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Free images Host - ImagesHack.us

ImagesHack.us is one of the biggest images host providers. Despite the pop ups and the inconvenience caused by the excess of adverts, the host provides massive bandwidth per domain name (this includes forums as well, so if many members posted large images hosted on imagehack, the files will be down until the next hour when bandwidth throttle will be elapsed again.)

• Supported formats:  .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .tif, .tiff, .swf, - As long as file size does not exceed 1.5 megabytes.

• Advantages:

Many handy tools such as auto clickable thumbnail generator, resizing the image  to different dimentions from 100*75 to 1600*1200. The thumbnails can ge generated with or without the original file’s resolution (you choose), and if you register (for free), you can create your own gallery and see the files you have uploaded, delete unneeded ones, etc. Another advantage is that the files are hosted forever, unless someone reports inappropriate content or copyright infringement. Also, if you find your photo / image been illegaly ripped from your site and hosted on ImagesHack, all you need to do is contact them and they will remove the file, as been a USA based company, they are very accurate with the Copyright laws.

• Disadvantages:

A popup is generated way too often when you view images or enter the site. Understandable as they obviously need to cover the costs of such a big web server, yet we, the selfish free users will moan about it anyway. Another disadvantage is that big files are getting resized upon upload to save bandwidth, so you can’t possible host a huge, high resolution file.  We coul add that hourly BW limit is a burden, but don’t forget that most free file / images host provide a lot less and ImageHack are actually been generous.

If you want to save your bandwidth on the website, you can host the needed images on their free server, then hotlink to the file, but remember if the BW is exceeding you will have an error image with a yellow frog stating the file is temporarily unavailable… so, not recommended for any business or serious website that cares for its reputation.

90$ discount coupon for DreamHost.com

DreamHost is definitely the best solution if you seek a dead cheap hosting that will provide you with specs of dedicated server. The cost is 9,95$ per months, but if you sign up annually in advance, and use the coupon code “Lorelei“, you get 90$ off your deal. As a bonus for an annual sign up you get a free domain registration as well, so grand total - for $29.40 you get 12 months of hosting - 168 GB disk storage and, as unbelievable as it sounds - 1.688 TB bandwidth (1688 GB). This very blog is, by the way, hosted on Dreamhost servers.To

sum it up, $29.40 (after applying the discount coupon) divided by 12 turns to be 2,45$ per month, and for this ridiculous cost you get absolutely mind blowing amount of bandwidth, AND a top level domain of your choice, for the life of your hosting (i.e. if you prolong your hosting deal for a year more, your domain will be kept free, but don’t let this worry you, as the registration is transferable at any time, if you decide to do so). The only case in which you would need to pay for the domain is if you cancel your hosting deal before time (or / and get a money refund).

Catches? There are no catches here, really. Of course when they provide you with such a massive, dare I say - unreal massive data transfer, they don’t really expect you to use it. I should think as long as you use half of what they provide you with - you will be perfectly okay, and when you will start to use it up until the last promised megabyte, your site might crawl slower than it normally does or if all the users on the same server will collectively use up their limit, they can throw the server offline for a bit, but how fat is the chance of this happening?

The only thing you should take into account while availing of the 90$ discount,  you have to pay by credit card. They would not accept paypal or any other form of payment, and more over you need to fax them (or send by airmail) an embossed with pen copy of your credit card. This was meant to prevent people from renewing their account using a discount, as should you decide to prolong the deal for the next year, you would need to pay the full price. That’s just about the inconvenience it may cause, as I remember my sign up process took longer than expected due to the credit card mess and 1 day approval.

Overall I am very very very satisfied with this webhost, they are reliable, provide a good uptime and huge resource of features. The support is excellent by all means, I always got a response and help for my ticket within 1-2 hours, which definitely is a big plus, especially if you break something and run begging the tech team to sort your issue out. Needless to mention is that for this price you really can’t go wrong.

Webhost’s price tells you everything about the quality

We all look at the price first. We do it for different reasons, either we have a limited budget and look for something that will just suit us financially, or, we want to see if the company is reliable or not, judging by the price. When you see a webhost that gives away massive bandwidth for a few measly dollars per month, you have all the reasons in the world to assume that this is an oversold crap host that won’t be here tomorrow, will go offline or… whatever. On the other hand, looking at a cheekily overpriced hosting that gives away a measly space for nice and round sum, you tell yourself that this is obviously a respectable company that holds responsibility for the provided hosting service. (Or, like me, you just tell yourself that they are arrogant and inconsiderate towards the stingy (aka “budget”) users).

Either way, expensive hosting companies get less clients and automatically save themselves the hassle of checking up on the accounts, filtering spammers and hackers, as there is no better filter against abusers than a big price. If you want to get a temporarily account just to be able to send away spam mass mail, you wont sign up for 99$/month host, simply because your spammy intentions won’t cover the costs. This may also guarantee that your website won’t go down due to server dis stability - the less users, the smaller are the chances for  hacking attempts, downloads timeouts, etc.

Cheap hosts, naturally, have less staff, consequently technical support takes longer and some other issues you would start complaining. Instead of fighting with the support team you end up telling yourself that getting a website running for a few dollars a month, without ads and with reasonable uptime is already a great achievement, so be it, as long as it’s online and you didn’t get scammed.

Yes, when a host seems too cheap to be true, I’d strongly recommend to do a little checking on teh company and see how long were they online, what sites are they hosting, and ask in big forums if anyone would recommend them or not. Remember that hosting service is a very competitive area, new companies pop out like mushrooms after the rain and the worst part is - some of them wont be here after the next rain.

Bottom line is, price may not reflect the actual quality of the hosting service (as some artificially rise the price to adjust to “high quality standard”), but it will definitely refelect the qualiy of the company in customer’s eyes. The vast majority of buyers, both online and offline,  is “trained” to think that expensive equals to “good”, and cheap equals to “bad”. Nonetheless, not all the cheap hosting services are “bad”, some are just lowering the price to attract clients and plan to higher it later once they get some accounts hosted, other just managed to find a dead cheap reseller that allows them to provide low cost, or even free hosting while still putting something in their pocket. In case of expensive hosts though, the likelihood of scam is smaller, and the chances of getting a top level host with 24/7 support are bigger.

Well, you are the one who has to pay for it, so you decide…