Network Solutions Coupon Code and Review - Unix and Windows Web Hosting

Network Solutions is one of the oldest companies in the business of domain registration. They've been around since 1979 and were a dominant player in domain registration when it used to cost as much as $70 to register a domain for 2 years and you didn't have to prepay for a domain. You could be invoiced and send a check to cover the amount due. A lot has changed since then and Network Solutions in addition to domain registration offers several products including quality web hosting that comes with a lot of features.

Network Solutions Coupon Codes

Get 3 or more new domain names for only $15 each: .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, .info, .name.
Coupon code: PCXXX02937
Valid upto May 31, 2009
Click here to activate coupon

$25 off purchases of $150 or more!
Coupon code: GCXXX02735
Valid upto May 31, 2009
Click here to activate coupon

$50 off purchases of $250 or more at NetworkSolutions.com!
Coupon code: GCXXX02902
Valid upto May 31, 2009
Click here to activate coupon

$20 off any Annual DIY Website
Coupon code: S7CPN20921
Valid upto: May 31, 2009
Click here to activate coupon

The Network Solutions Web Hosting Plans

There are three plans to choose from - Standard web hosting, Advanced Web Hosting and Pro Web hosting. Standard web hosting at Network Solutions costs $11.95 and comes with 300 GB of disk space and 3000 GB of data transfer. The features across all three web hosting plans offered by Network Solutions are more-or-less the same. The difference is in a few areas. One is that the disk space increases as you opt for a higher plan. Standard web hosting comes with 300 GB disk space. The Advanced Web Hosting plan comes with 500 GB disk space/5000 GB data transfer and The Pro Web Hosting plan comes with unlimited disk space and unlimited data transfer. In our opinion, the disk space offered in the Standard web hosting plan, by Network Solutions is a huge amount most websites are never going to need more space than this. An average web page is never more than 30KB in size. Google and other search engines also prefer that web pages not be over a certain size. So with 1 GB disk space you can have 30,000 pages on your website. Now multiply that by 300 and you get an idea of what the Standard Web Hosting plan offers! The Standard Web Hosting Plan costs only $9.96 per month if you opt for an annual sign up. The Advanced Web Hosting Plan costs $13.29 per month while the Pro Web Hosting Plan costs $29.13 per month.

Unlimited Resources for under $0.35 per day – Is there a catch somewhere?

Most companies like Network Solutions will go out of their way to offer you a lot of resources because they know that a very tiny number of their customers will ever need resources anywhere close to that. Also if you start using up even 50 GB data transfer, most of these companies will recommend that you get a more expensive solution. So you don't have to worry about ever running out of resources if you run a website and opt for any of these three plans because if you have a real high traffic website getting 10,000 visitors or more every day you'll be asked to get a dedicated server anyway. Most hosting companies won't let you host such a high traffic site on a shared hosting plan. Until your website reaches a point where you're getting a huge amount of traffic, you'll never need to look beyond the Standard web hosting plan of Network Solutions and that costs only $9.96 a month. This is just over 30 cents a day! Besides if you are getting 10,000 visitors a day, in most cases you’ll be making a lot of money, so spending a little more for hosting wouldn’t hurt at all!

Which is the best option - Standard, Advanced or Pro Hosting Plan?

One reason you may prefer the advanced web hosting plan is that it offers you IMAP access. This is web-based email access, the kind that Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail offer you. The Standard Web Hosting plan comes with only POP3 email access. This means that you can only configure your email in Outlook Express and not check it on the move. Webmail is only available in the Advanced Web Hosting Plan and Pro Web Hosting plan. There is a simple way around this if you still want to opt for the Standard Web Hosting Plan. Just sign up for Gmail for free and check your POP3 email on the move from within Gmail. This way you can get IMAP access without opting for the more expensive plan of Network Solutions.

You get 1000 email accounts with the Standard Web Hosting Plan, 2500 email accounts with the Advanced Web Hosting Plan and Unlimited email accounts with the Pro Web Hosting plan. Email storage in all cases is 1 GB.

Web Site Building Tools

Network Solutions provides you free web site building tools that you can use to create your own website. You don't need to be an expert or even acquainted with web design for this. It's meant for the lay person. There's a click and drag interface that lets you design your own website. There are thousands of royalty-free graphics that you can add to your website to give it a professional look. There are professional templates that have a search-engine-friendly architecture. By 'search engine friendly' we mean that the pages are created in a way that makes it easier for search engines to index them. Unless your website is crawled and indexed by the major search engines including Google and Yahoo, you'll miss out on a valuable source of traffic. With the web design tools that Network Solutions offers you can save multiple copies of your website and go back to a previous version when you want. So you can make changes without fear of breaking your website or causing a mess. This is a very useful feature for people not very familiar with web design. You can add free message boards, polls, forms, and guest books to your website. You can add Google maps and directions.

Free ad vouchers

With their hosting plans, Network Solutions gives you free ad vouchers of $50 for Yahoo Search marketing and $25 for Google AdWords. While this is somewhat less generous than some other web hosting companies, to be fair to Network Solutions, their plan costs less than $12 a month.

MySQL Database Hosting on Unix

You can get MySQL 5 Databases on Unix hosting offered by Network Solutions. Standard Web Hosting comes with 25 MySQL Databases and 300 MB disk space. Advanced Web Hosting comes with 50 MySQL databases and 300 MB disk space while Pro Web Hosting comes with 100 MySQL databases and 300 MB disk space. If you're planning a large customer oriented database driven website you'll outgrow these hosting plans quickly. Nevertheless as a test environment or until your website takes off in a big way, you can keep your costs low with these hosting plans offered by Network Solutions.

MS Access and MSSQL 2005 Database Hosting on Microsoft Windows

Network Solutions offers MS Access and MSSQL 2005 Database Hosting with their Microsoft Windows Hosting Plans. If you're looking for MS Access Hosting, the Standard Web Hosting plan comes with 5 DSN. The Advanced Web Hosting Plan comes with 7 DSN while the Pro Web Hosting plan comes with 10 DSN. If you need MSSQL 2005, the Standard Web Hosting plan comes with 2 databases and 200 MB disk space. The Advanced Web Hosting Plan comes with 3 databases and 200 MB disk space while the Pro Web Hosting plan comes with 5 databases and 300 MB disk space.
    
Real® Audio/Video Stream

RealMedia Audio and Video streams let you offer real-time transmission of audio and video files from your Web site. This is supported on Network Solutions web hosting plans.

Open Source Software Archive

You can install various types of CMS (Content Management Systems) from the archive of Network Solutions include Joomla, DotNetNuke Mambo, Drupal, Typo3, postNuke, xoops, Geeklog and Owl. CMS software lets you manage the content of your website without having to involve a web designer to take care of it.

Start your own blog

You can start your own blog using WordPress, BlongEngine or B2evolution software. We recommend WordPress as it's one of the most popular blog softwares and very easy to manage.

Other software
    
You can add chat, photo galleries, shopping carts, calendars, guestbooks and a message board to your website using the various softwares that Network Solutions lets you install on your website. Other software include TikiWiki, Screwturn Wiki, PHPWiki,  Simple Machines Forum, phpBB for forums, CraftySyntaxLive(CSLH) CraftySyntaxLive(CSLH) and Help Center Live  for chat, Gallery2 and Coppermine for chat, osCommerce and Magento for e-commerce solutions and XRMS CRM, OSTicket, Mantis Bug Tracker and PHProjekt for project management. You can also use WebCalendar, VTCalendar, BBClone and Advanced Guestbook software.

Configuration

Network Solutions provides you with a CGI Bin and Perl Access. Server Side Includes (SSI) are enabled. Python, PHP4, Zend and Java servlets are supported.

The Windows Hosting offered by Network Solutions supports Windows - ASP Windows® - ASP, Windows - .Net Windows® - .NET Windows Cold Fusion MX Windows® - Cold Fusion MX.

Cron Jobs are supported.

and finally..

Overall, given the features that come with each web hosting plan and their reputation for providing quality web hosting, we suggest you opt for the Standard Web Hosting plan offered by Network Solutions. This will get you hosting at the lowest price and still get you almost all the features that they offer. In case you want to upgrade at any time, a simple mail to them will help you do so.