Features

The first place to look for differences is obvious: the features. The types of features a web hosting company offers can be a dealbreaker for even the less web-savvy among us. Why? Because even a great price is worth nothing if it doesn’t get your online presence anywhere. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the offerings at both HostGator and InMotion.

It’s not difficult to see that InMotion Hosting basically takes a shellacking. Unless InMotion has a great price (such as paying you to host your web site, it looks like this is a battle that’s probably going to end pretty early on in the process. Let’s take a look.

Pricing

Although there are $5.95 and $6.95 versions of the InMotion plan, we like to keep things simple by showing the cheapest options head-to-head. The cheapest option in InMotion’s system is the “Starter” option of their “Value Class” – and, yes, what a sad world we live in that we still have to separate web hosting plans based on their class.

The price is more attractive than HostGator, but of course the decision you really face is whether those two extra bucks or so each month are with the perks. We think they are, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Customer Support and Other Issues

The customer support on both sides is pretty satisfactory here, with 24/7 support being pretty well established as the industry standard by now.

One issue that bears mentioning is the idea that no pricing plan is created the same, even, in some cases, the prices look similar. If $3 gets you no bandwith on one hosting provider, for example, but $6 gets you unlimited hosting bandwith on another, what does that mean? The $6 hosting provider is really the one offering the sweeter deal. And that leads us to our conclusion.

Conclusion

What to make of this matchup? Quite simply, HostGator wins out. It’s got the better features, the better support, the better everything. The price may look a few dollars more expensive in our breakdown, but when you consider that getting the same hosting benefits will cost you more money over at InMotion, you start to see the scheme they’ve got going. Stick with HostGator and your web site will do just fine.

There are all kinds of ways for an SEO guy to find information about a domain name. Yahoo Site Explorer, a Google site: search, and a bunch of other search engine based tools can be used to gather as large of a list of links as possible, all of which may or may not still be pointing to the domain. Then, the SEO guy could visit each individual link and check to see if it still exists, use Google Toolbar to check the PageRank of each page, count the number of internal and external links on each page, check and log the IP address of each linking domain, and more in order to have enough info to run a decent analysis on; all so that the SEO guy could have a good understanding of the external value of a particular domain.

Alternatively, SEO SpyGlass can be used to do all the grunt work. It gathers link information from a wide array of search engines and tools, with international search engines/tools available as an option. It can then gather a wide array of info for each link. It will then analyze the data and even calculate a proprietary “Link Value” so that a beginner SEO guy can have some understanding of how good a link is. This SEO SpyGlass Review will look at just how well it completes this task.

Raw Capabilities

A large part of how well SEO SpyGlass works is a numbers game. How many tools does it pull from to gather links? How many different pieces of information does it gather for each link? Well, let’s take a look; here is a list of USA search engine based tools that SEO SpyGlass.:

• Google
• Google Mobile
• Google Blog
• Yahoo
• Blekko
• Dogpile
• Exalead
• Excite
• IceRocket

But, SEO SpyGlass has information for search engines from a total of around 110 different countries, meaning that it is highly unlikely that there is a search engine that you are aware of that can be pulled from automatically and isn’t in SEO SpyGlass’s list of usable search engines.

From just the URL where the link supposedly exists, here is a list of all the metrics it will gather for each link, in the order that SEO SpyGlass lists them:

• Title: The title of the page that exists at the specified URL
• Links Back: Whether or not the link exists AND is properly followed
• Anchor Text: Whether or not the link uses anchor text and what that anchor text is
• Anchor URL: What the exact URL of the link is
• Page PR: The PageRank of the specified URL
• External Links: The number of links that point to other domains from the specified URL
• Total Links: The total number of links on the specified URL
• Link Value: A proprietary calculation used to approximate the value of the link; useful for beginners
• Domain: The base domain of the specified URL
• Domain IP: The IP address and country location of the specified URL
• DMOZ Listing: Whether or not the domain exists in the DMOZ directory
• Yahoo! Dir Listing: Whether or not the domain exists in the Yahoo directory
• Alexa Ranking: The Alexa traffic rating of the domain
• Domain Age: How long the ago the domain was first registered
• Last Found Date (optional): The last time that SEO SpyGlass found the link listed in the search engine tools
• Backlink Status (optional): Whether this is the first time (new) or not (remains) that SEO SpyGlass has seen this link listed in the search engine tools, or if SEO SpyGlass no longer (removed) sees the link listed
• Country (optional): The country that the IP address of the specified URL is located in
• Notes (optional): An editable field for custom notes

Additionally, the following metrics can be enabled, and they seem self-explanatory:

Contact info, compete rank in compete.com, traffic according to compete.com, pages indexed in Google, pages indexed in Yahoo, pages indexed in Bing, pages indexed in Yandex, domain Google popularity (inbound links found in Google), domain Yahoo popularity (inbound links found in Yahoo), domain Yandex CY (inbound links found in Yandex, a Russian search engine), Digg articles from the domain, domain bookmarks in Delicious, domain’s views in StumbleUpon, domain Diigo bookmarks, domain social mention popularity (inbound links found in SocialMention.com), domain’s mentions in Twitter, domain’s mentions in Google Buzz, domain’s popularity in Facebook (number of times content from the domain was “Liked”), cache date in Google, cache date in Yahoo, cache date in Bing, cache date in Yandex, page Google popularity, page Yahoo popularity, visits to your site (from the link specified, requires Google Analytics integration), page bookmarks in Delicious, page’s views in StumbleUpon, page Diigo bookmarks, page Social Mention popularity, page’s mentions on Twitter, page’s mentions on Google Buzz, and page’s popularity on Facebook.

Furthermore, you don’t have to use this tool on your own domains, you can also use SEO SpyGlass to see what links your competitors have so that you can try to get links from the same places. All of this makes it a very powerful tool. A lot of competitive information can be gathered very quickly with this tool.

With such an extensive list of metrics that SEO SpyGlass can check for, it’s bound to fit the needs of even the most analytical SEO guy. And since SEO SpyGlass does all the number crunching for you, the information won’t necessarily be overwhelming.

Technical Concerns and Solutions

But a technical person might ask one very important question: “If it’s gathering all of this information through my internet connection, won’t my internet connection get blocked by a lot of these places? Especially Google?” Well, SEO SpyGlass offers the ability to find proxies to run through. A quick 20 minute scan of proxies found a total of 16 proxies with a response time of 600ms or less, of which 3 were located in the USA. And, if any of those proxies fail to respond during the scanning, SEO SpyGlass will just go to the next proxy. Only when all of the selected proxies stop responding does SEO SpyGlass automatically revert to using the normal internet connection.

This proxy rotation feature means that you can have 5 requests going to a variety of search engines, all from different IP addresses, and all at the same time. This alone can significantly cut back on down time as a result of being blocked from search engines.

In addition to the proxy rotation offered, it also offers human emulation options. These options include the ability to wait random amounts of time before visiting a search engine or going to the next page of a search engine. It also gives the option of visiting a search engine’s home page before continuing since a lot of human users do exactly that. These features can and will slow down the process, but these features are crucial if you have more than one computer on one internet connection that all need to access these search engines at any time.

Overall

By offering everything to everybody, SEO SpyGlass becomes well worth the one time price of $99, especially since updates to the system continue to be free after purchasing, meaning that the support for the search engines shouldn’t diminish over time.

Now, of course, you could do all of this gathering yourself. Why buy the tool when you can just go to the search engines yourself to build a list of links in a spreadsheet and then go and gather the info around those links that you wanted? Well, yes, you can do that, but it will take exponentially longer than using this tool. If you only need to do it once, then that might be ok with you. But, if you want to track progress over time for yourself or your competitors, you may want to run this tool once per week. Doing it by hand could take a couple days of constant attention each time. This tool will cut that down to less than a day of passive attention, meaning you can do a lot more in the same amount of time.

For the aspiring SEO guru, SEO SpyGlass is nearly a must-have.

Are Host Gator and Just Host worthy contenders? It’s time to find out.

Features

It’s time for the head-to-head matchup – the tale of the tape, if you will. As you’ll see in the table below, we’re weighing the features of Just Host and Host Gator based on their similar, minimum-cost pricing plans – and the details of those prices will be available in the next section.

The above comparison provides a lot of similarities in features, but with a few key differences. It’s a classic case of knowing that if the prices are similar, there’s probably one site you’re going to prefer over the other if all you care about are the features. So let’s take a look at those prices and see how well they really do match up.

Pricing

No, that’s not me making an error – these are the exact same pricing plans for the features you saw listed above. I’d say that takes out one variable in your decision, no? One note about Just Host’s pricing, however: they weren’t as upfront about them as HostGator was. I had to start registering with Just Host to find out I wouldn’t get their tiniest fee without a longer commitment.

Customer Support

The customer support won’t be a problem for either of these companies – you can reach them by phone, you can reach customer support 24 hours a day, and you’ll be able to find someone who, of course, speaks English. We have to give the edge in refunds and money-back guarantees to Just Host, which will refund the remainder of your term if you decide to cancel your account, and will give you a free month’s worth of hosting if you don’t have 99.9% uptime on your web site. Maybe it’s time to root for 99.8% uptime.

Conclusions

These are pretty comparable hosting companies – either one would be a worthy recommendation and either one would be a fine choice. But I have to give the edge to Just Host based simply on the sheer amount of features allowed and the add-ons they’re willing to provide right off the bat. But HostGator still belongs in the discussion.

This can make Facebook something of a security nightmare. Hackers who gain unauthorized access to your account not only have access to a great deal of private information, but they can wreak havoc with your personal life in many different ways, such as what happened when members of 4chan hacked various Facebook accounts.

Even Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, is not immune to this problem as his fan page was recently hacked and vandalized.

This raises serious questions about the security of Facebook, if Zuckerberg can’t avoid being hacked, what can the rest of us hope to do? Fortunately there are steps that we can take to make our accounts more secure .

Because, while there is no such thing as being “completely secure” we can definitely make ourselves more secure than most and that, in turn, makes us a more difficult target and one less likely to get hit.

With that in mind, here’s five quick tips to put you ahead of the pack when it comes to Facebook security.

1. Enable Secure Browsing  

This one is a must if you routinely surf Facebook on open wifis such as coffee shops and public libraries.

Go into your account settings and, under account  security, tick the box to enable “Secure Browsing”. This will encrypt all of your traffic to and from Facebook, ensuring that anyone who happens to be sniffing (watching) the network you are on, a common tactic on public networks, isn’t able to grab your data, including your password.

This is a good first step to keep your information safe.

2. Tighten Your Privacy Settings 

Next up, go into your privacy settings and set them as restrictive as you can, limiting the bulk of your data to just your friends. You can further restrict the flow of information using lists, ensuring that not all of your friends have access to all of your data.

This is important because a lot of what people consider “hacking” is actually human engineering. People can often guess or obtain passwords and other sensitive information based no data made available.

For example, if someone is able to locate your pet’s name publicly and you used that as a security question elsewhere, someone might be able to get or reset your password to that service.

3. Be Password Smart 

Not only is it important to use good, strong passwords on your Facebook account but you also have to ensure that you don’t reuse that password on other sites. For example, that’s how 4Chan was able to compromise so many Facebook accounts.

If you have a difficult time creating and remembering passwords, consider using a service like LastPass to help you generate, remember and enter truly strong passwords.

4. Enable Facebook Device Login Notifications  

Under the same security settings you found “Secure Browsing”, there is also an option to send you an email or text message when a new device accesses your account.

While this may not be practical for every Facebook user, especially those who routinely login from new machines, those who have only a few computers they use regularly will likely find this to be a boon, providing early warning of any suspicious account activity.

5. Block Untrustworthy Apps 

Finally, any and all applications that you aren’t using should be blocked from accessing your Facebook profile. You can always re-enable such apps later but applications are a potential security risk as you have to worry about not just the security of your account, but of these apps.

After all, if someone manages to compromise the app itself, then your account is vulnerable at least as far as the permissions you granted it will allow.

Ditch the apps you aren’t using to avoid exposing yourself to any unneeded risk.

The Bigger Question

All of these security issues with Facebook raise serious questions about how much we can trust Facebook with our data and our private information. It also raises questions about the role Facebook should play in our daily lives as a social hub and as a broadcast point.

Unfortunately, these are not easy questions to answer and everyone has to decide what the right answer is for them. But clearly these are questions that demand further scrutiny as Facebook’s presence continues to grow.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a company that offers a to do list app, and who also consults for a psd to html company.

If you fall in this demographic, there’s a good chance that speed is the name of the game. You want to build a website quickly without sacrificing any quality. You might have high standards enough to eschew the Facebook profile page or the subdomains you can find on easy site-builders like Blogger.com, but this leaves you wondering where to find the website builders who cater to someone like you.

Enter GoDaddy Website Tonight, a website builder that makes the promise – heck, it’s in its title – that you can start work on your website today and have yourself broadcasting all over the world by tonight. If you’ve been in the market for a quick turnaround, this might be the site builder of your dreams. As long as it delivers the HTML-laden goods.

Above: the tour preview displays the simplicity of getting started - and at least that's a relief.

WebSite Tonight, Gone Tomorrow?

No GoDaddy WebSite Tonight review would be fair unless we actually addressed what it’s like to work with GoDaddy.com. If you’re a customer like me, there’s a good chance you’ve had up-and-down experiences. The customer service can be very effective and responsive, but it’s no fun jumping through a million hoops on their web site just to get your domain registered. Yes, GoDaddy, we get that you want to sell us additional domain names, now let us move on.

Any website builder that advertises itself in publishing your fine art tonight can’t force you through these hoops. An inexperienced Internet surfer might have some trouble simply locating things, no matter how simple GoDaddy tries to make things. For all the work GoDaddy performs in engineering its services around getting you a website quickly, it’s just not always that simple.

The good news is that GoDaddy’s bells and whistles don’t really count as part of their WebSite Tonight service. With easy setups that include the necessary bits like importing content that you’ve already created, the actual interface of WebSite Tonight does deliver on the “tonight” promise.

The question, of course, is how well it delivers on actually building a website. Although you will have a plethora of options to choose from, like templates, fonts, flash introductions and the like, there’s nothing really eye-popping about the GoDaddy WebSite Tonight designs. I can’t imagine anyone could see some of the GoDaddy templates here and shriek giddily, “I’ve got to order this right away!”

Even the sites GoDaddy WebSite Tonight uses as its “featured” sites – you know, the ones that were built using the services GoDaddy’s selling to you – are completely underwhelming. Really, GoDaddy? There weren’t any enterprising pioneers willing to manipulate your templates into works of art – or even impressive displays of HTML prowess? It’s disappointing, to say the least. Yes, you can build yourself a website “tonight,” but at what cost, people?

Building a Website in a Day: The Nitty-Gritty

Of course, there are other variables that factor into the overall equation in the GoDaddy WebSite Tonight review. If GoDaddy paid me a thousand dollars a month to host a WebSite Tonight site with their service, it would be the greatest innovation I’ve enjoyed since the invention of the drive-through window.

In other words, we have to factor in a few more ideas here. Let’s start with that thing on everyone’s mind these days: the pricing.

Understanding the Price: It’s Actually Kind of Tough

Price can be a weird issue with GoDaddy. It’s not hard to find a good bargain with their services, but the way they always try to sell you on buying more and more can feel like an added price. Even a look at the WebSite Tonight main screen shows you a zillion different pricing options including the bells and whistles like text cross-outs and red fonts telling you how exciting a certain deal is.

The pricing structure is split up into three tiers, all based on the size of the site you want to construct. “Economy” means a five-page site, “Deluxe” means a 10-page site (really? “Deluxe” means ten pages, huh?), and “Premium” will get you up to 999 pages.

Admittedly, newbies to the world of website building won’t find a ton to argue with here. Five pages is more than enough for certain people to enjoy. But once you’ve gotten some experience under your belt and want to expand your site, even the newbies will probably find that “Economy” and even “Deluxe” don’t quite cut it.

That leaves “Premium,” which can be had for anywhere from eight to twelve dollars a month depending how long you purchase the service for. Sure, that sounds cheap, but when you consider you can easily find a free, cheap service online that will provide you equally “Premium” templates, it’s eight to twelve dollars a month too much.

Customer Service

I’ve never had a beef with GoDaddy customer service. They are quick to pick up the phone (usually you only have a 5 minute wait or so to talk to a person) and generally only ask for a customer service survey or quick upsell in return for their assistance. Hopefully, the WebSite Tonight deal is easy enough that you won’t have any need to talk to the GoDaddy customer center, but should the need arise, you probably won’t find yourself stuck in any sort of website building purgatory.

A WebSite in a Day? Conclusions

There’s an old saying that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that saying stands here. If you want a great website, you’re not going to have one built by tonight if you start right now. GoDaddy WebSite Tonight can probably deliver one for you, but it’s not exactly going to be a work of art. And heck, even if you’re not in the market for a work of art, there are cheaper ways of building and hosting your own websites.

Rating:

1. Invert Screen Colors

While this prank is not exactly subtle, it’s quite baffling to any computer user who didn’t know it was even possible. This quick prank will allow you to get in and out of their cubicle within the space of a short bathroom break.

Mac

1. Command + Option + Control + 8

Windows 7

1. In the Start menu, search for “Magnifier.”
2. In the box that comes up, click the gear icon to show options.
3. Check the box that says “turn on color inversion.” Click OK.
4. You may need to click the magnifying glass and/or minus button to get the screen back to normal and exit Magnifier (we don’t want anyone finding out how we did this, now do we?).

Windows Vista

1. Hold down Alt + Shift + “Prt Scrn.”

2. Autocorrect Pranks in Word 2010

Imagine the utter helplessness your cubicle mate will feel when he or she types a proposal that “corrects” itself to sound ridiculous. Replacing “the” with “that there” and “a” to say “a dog gone” will read hilariously: “We developed a dog gone strategy to assist that there client.” Of course, you can really get creative (and evil) with this one.

Both:

1. Open Word, then navigate to Word Options under the File Tab.
2. Under Proofing, select the button that says “AutoCorrect Options.”
3. The resulting window will be where you wreak your havok. In the blank space below Replace, add a commonly used word, like “the.” In the space under With, add the ridiculous replacement word(s), such as “that there.”
4. Click OK to close out of both boxes.

3. Frozen Screen

This classic among pranksters can take a coworker from calm to panic in 2.5 seconds. They return to their cubicle after lunch to find nothing is working — the icons and task bar seem frozen. While this prank works best on a Windows OS, it is possible to create a similar effect on a Mac.

Mac
Note: This works best on a desktop with few files on it, as you can only hide hard disk, server, and external drives.

1. Take a screenshot of the desktop, ensuring the dock is showing (Command + Shift + 3).
2. Find the saved screenshot and control click it; select “Set Desktop Picture.”
3. In System Preferences, choose Dock and check “Automatically hide and show the Dock.” It’s also a good idea to change the dock position on the screen, so the dock doesn’t pop up when the user hovers over the fake dock images.
4. In System Preferences, go to Finder Preferences. Uncheck all of the items under “Show these items on the desktop.”

Windows

1. Take a screenshot of the desktop.
2. Paste into Paint or Photoshop, then save the file.
3. Change the desktop wallpaper to the saved desktop image.
4. Right click on desktop and under “Arrange Icons By,” uncheck “Show Desktop Items.”
5. Right click on the task bar, and under Properties, check “Auto-hide taskbar.”

4. Cursed Cursor

Nothing stirs up anger more quickly and predictably than the cursed hourglass “busy” cursor. For more subtle agitation, you can bump the speed up or down slightly on the mouse tracking, or cause it to scroll at lightning speed.

Mac

1. Go to System Preferences > Mouse.
2. Bump the Tracking up (or down) a notch or two. For less immediate (but still entertaining) effect, adjust the scrolling drastically by bumping it all the way up.
3. To change the cursor on a Mac, you’ll have to download a program—iCursor (free) fits the bill for annoying little effects like circus lights or soap bubbles.

Windows 7

1. In your Control Panel, go to Mouse.
2. In the Mouse Settings Window, go to the Pointer tab and find the Normal Select cursor.
3. Click the Browse button next to it and select the hourglass or “busy circle of death;” click Apply.

What are the best pranks you’ve played on your coworkers in nearby cubicles?

About The Author:

David Ching is the marketing director at EQA Office Furniture, which offers quality office furniture and free 3D virtual design services. Visit their website for prices on office cubicles and other office furniture.

Sites like HostMonster and Just Host are why we do this thing in the first place – they’re quality hosting sites that offer a lot of bargain for the dollar, which means you end up keeping things simpler on your end while they’re busy trying to keep you stocked with features and services.

These are two of the better hosting sites I’ve personally come across, and a quick glance at the features and pricing should convince you of the same. Let’s take a closer look – table style.

Features

What’s the main difference between the two hosting companies here? Surprisingly, very little. The big issues – disk space, band with, add-on domains and the like – are both “unlimited” whether you decide to go with Just Host or HostMonster. That’s good news. But we aren’t satisfied with looking at just a few variables, so here’s some extra information to wrap your mind around:

It’s one of the most comparable matchups we’ve had here at Clickfire, which means the rest of the battle will have to be settled via steel cage match. Or, you know, looking at their pricing options, I guess.

Pricing

Conclusions there? Well, dang it, the sites are still pretty comparable. Just get the Just Host 2-or-3-year plan and you’re locked in at the stable HostMonster prices. (By the way, if your interest is piqued with all of this HostMonster talk, be sure to check out our Hostmonster Review here at Clickfire.) We do like the lower price of the lower-commitment 1-year HostMonster plan, but that’s just a slight advantage, and not something to write home about.

Separating the Two

If we know all of these features and prices are pretty much the same, how do you really separate the two host companies? Well, a few issues that you’ll likely have to discover on a personal level, such as:

• Customer service quality
• Uptime percentage
• Ease of billing

These are only things you can really discover once you’re a customer at either HostMonster or Just Host (speaking of which, Just Host has also been reviewed at Clickfire). Which means that, sadly, we can’t give you a definitive answer here. But, hey, sometimes it’s nice to know that there’s not only one good option for your hosting needs. If only every buying experience we had online was like that these days.

In short, the freedom of the Internet is too danged important to think that all is well in the domain of Internet censorship.

So how can I convince you, oh readers of Clickfire, that it’s important that we remain vigilant? Let’s take a brief look at what a grim future SOPA, PIPA, and similarly-constraining Internet regulations could mean, both in reality and in theory.

The Future of SOPA, PIPA, and Other Legislation

The officially-listed purpose of the SOPA legislation reads as follows:

To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.

Two words: ha and ha. The true thinking behind SOPA was so transparent that conservatives and liberals alike united against Internet censorship on January 20th, 2012; both political factions recognized that in order to “promote prosperity, creativity…and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property,” the United States Congress would essentially need to grant itself new regulatory powers.

Common sense recognizes that something’s not quite right when big corporations and organizations like the RIAA are given the power of government to enforce their intellectual property in the way they see fit. Not only is it unfair, it’s downright un-American.

That’s not to say that intellectual property doesn’t exist, or that protecting it should not be a priority. But we should all be – and have been – extremely wary of when the government gives itself new powers for any purpose.

After the massive demonstrations against the policies took place, SOPA and PIPA lost momentum. But a new threat has emerged from the legislative mind of Lamar Smith, and this time it’s coming under the guise – of all things – of “protecting children from Internet pornographers.”

Once again, it’s hard to disagree with the central promise. We agree with SOPA that intellectual property rights should be protect. We agree with the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 that children should be, well, protected from Internet pornographers.

We just hate the way Lamar Smith suggests the government should go about “protecting” all of us.

As Wikipedia reports regarding PCIPA:

Section 4 would require providers to retain a log of customer IP addresses, linked to “corresponding customer or subscriber information” listed in subsection (c)(2) of 18 USC 2703, for at least a year. This includes, but is not limited to forcing Internet service providers to keep track of and retain their customers’ information — including their name, address, phone number, credit card numbers and bank account numbers.

Surely there’s a better way to protect children from Internet pornographers than to force Internet providers to essentially work as another arm of the CIA.

The Future of the Internet

I am cynical about the future of the Internet – but it has little to do with the Internet. The Internet is doing well; it’s prosperous, thriving, and free. The fact that it has some problems is only indicative of human nature – human beings in general have problems.

However, my central premise is that regulating the Internet under the guise of fixing its darker problems won’t only not fix those problems (really, how can you control that many people? And besides, laws against theft and child pornography are already on the books), but it will introduce new problems.

Consider how our privacy is already an issue with the Internet. In many cases, this is a matter of our own permission – we agree to give away some of our privacy in exchange for using Facebook. It’s not a great thing, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to agree to those terms if we want.

In other cases, our privacy can be taken from us. Sure, it’s taken by hackers, spammers, and other scummy webmasters who have nothing better to do with their time. But when our own government is depriving us of our basic privacy because they assume the worst about us and censor us without due process, it’s time to worry.

So what might a future Internet look like? If you ask me, it will likely look very much the same – at least for now. Between some web sites going offshore to ensure that they can avoid government shutdowns and protests like we saw earlier this year, it’s apparent that people are willing to fight for their freedoms. And that’s a good thing.

But a potential problem comes when we don’t remain vigilant. When we passively accept the whims of the government because we’ve grown tired of fighting the constant debates, the constant legislation, the constant wearing down of our rights. One day, the Internet may be a heavily-regulated shell of what it once was, and innovators and entrepreneurs will be forced to find some other way to interact freely with other people to generate prosperity for themselves and their families.

If the government can shut down whichever site it likes without due process, we live in very scary times indeed. In the present world, governments like China already heavily censor the flow of information and commerce simply by extending their heavy hand over markets in which they don’t belong.

Is that what we want for the United States? For all our innovation – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Silicon Valley, and every App that’s come along in the past few years – to become a relic of what we once were?

It’s entirely possible. Restricting peoples’ freedoms means also restricting their freedom to succeed, to prosper, and to profit. We need that in a tough economy. We need to give people the freedom to do well on their own, to create, to innovate. It’s not enough to say that the government should regulate more simply because there are problems that exist.

What do you think?

Features

We always begin our tale of the tape with our features – it’s important, like measuring a boxer’s arm length, and it will be one of the easiest ways for you to determine which hosting company is better. Unless, of course, the features are nearly identical. Let’s take a look at HostGator’s features as compared with HostMonster.

As you can see, there’s very little HostGator can do that HostMonster can’t do, either. The features listed above are typical of many hosting companies, so it’s always the small details that you’ll want to pay attention to. For example, add-on domains are a big issue here: if you need them, HostMonster is clearly the vendor you’re going to want to visit. But let’s make sure the quality of pricing plans follows the quality of features before we go making any rash decisions.

Pricing

That’s right – $5.95/month is a nice healthy flat rate overall, and means you can go as short-term as you like within the confines of HostMonster’s pricing systems without paying too much in hosting fees. Why this pricing structure? It’s actually a deal that HostMonster has going right now; if you’re interested, now’s the time to act.

Customer Support

Customer support is always a big deal, and luckily both of these companies offer it 24 hours a day – not unusual in the world of web hosting, but certainly appreciated whenever it’s there and it’s good. HostMonster also lets you do a live chat with a customer representative without being a customer – they’ll probably try to sell you something, sure, but it’s the thought that counts.

Conclusions

Again, we have very similar web hosting sites that offer a lot of bang and demand little buck in return. It’s hard to go wrong when you’re given a choice between HostGator and HostMonster, but the little details do add up, particularly if you’re on the hunt for more features than your typical Internet newbie. If you’re already surfing Clickfire, we like the chances of that.

But if I told you the good news, that means I’ve got bad news: with a few exceptions, Homestead is just not any better than the plethora of website builders out there. Yes, it has a free trial you’ll want to give a try if simply to experience the web site for yourself. Go ahead, prove me wrong. But this Homestead review intends on giving you the straight facts – the good and the bad – about this Intuit-published website builder.

Homestead? Why Not Just Use Intuit?

Considering Homestead and Intuit will both run you about 5 bucks a month after you end their free trials, there’s one simple hurdle I can’t get past: why does Intuit even publish Homestead? Sure, Intuit is built and geared for small business owners who like features like online payroll and setting up stores, but Homestead is similar enough that there are more than just a few redundancies. Maybe Homestead is simply Intuit’s answer to other website solutions like Weebly or Site Build It, but there must be more to the story.

We bring this up because not everything is as hunky-dory in the world of Homestead as it is over at the Intuit flagship. The designs and templates present at Homestead are nothing to write home about, and the features – though comprehensive – don’t excite you like the ones over at Intuit. It’s quite the head-scratcher.

The solution is to review Homestead and forget that Intuit exists. Once we do this, we see it is actually a worthy entry into the world of Weebly’s and Jimdo’s. Just remember that the free trial runs up!

Building and Publishing with Homestead

There are two main strengths to Homestead’s overall offer, which we’ll address here: price and features. Let’s take a look at each.

The Big Variable: Price

As we stated before, you start out your Homestead experience with a free trial, which actually better resembles a “first month free” offer. If you don’t sign out of the free trial after a month, then you’re on the hook for $4.99 in proceeding months. It’s not a bad way to get people to sign up and, hey, if you can’t remember to cancel an account after a free trial then you probably deserve to be billed that $4.99.

The escalation to $4.99 each month isn’t exactly horrendous, either. Considering you can handle just about all of your website needs at Homestead for that price, it’s a great way to build a quick, easy, and cheap Internet presence. And since one of the features at Homestead allows you to use your own domain name, you’ll avoid the hazards of a “yournamehere.homestead.com” monstrosity. Oh, and speaking of those features…

What Will You Get in the Features?

This is where Homestead makes up the most ground. A simple browsing of their features yields important information. You can use your own domain name, have your own email address, employ analytics, add a blog, accept payments through PayPal – the whole shebang. While it’s not quite as sophisticated as its parent sitebuilder, Intuit, it’s still a capable website builder in its own right. Other sites might make you pay more for the full gamut of features, so Homestead’s flat-price option at least keeps things simple. And you always know what you’re getting.

How it Feels Using Homestead

Admittedly, Homestead is better tailored to a less advanced audience than is Intuit. Intuit allows for a legitimate small business presence online; Homestead is more like pitching a tent and camping out online. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and heck – if you’re someone who wants to get started off simple, Homestead is exactly the type of sitebuilder you’ve been waiting for.

Because you’re not on the hook for the first thirty days, you’ll be able to explore all of the features Homestead has to offer without a credit commitment. This gives you the freedom to take your time in selecting from a lot of templates – though don’t expect Homestead to reinvent the design wheel for you – and upload your own images and logos while integrating a store or blog. Depending on your ultimate goals, Homestead should be able to suit your Internet skills pretty admirably. And yes, that’s a fancy way of saying it’s a great “Internet for dummies” site.

The Big Question: Do I Recommend It?

As good as I’ve made Homestead sound, there’s still one big complaint I have: Homestead doesn’t really have a strong identity. If it’s for small businesses, why charge as much as a superior service like Intuit? If it’s for the simple crowd, wouldn’t you be better off paying nothing at a quality site like Yola or Weebly?

It sounds like a rhetorical question, but it’s one you’ll really want to ask yourself. Because depending on your goals, there’s a good chance you won’t find that Homestead is the right sitebuilder for you. Unfortunately it’s got some excellent features and a simple pricing system that don’t really seem to fit the intended market. I know: $4.99 a month isn’t exactly steep, but it’s $4.99 per month more than you should be paying if you really know what you’re doing.

If you want to follow this Homestead review’s recommendation, give the free trial a good testing out. You may find that Homestead’s quality features are easier to use than the ones you find at another site. Heck, you don’t have to listen to me. But if you only want to sign up for one website builder today, keep browsing Clickfire for a review of one of the superior sitebuilders. After all, if Homestead is not the best website builder you can find, that’s probably just good news.

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