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Review summary

Full review

Yahoo may be one of the biggest names in the business but does Yahoo Hosting give you value for money, functionality and features? The plans available are on the basic side in terms of add-ons and features but the site creation tools are a valuable addition. We looked at what Yahoo offers businesses to help get their sites online.

Hosting

The Basic package is designed for smaller, personal sites like blogs and comes with a disk space of 100GB, plus data transfer of 1,000GB per month. This is not a package for businesses due to the low amount of space, and the fact that you can only have 10 pages on your site – but the price is low. The Advanced package is a few dollars more per month and with this you get 500GB of disk space and 5,000BG of data transfer per month. Unlimited pages are available but the price is quite high for up to 500GB storage – many hosting plans give you unlimited storage for the same or lower price. The unlimited space and transfer comes with the Premier plan which is the highest priced package.

The plans do not represent the best value for money on the market, but Yahoo Hosting does provide a comprehensive website design tool so you probably don’t need to spend extra on a design package if you are yet to create your site. Everything is included online, for example customizable professional designs and a WYSIWYG interface. However, if you want to use coding and development tools to ramp up your website support is only available on the Advanced and Premier plans.

Security and reliability are good, as you would expect from a name like Yahoo. Uptime is recorded at 99.9 percent and sites are backed up in different locations on a UNIX operating system and Apache servers. For Advanced and Premier customers, password protection is available for certain parts of your site and you get shared SSL certificates to protect customer data. You will need to pay extra for ecommerce services, which is something that brings the rating for this host provider down.

Domains

Yahoo Hosting provides a domain name included in the package, which is fairly standard for hosts these days. If you are with the Premier plan you can register for a private domain so that your contact information is protected. Domain transfers are also handled by Yahoo; again, this is a fairly standard inclusion in a host package.

Email

Many of the other hosting plans provide unlimited email accounts but Yahoo Hosting is less inclusive – you get 250 email addresses on the Basic plan and 500 addresses on the Advanced package. The Premier plan gives you 1,000 email addresses. You do receive a good level of protection from spam and viruses. Handle your email through a web-based service or a POP3 account.

Marketing & reporting

Despite the limitations in storage and data transfer Yahoo Hosting provides a good amount of features connected with marketing and reporting. Promote your site with galleries and slideshows as well as video and audio downloads or clips. Add forms to the site to pick up contact info and generate leads. There is also the option to add PayPal so customers can make small purchases, although a full ecommerce offering needs to be purchased separately. Google AdSense ads provide a means of income generation while you can also link to social networking sites to generate and maintain interaction with customers.

Tracking tools are also comprehensive, including statistics on who visits your site and where you stand in the search engine rankings. You can also add Google Analytics or Yahoo Web Analytics to the site, and list the site in Yahoo Local.

Ease of use

Yahoo Hosting lacks customization options on the lowest-priced plans but the system is easy to use and set up. The service is geared towards beginners so there are a variety of set-up wizards and other tools that take you through the processes required to get your website online, or your website created with the simple site creation tools.

Help & support

Contacting Yahoo customer support is primarily directed through email, although there is 24-hour phone support available. For email enquiries, choose from a dropdown list of categories and narrow your question based on what is available. Yahoo Hosting also provides a help section that contains a list of categories for seeking assistance, including setting up an online store and questions about your account. There is a set of online resources including a KnowledgeBase and tutorials, but there is no online chat option.

Overall

Advanced and experienced users will no doubt be frustrated with the lack of features and the lack of opportunities for coding and development that Yahoo Hosting provides. However, beginners who want a simple way to get on the internet combined with good quality site creation tools will find what they are looking for in Yahoo Hosting.

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