Green Web Hosting: and the winner is…Host Papa!
By Holy Solar | May 20, 2008
Welcome to Holy Solar!
We have created this site in order to spread information about one of the most critical issues facing our technological society: how will we power our jaunt into the science fiction world without a warp engine?
You’ve probably guessed that we’re here to endorse alternative energy based on natural sources, especially the inexhaustible light of the Sun. We’ll be exploring the latest developments in deploying earth-friendly energy methods and equipment here, but we thought we’d start with a few words about our brand new host.
First of all, you should know that our quest for the best in web hosting took us nearly three months, bringing us to every corner of the internet and 20 pages deep on hundreds of Google queries. Before choosing, we had visited every host who offers “green” hosting, contacting several for extended e-mail conversations, and quested high and low for customer feedback and objective reviews.
Going green was, of course, a top priority, but being able to maintain our existing sites was also vital. Cost was not a serious issue, although customer service means a lot to us. We didn’t want to trust our websites to a company who couldn’t be bothered with questions.
It is not our wish to cast aspersions on the other ecologically conscious hosting companies by name, suffice it to say that the few hosts offering direct solar power to their servers were both terribly expensive, and worse, severely limited in allotted resources. I’m not just talking about 500 mb storage limits and prohibitive bandwidth charges, some of these plans don’t offer MySQL , Cpanel, or any of the features one associates with a modern server.
In the beginning, we were inclined to focus on such hosts, preparing to double our annual site costs in the name of ecology. After all, supporting green technology is the only way for it to become more widespread. Sometimes we have to pay a little extra for our convictions.
Several times we were on the verge of signing an expensive and undernourished hosting plan, only to find that the customer service wasn’t up to snuff. Most of these hosts had only an e-mail contact; sure, we don’t need to call our host very often, but in an emergency, do you really want to wait for two days for a response to a support ticket?
In the end, we had to consider the merits of hosts who “go green” by proxy-using a system known as green energy credits. This frankly seemed like a cop-out at first, like planting a tree; a nice symbolic gesture, but hardly a revolution. After all, buying energy credits isn’t the same as running a data center on pure solar power.
And then it dawned on us…in many ways, it’s better! One problem with the way people think about alternative energy is that it has been the province of pioneers and DIYers. There’s been a lot of innovation, but producing energy at home requires a commitment which not everyone has. Ordinary people don’t see how they can participate.
Unless the entire infrastructure, including the grid, goes green, our individual efforts don’t add up to much. The credit model could ultimately grow into the dominant style of energy production, shifting the bulk of the demand from fossil fuels and creating a thriving cottage industry in the bargain.
The more we learned about green credits, the more we realized that it isn’t a cop-out at all. It’s the future. Energy farms can provide homegrown electricity to the grid directly, which will be necessary if the future is to burn cleanly. Purchasing green credits helps make the independent wholesale production of alternative energy economical, in an industry which suffers from huge startup costs, but will become more viable over the next several years.
Once we became comfortable with the green energy credit concept, the choice actually became quite clear. There were two hosts, one with a great name, the other with a great plan. One offered Cpanel and unlimited storage, transfer, and domains. The other had a hodgepodge of strange limitations.
One offered live support chat and a toll-free telephone line. The other made us submit a support ticket for a few pre-sale questions (a new ticket each time!) The final factor was payment…we had multiple reasons for preferring PayPal, but only one of these hosts could be bothered to accept the medium of exchange which nearly every webmaster uses.
We’ll admit to not being crazy about the name, but there’s no doubt about it…we have found the best ecologically active webhost in the Ethersphere. And saving nearly $50 from our old plan, which was already pretty inexpensive, was just a bonus. At $5.95/month, Host Papa’s price is like a breath of clean air.
We’re just happy to know that our hosting fees help support small-scale solar and wind providers, and that the very electricity bringing this site to your screen is from a network of forward-thinking energy farms which will hopefully power your home someday.
Visit Host Papa’s Incredible Eco-Friendly Green Hosting Plan!
Topics: Green Web Hosting, Sustainable Energy |
5:40 pm on July 24th, 2008
We also ended up choosing HostPapa, which was mostly for the price and features. We paid for two years.
We did a lot of research before selecting HostPapa, but since signing up a couple of months ago, we have learned even more that we need to research and some tools to help us. I have ended up on quite a trip down the Rabbit’s Hole…..perhaps learning more than I wanted to know!
12:47 pm on August 6th, 2008
@NIKKOLE - I’d sure like to hear a little more about your experience w/ HostPapa. I’m a web developer looking to add green hosting to the options I offer, and HostPapa sure sounds good, but you’ve got me pretty interested in what you have to say.
And just for the record (and because I don’t mind calling it as I see it), I signed up for AISO.net’s (solar based) hosting a couple months ago, and boy, was *that* ever a mistake! I was on the phone with them three times over six weeks trying to get them to give me an ETA for a feature they promised me when I signed up. Always, it was, “Oh, that’ll be ready in about two more weeks.” The tech support guy (I’m not sure they have more than one) got pretty surly when I called him on it, too. Oh, and talk about expensive hosting, too. Jeesh. So long story short, stay away from AISO.net and their solar web hosting.