December 22nd in Blog by Tom . Leave a comment.
Let’s be honest, most of the green web hosting businesses out there are simply resellers. Even companies as big as Hostgator are simply reselling server space maintained by someone else.
It’s refreshing to find a host that runs their own servers. How can you tell? They offer services like co-location. Co-location means your servers are physically located in someone else’s facility. This can be very helpful because the attention and time required to keep servers running smoothly is pretty significant.
AISO.net (Affordable Internet Services Online) offers co-location services as well as the basic hosting accounts common to the rest of the green web hosts listed on this site.
December 21st in Green Web Hosts by Tom . Leave a comment.
Since we dropped all affiliate links from the site, we are a lot more free (and objective) to be completely honest about all of our green web hosting reviews. Accordingly, we have updated the Top 10 Green Web Hosts list to more accurately identify the greenest of the green.
The top 10 list is compiled by evaluating green web hosts on a number of parameters including responsiveness to customers, features, price, website quality and environmental friendliness.
December 20th in Blog by Tom . Leave a comment.
The Greenwashing Blog has joined the Hippie Network. The network is a fast growing collection of eco-blogs that discuss relevant, helpful and interesting green news. The Greenwashing Blog brings a reputation for looking at eco-claims with a critical eye.
Do you have a popular eco blog? We still have some limited room in the network for interesting blogs that focus on the environment. Contact us to start a discussion.
December 18th in Knowledge Base by Tom . Leave a comment.
Web hosts are starting to claim that their web servers are “optimized for energy efficiency”. Although this may be true, this is a hard claim to dispute because standards have not yet been set for efficient operation of web servers. However, if you know something about servers, these things could help you determine if a web host has truly optimized their servers to run on the least amount of energy.
The type of server matters. Blade servers tend to be more efficient because often components that consume the most energy can be shared such as fans and motherboards/processors.
The age matters. Servers are like any other technology, they become outdated as soon as they ship from the factory. Unfortunately, web hosts make money after servers have been paid for, so there is built-in economic incentives to keep servers well past their prime.
Hard drive and storage types matter. Solid state hard drives (not often found in web hosting applications) consume much less energy because there is no spinning disk.
Power supply matters. How the host configures their power supply can increase or decrease energy consumption dramatically.
Cooling systems matter. As server farms or data centers become more advanced, more efficient methods of cooling the massive heat generated by servers advances as well. From liquid nitrogen to water cooled, the method of cooling matters. Choose hosts located in colder climates. This takes less energy from the grid to cool controlled atmospheres.
Ask your host about these things, and make them part of your web host evaluation.
December 16th in Green Web Hosts by Tom . Leave a comment.
When searching for more green web hosts, we found this page from 1and1. However this is mentioned on the bottom of their site, clearly not a priority. They have offset their server usage with clean energy, which is the go-to solution for businesses who want to go green. Some of the top green hosts go big when they go green.
From direct experience, 1and1’s support is far below the standard you should expect from a web host. Our vote: pass on 1and1.
Read more about Greenwashing at The Greenwashing Blog.
December 15th in Blog by Tom . Leave a comment.
Very. We are listed by a number of impressive websites as the source for objective news and reviews of green web hosting providers. We are even listed on Wikipedia as a resource! You can help us grow and further our mission of providing objective information on green web hosts by sharing us with your favorite social networking tool (see right below this post), by subscribing to our RSS feed or by following us with twitter.
December 14th in Green Web Hosts by Tom . Leave a comment.
BounceWeb is a recent convert from conventional web hosting. They utilize clean energy credits to offset their energy use. Additionally, they claim to have tuned and upgraded their servers to use 43% less energy. Here’s what they say about their green efforts:
In their words:
“Web Hosting must be more socially responsible by improving server energy efficiency which we have done by switching all of our servers hardware to use 43% less electricity. We provide the best green wind powered web hosting in the world to keep the world beautiful.
Carbon neutral means we do not emit any carbon emissions that cause global warming that we do not clean up. Our wind powered webhosting has been revised to be completely carbon neutral.
A renewable energy credit or REC (http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/gpmarket/rec.htm) is what we purchase to offset our carbon footprint, we have partnered with the leading REC provider 3Degrees as they enables businesses and individuals to fund clean energy and carbon reduction projects through the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates and Verified Emission Reductions.”
Visit Bounceweb
December 13th in Blog by Tom . Leave a comment.
Eco Host Reviews – your source for objective news and reviews of the green web hosting industry now has a new feature! If you run a green web host, you can now submit news and announcements for posting.
There is no guarantee that everything submitted will be posted. Anything that includes a special deal for our readers will be given preference.
If you’re ready to submit news now, click here.
December 12th in Blog by Tom . Leave a comment.
At EcoHostReviews we tend to focus on the consumer of web hosting. However from time to time we will draw some attention to existing web hosting providers that aren’t yet green. This article over at Studio7 outlines just some of the many reasons we should all be cleaning up the web hosting industry. Check it out.
December 11th in Blog by Tom . Leave a comment.
There are so many web hosting providers out there it’s hard to choose the best. It is even harder to filter through all the gimmicks and “services” they offer to convince webmasters to join them. In our opinion these five features should be offered by every web host, which may help you filter out the quality hosts from the chaffe.
- Free, live support. – Live chat support is a HUGELY HELPFUL feature and can be the difference between getting your site back up and running in the shortest possible time.
- Unlimited storage. – This is quickly becoming the standard among web hosts. Although technically there is no such thing as “unlimited storage”, you should never be limited in terms of how much web space your host provides you unless it is a budget or economy web hosting account.
- Unlimited bandwidth. – Bandwidth or “file transfer” is an often limited feature of web hosting accounts. This is also a common way web hosts sneak in extra fees to nail you. Unless you’re operating a file sharing service or video hosting website (two very bandwidth-intensive activities) you really should not be limited in this area.
- Unlimited web sites. – If you stay within storage and bandwidth limits (if you are limited, see #2 and #3 above), you should be permitted to host as many websites as you wish.
- Access to your root files. Although you will rarely be granted access to the server root on a shared hosting account, you should be able to access files right down to the public_html folder which holds helpful files like .htaccess and robots.txt.
Image credit: GraphicRiver.net
