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In recent months most marketing and advertising sites have been inundated with the name GVO, the headlines being written becoming more and more fantastic by the day as flocks of hopefuls flooded into the GVO fold hoping to strike it lucky or rich or both.

There is no doubt that Joel Therien’s launch (or, more correctly rebranding and relaunch – more of that later) was a well executed and well supported piece of internet marketing and has without doubt been hugely satisfying for him and his team.

So what’s it all about, why are the network marketing crowd champing at the bit, MLM’ers drooling over the pay plan and newbies foaming at the mouth and authoring copy that they can’t possibly have the knowledge or experience to back up? It is my hope that people reading this post will appreciate that despite some of the crap and awful advertising that has been foisted upon the internet community by the “get rich quickers” and program hoppers out there, that a little bit of honest perspective is exactly what you are looking for.

One thing I personally find a great turn off is things such as comparisons with GDI which are blatantly nonsense – GDI is nothing more than an MLM program selling domains, originally the Western Samoan dot WS! Many people fell for the hype and some did make a lot of money but most probably did not and will not and to suggest that GVO is in any way similar is a fallacy and very misleading – how many decent websites have you seen from GDI users…not many I’ll hazard because they are not a marketing and hosting service provider and they do not enable their customers other than to sell on the domain MLM and throw in a few pathetic static templates to add a “website” to your shiny new domain. OK, got that one off my chest at least

Let’s step back from all the marketing for a moment and remind ourselves that GVO is a rebranding exercise, albeit one that is accompanied by some very real physical changes and improvements to the company previously known as Kiosk.ws

Kiosk.ws has long been touted as the hosting company run by internet marketers, for internet marketers and although its shared hosting plans did not come cheap, they were endowed with a bundle of extra services that made the overall package very good value for money. Not least of these extras were the unlimited autoresponder accounts and the provision in more recent times of live conference room services for members. Add to that the multi-tier affiliate program, ten levels deep and paying recurring monthly commissions and you had a very good package which was married to a very reliable hosting service with excellent support.

However, after many years of operation, it was obviously felt that things had become stagnant and there began a long process of updating and revitalizing the company from the ground up. Customers in 2009 have far higher expectations than those of a decade ago, particularly in relation to technology and Joel began the long and no doubt costly process of overhauling what had, to be honest, become a very dated looking web presence, even if the services underneath remained pretty sound.

For long time customers like myself, watching the whole process unfold has been fascinating and sometimes frustrating. The first real major change was the relocation of the company’s data center from Canada to Texas. Fortunately, this transition was pretty smooth from the customer’s side although it was obviously not a walk in the park for all the folks at Kiosk. Around this time, the first intimations of GVO started to appear – the first time I saw the now well known logo was on a tee shirt worn by Joel on one of his very early video blogs although no mention was made of the name for some time.

The plan slowly unfolded and it became apparent that the thrust of the marketing was going to be on the network marketing aspect of the relaunch – basically there had been some minor tweaks made to the compensation plan for affiliates, but it was nothing really drastic. It just goes to prove how dressing something up in new clothes and giving it a new image is often a very effective tactic – most of the new GVO hordes had never heard of Kiosk.ws and probably would never have considered becoming customers. The relaunch was of course given great impetus by bringing on board many big name marketers with large opt-in lists od get rich quick hopefuls!

Whilst I can see that this was a great way to generate huge amounts of “buzz” I believe it also has a not inconsiderable downside – that being that outside of these network marketing zealots, the image of the company can also be tarnished in the eyes of regular webmasters and bloggers and even affiliate marketers who just want a competent and reliable place to host their sites or to be part of a reputable affiliate program. Rightly or wrongly, there will be some suspicion of promotion with a focus so heavily weighted towards network marketing and that is a shame because GVO has a long and excellent history in providing value and service in its primary business.

Putting all that aside for a moment though, is GVO better than the old Kiosk.ws? In many ways I would have to say yes, but I will also mention a few reservations. It as taken a very long time for everything promised to new customers to materialize. As an old hand, this does not really surprise me, it is the way the company has always been and is really an indication of their thoroughness and desire to get things right for their customers. Unfortunately I suspect that some new customers have been put off by this.

However, the new GVO services are definitely a step up from Kiosk as it was – the autoresponder service has been completely revamped and the new EresponderPro can really now be considered a rival to the big services like GetResponse and Aweber with far more features and user friendliness than the trusty old Supersponders we had at Kiosk. The whole look of the company is far more in tune with the 21st century and for both visitors and customers the website experience is far more pleasant and less frustrating to use.

I have no doubt that many of the eager beavers who signed up, tempted by the siren song of money for nothing will reduce in numbers as the months go by – there will always be this kind of fallout after a big MLM focused launch. Those that came primarily for a good hosting plan with a great suite of marketing tools will appreciate the value and savings and stick around if the service does not fall short.

So, how has the service been amidst all the marketing hoopla of recent months? Well, unfortunately there have been some problems and some of them quite severe, others just annoying. The blame for some of them can be laid firmly at the door of the company but others cannot. A few examples of recent issues experienced by this webmaster are:

1) A DDOS attack on this domain – by no means the fault of the hosting company. However, the new support staff in India were very disappointing and it took three weeks to even get to a tech support person who would acknowledge the problem and do something about it – that was effectively three weeks of downtime simply because nobody would listen to what I was telling them, preferring to insist it was all being caused by my Wordpress installation. This was the first big fail I had ever experienced with the company. It took several more weeks to get things sorted out.

2) A failure of the new cloud technology provided to GVO by Dell led to another spell of downtime for many Kiosk.ws customers but to be fair to GVO, it was totally beyond their control and they worked like madmen to get everything up and running as quickly as they could. Their only real failing during this crisis was a lack of communication with customers – several of us ended up manning the support room ourselves over the weekend!

3) Server security became a burning issue over a period of a few weeks recently with constant hacking of the shared server on which we reside – finally an I-Frame attack exploiting outdated Worpdress blog installations resulted in all sites being moved yet again to a new server. Since then things have been OK.

On this occasion however I was very disappointed once again with the company who moved my domain without any notification beforehand and in doing so lost a fair chunk of data. To make things worse, the cavalier response from support was that it was my responsibility to keep offsite backups (agreed, it is) but worse, their refusal to admit that they had made an error and to apologize for their mistake. I think in all the years I have been with the company, this was a first and I know it would not have been allowed to happen back in the days of the Canadian data center. I was not a happy customer at that point.

However, when all is said and done, and with all my years of experience of hosting companies, you could do a lot lot worse than GVO. Joel is a genuine and honest guy with a team who, for the most part, always have their customers’ interests at heart. They have never refused to enable a server setting for me or to refuse to host a particular script. For the money you pay you get a very comprehensive set of webmaster and marketing tools which would cost you considerably more were you to buy them all separately.

I shall be sticking with GVO for the foreseeable future and if you are looking for a great package in terms of hosting and building a business online, I think they are definitely worthy of serious consideration.

To find out more about the GVO Hosting & Marketing Packages available visit GVO Hosting & Marketing and if you want to learn more about the affiliate compensation plan we recommend attending one of the excellent GVO Academy presentations online.

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D9 Hosting have recently relaunched their website with a much cleaner and more user friendly look, but the changes are not just cosmetic.

D9 Hosting have announced some big changes and the major points are listed below:-

New Hosting Packages From D9 Hosting

The core package now offers all the disk space and bandwidth you will need for your home and small business sites, whilst new reseller accounts allow you to sell hosting services to your own clients, under your own brand. You even get a free domain name reseller account so you have access to domain names at wholesale prices.

For clients that need more power, there are now VPS (virtual Private Servers), Hybrid and Dedicated Plans. So, no matter what your hosting needs are, D9 Hosting can accommodate you and your customers.

New Server Locations

No longer do your sites have to be situated in the US. For customers that need quick response times to Europe, D9 Hosting announce that they can now provide you with VPS, Hybrid, and Dedicated plans located in the UK.

New Customer Rewards (subject to change)

As an existing customer of D9 Hosting a new range of special offers is being introduced and at the time of writing you can now take advantage of the following:-

UK VPS Special – 10 GB extra Disk Space, 50% Extra RAM, 10% Discount

Minisite & Graphic Design – 10% Discount For All Customers

These will be updated every few weeks so it’s important that you keep checking back to make sure you don’t miss anything!

Cheaper Domain Names

This part of the D9 Hosting update process was actually implemented as a test a couple of months ago, and you’ll be pleased to know they are sticking with the new cheaper domain name prices.

You can now register, renew, and transfer domains through D9 Hosting for only £6.99 per year (.com pricing, other TLD’s may vary), this is one of the cheapest prices on the net so you may want to consider using them as your domain registrar.

You can find out all about D9 Hosting’s plans and prices by clicking on the graphic and visiting their new website.

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When embarking on this review, I did so knowing that Easy CGI have proved to be one of the most popular hosting companies listed on my sites in terms of click through numbers if not perhaps conversions. This says a lot for their presentation and the design of their promotional creatives; their banners in particular generate an unusually high rate of interest, but are they any good and how do they perform in the cutthroat world of web hosting?

Well, Easy CGI started out back in 1994 as an internet service provider before opening the doors to their hosting operation around four years later. They are a relatively large company now and over the years they have concentrated on success through excellent standards of service and customer satisfaction. Judging by many consumer comments around the web, they have performed well in this area, and many customers have nothing but complimentary things to say about them. This is a good start and a definite plus point for any host.

On visiting the website you will be greeted with a good layout and easy to navigate pages. As is now common practice, their shared hosting plans are prominently displayed offering an at a glance feel for pricing and features. There are currently three levels of shared hosting, initially a little confusingly all labeled “Advanced” and ranging in price from $7.96 to $21.56 per month. Even the cheapest of the bunch offers a good level of features and pricing levels are pretty much average for a budget hosting option. For full details of each plan the company’s website is clear and concise with a nice comparison page making it easy to see how each stacks up against your requirements.

All in all the website is workmanlike and straightforward, pretty much like the company. Nothing is hidden and there aren’t any silly restrictions or small print horrors waiting to trip up the unwary. We should mention that Easy CGI is Windows hosting as opposed to Linux. This means no C-Panel, so, if that is an absolute requirement you will need to look elsewhere. Having said that their generic control panel is functional and does what it is designed to do although some users have criticized it for not being quite as quick and sleek as other major control panels, and the fact that its interface is unfamiliar to many means a learning curve to familiarize yourself with a different layout. If you’ve never encountered a control panel before, it’s no different to learning any other panel and shouldn’t cause any problems. Not the prettiest interface either but aside from that, there’s not much to say about it and it gives almost total control over your sites and domains..

Aside from the shared hosting you will also find Virtual Private Server options starting at as little as $43.96 a month if paid yearly. They also offer co-location servers and again, prices are reasonably competitive. Domain services are available via the company too and they can also arrange email only hosting for a very low monthly fee.

Sticking with the shared hosting however, the company support a wide range of databases and even the cheapest plan gives you 50 MySQL’s which is pretty generous. You’ll get all the usual things like FTP and PHP, SSI, PERL, ASP and AJAX, plus of course the usual 24/7 support, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and add ons like a website builder (not sure how good it is) 500 pop email accounts and statistics. It’s really a question of storage and bandwidth differences among the plans, but all are reasonably endowed in those areas.

We mentioned support and by all accounts they perform well with both phone and email help systems that we haven’t managed tofind any real complaints about from users, some going as far as to claim them to be “the best I’ve ever encountered”, which, although relative, is good to know. Billing is straightforward and easy to administer for users, all through their control panel. There’s a built in ticket system and some tutorials, FAQ’s etc. to help out the complete novice and all in all the experience is a pretty painless one for people of all levels. Overall it is fair to say that EasyCGI are a competent enough bunch with very good support channels for their customers. They provide everything you would expect without offering anything exeptionally unique but their prices and services are fair, straightforward and reliable and their reputation pretty solid. For those who are “Linux or nothing” zealots they will obviously not be of interest, but for everyone else, certainly deserving of consideration. EasyCGI.com – 3Levels of Web Hosting to Meet Your Needs

Technorati Tags: Hosting Reviews , Easy CGI Hosting Review , Affordable , Reliable , Shared Hosting , Windows Hosting , Web Hosting , EasyCGI , Web Hosts Reviewed

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