing wind energy credits to claim green status. They’ve gone in an reconfigures their servers so that they use less energy and run cooler. That has the added benefit of reducing the cooling power needed to run the data centers. Office policy is to print only legal and essential documents and recycle any other paper used. Auto lighting control automatically turns off lights when the office is vacated. They even promote telecommuting and take turns bringing in home cooked meals to avoid all the paper, plastic and styrofoam that comes with take out orders.

GreenGeeks standard hosting plan will work for most everyone, but resellers and larger companies may need more resources. For that, they offer green reseller hosting and green VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting.

Are you intrigued enough to learn more about the details and features of GreenGeeks green web hosting ? Yes, it IS possible to be environmentally responsible and get the best deals on hosting at the same time.

For Green Hosting, Come to Papa

When it comes to green hosting, your papa knows best. That’s your HostPapa, of course.

HostPapa offers extraordinary values on website hosting to begin with. You can pay less than $4 a month on the 3 year plan, while getting a free domain, no setup charges, the ability to host unlimited domains, plus free ad credits to get your web marketing efforts kick-started.

Oh, but what the restrictions on storage and bandwidth? There are none. You have access to unlimited disk space and unlimited monthly bandwidth. Why, it’s almost like being the in the cloud, but with an ultra-low fixed monthly fee. All this and green, too?

What’s the green story? You may have heard that data centers are huge energy users. It’s a double whammy. First you pay for the electricity to run the servers and appliances. Then you pay again for the electricity it takes to keep the equipment cool. If you don’t keep everything in balance, the equipment fails and you are offline.

It would be nice if all that energy were being created from renewable energy sources. But, sadly, most data centers run on whatever happens to be available without regard to the type of generation. That includes many web hosting companies. They’re in the business of hosting websites, not worrying about where the electricity comes from and what it may be doing to the environment.

Well, HostPapa doesn’t feel that way. They believe in powering their servers with renewable energy sources. They might like to put up their own wind generators, but that’s not practical in most locations. An excellent alternative is to support wind and solar projects that wouldn’t otherwise be practical. You do that by purchasing renewable green energy certificates, also called green tags. Those certificates put green energy in the grid to offset coal and gas fired generators elsewhere.

HostPapa has purchased green tags equivalent to 100% of their energy consumption. Those tags come from wind, solar, and animal waste to energy projects in the Pacific NorthWest and Canada.

With HostPapa you can feel good about your environmental choice of Web Host and get an excellent deal on hosting at the same time. In addition to the standard hosting plan that works for most users, HostPapa also offers a reseller account for those want to set up their own private branded hosting services or anyone with multiple domains who wants to keep them completely separate. A reseller account is like a bundle of hosting accounts, each with its own control panel plus a master control panel for the providers.

Reseller hosting can be used to support any number of websites. The limitation is the amount of disk space and bandwidth in your account. You can start with the smallest account that will accommodate your suite of websites and upgrade as you need more room or bandwidth.

Lots of web hosting companies have a flurry of hosting plans with a myriad of different options. HostPapa simplifies this with just a standard webhosting plan with unlimited resources plus a scalable reseller plan. They also offer a special service to create a mobile version of your site. If you have customers or clients that use iPhones, Blackberries or other mobile devices, you can make it easy for them to do business with you by offering a site optimized for mobile users.

Are you interested in green hosting at a highly attractive price with all the features you need to host your sites on the Web, check out the offers from HostPapa.

Make Mine Green Hosting

What are two of the biggest challenges facing data centers right now? They’re perhaps not the ones you’re thinking of, but power and cost are real limiting factors to the growth of online everything. Some of the biggest server farms are sited not for the convenience of staff commutes or proximity to major businesses, but out in the boonies away from everything. Actually, not away from everything. What they want to be close to is huge sources of reliable power.

They say that information is power. That’s true in more ways than one. Information technology is power hungry. It takes massive quantities of kilowatts to search databases and crunch numbers, at least for the size of the data sets and the speed that we demand. Servers are machines that turn electricity into heat in the process of computing. A couple of high performance PCs can keep a small office toasty warm. Tens of thousands of rack mounted servers can cook anything nearby, if not for the air conditioning. Considering practical efficiencies of energy conversion, it can take one to two watts of electricity for cooling for every watt consumed by a server.

Data centers are power hungry monsters that have come on the scene just as we’re starting to wonder how we’re going to generate more power. The economic downturn has given us something of a reprieve in the last couple of years, but energy shortages will be back again sooner than any of us dare think. Then we’re faced with a choice of trashing the environment with coal and risking our security by dependence on foreign gas and oil, or waiting decades for additional nuclear reactors to come online. We could just give up and outsource our data center needs to other countries, but then what have we got left?

Forget the doomsday scenario. There’s a much better option and it’s in place now. It’s called green energy. Once ridiculed, both solar and wind are now serious sources of cost competitive electricity. Major solar farms are under construction in California. Windmill farms are sprouting up just about anywhere there is a steady breeze. One of the biggest wind initiatives is underway in Texas, the oil state. What do Texans know that the rest of us better figure out pretty soon? Oil is yesterday’s news. The new oil is wind.

HostGator has figured this out. They’re ahead of the curve in ensuring a reliable source of the power they need and reducing the cost of that power as well. The source is Texas wind energy. HostGator buys theirs through Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to a Texas windfarm in the amount of 4,009 RECs. Each REC represents 1 megawatt of power, so you get an idea of the scale we’re talking about.

But HostGator doesn’t stop there. They believe in green energy so much that they’ve purchased RECs for 130% of the electricity used to power and cool all of their hosting servers. They’ve also addressed the consumption issue by increasing the electrical efficiency of the servers they use by 36%. That has a multiplier effect in that less power hungry servers also need less cooling. Smart, very smart.

The good news is that even if your business isn’t strategically located near a source of green energy or you can’t afford the capital expense of generating your own solar or wind power, you can still have green website hosting through HostGator. They already host over 4,000,000 domains representing about 1% of the world’s Internet traffic. That includes our own T1 Rex, Ether Rabbit and MPLS Networks Today sites, among others. What’s more, we get a terrific deal on reseller hosting for multiple sites. It actually costs less to get ahead of the game with HostGator than to stay stuck in the past with many conventional hosting services. Clearly, HostGator has this figured out.

Host Gator Serves The Web On Texas Wind Power

Are you torn between your need to support businesses that are easy on the environment and the need to minimize the cost of your online services, including Web hosting? Relax. HostGator gives you cheap and green at the same time.

You probably know that web hosting is an energy intensive business. Web servers are like any other computer, except even more power hungry. The more performance you push from your server farm, the more power you pull from the grid and the more heat you generate that has to be removed from the facility. Doesn’t sound very green, does it?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with energy. Energy is what gives us life and makes everything else possible. The problem is that we’re such an energy intensive society that we’re damaging our environment even as we progress in our way of life. The key to living in the kind of technological society we desire while preserving our natural environment is to get our energy from clean sources.

This is what Host Gator has committed to doing. Their first approach was to switch to 36% more efficient servers to reduce the carbon emissions of their shared and reseller servers. But with around 2 million websites to be served, that only went part of the way toward being a truly green business. So, HostGator purchased renewable energy credits for 130% of their server power and cooling.

Why 130%? That covers every watt needed to power the servers, cool their heat output, and operate the rest of the business. They’re effectively paying a Texas wind farm to generate renewal energy on behalf of Host Gator. It’s the next best thing to putting up windmills on their own property and generating the power themselves - except they can’t do that in downtown Houston. The money from renewal energy credits goes to offset the costs of constructing more wind generators, helping this green source of energy get deployed for today’s and future generations.

But doesn’t this green energy approach make HostGator non-competitive with web hosting services that don’t consider their environmental impact? It certainly doesn’t seem to. In fact, it’s a credit to their management that Host Gator features and pricing leave a lot of their competitors in the dust. Are you as astounded as I am to find that you can get unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for your domain name for under $5 a month? That includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a 45 day money back guarantee, 24/7 support, and a wealth of web hosting and email hosting features.

The Business package with the ability to host unlimited domains, a dedicated static IP address, and private SSL starts at under $13 a month. Reseller plans are also available for under $25 a month that allow you to start a web hosting company of your own. You set up the accounts and give each of your customers their own control panel. You get to establish your own brand and decide how much to charge. Then keep 100% of the money you collect from your clients. HostGator will even give you a free copy of “The Web Hosting Book” to help you get started.

Does high quality green web hosting at bargain prices sound like the type of hosting you want for your business? If so, learn more and order Host Gator web hosting and reseller hosting services right now.

Holy Guacamole, It's Green Hosting

The unlimited power sucking days of the Internet may be nearing an end. It's not just SUVs and old incandescent light bulbs that are sending polar bears to a watery grave. Every one of us who publishes a Web site or operates an online business contributes a little to the rising fever of Mother Earth. But what can we do about it short of pulling the plug on the very technology that puts food on our tables? What we need is a lean, green hosting machine.

Eco-hosting is a new idea that comes from the recognition that non-polluting electric power sources are in short supply, while our appetite for electricity is insatiable. Throwing another shovel full of coal on the fire isn't the answer it used to be. That's especially true now that we know that even scrubbing fossil fuel emissions of the uglier smog and acid rain pollutants still leaves the CO2 dilemma. While we might feel a little squeamish about plugging in another toasty server farm, lots of people are feeling so squeamish about global warming that bringing new power plants online is getting contentious. Hydro is pretty much all dammed up. Nukes are scary. What's left? I know. Alternative energy!

Wind and solar energy used to be laughable. But while everybody was yucking it up over the decades, the cost of both energy conversion technologies has been getting more and more competitive. Joke's over. You've got Google powering its Googleplex with solar panels and oilman T. Boone Pickens singing the praises of windmills in Texas. The alternative energy bandwagon is electrically powered and picking up steam... so to speak.

A company that's positioned itself out in front of the eco-parade is one with a really green name. I mean REALLY green. It's Good Avocado.

You read right. Good Avocado is the name of an eco-hosting company. No avocados come lately are they, either. This company has been offering eco-friendly hosting solutions for almost ten years. Now you might be wondering what makes a hosting company eco-friendly. In this case it's based on 100% carbon neutral operations "generated" by buying wind and solar offsets. Plus they plant a tree for every account they establish.

Green? Yes. But what makes them a good Web host avocado? This group is as smart as they are responsible. Their hosting technology is based on a cluster of servers called the AvocadoFarm that can ramp up with more traffic capacity to maintain consistent page load times and a 100% uptime guarantee. You know that the vast majority of web hosting companies wouldn't dare make such an offer, much less meet it.

You don't pay a premium for this hosting performance or the satisfaction of doing your part to support a better environment. Hosting packages and reseller accounts are competitively priced and come with lots of professional grade goodies like a brandable interface, Ruby on Rails, ability to host unlimited websites, and as many email accounts and MySQL databases as you can use. With 300 GB disk storage and 1,000 GB bandwidth you should be pretty well set no matter how big your business grows. Sound good, perhaps even great? Have a closer look and perhaps take a bite of Good Avocado Professional Hosting.