Website Hosting Packages Comparison : Hosting For A Quid

SUITABILITY A quick overview of what kind of site or customer would suit which package.
FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
An advertising-supported service for Geeklog-powered websites only.	For small, personal sites without message boards, forums, chat rooms or complex blog-type structures.	For small, personal blogs and those who want their website up and running quickly.	For sites without much traffic, but run by people who want the freedom to experiment with different types of scripts and programs.	For small businesses venturing into the online world for the first time.	For small businesses who don't have a dedicated designer, and for medium-traffic blogs or community sites.	For larger businesses, or community sites featuring forums or other interactive sections and with lots of members.	For large businesses, people who blog for a living, Internet professionals, ridiculously popular community sites and those who don't want to ever worry about limits.
IF YOU'RE NOT SURE What to do if you don't know where your site or project fits in.
At HFAQ, we want you to be confident and happy with your chosen package. If you're not sure which way to go, there are a few things you could try: 1. Talk to us. We always appreciate contact with current or potential customers, and will be happy to listen to your website idea or project and advise a suitable hosting plan accordingly. 2. Be conservative. Although domain names are non-refundable, hosting packages are very flexible and there is no rule that says you can't pick a hosting package and then change your mind later. We heartily recommend the Stainless Steel package at £4 per month for people just starting out, because even though it has very modest amounts of data transfer and storage space, it has all the features of the Gold package. Thus you're free to experiment with all the different scripts at your disposal, try a test run of your website, and make an informed decision on what package to eventually settle for. 3. Go all-out. Of course, being conservative just doesn't sit right with some folks. The Gold package is only eighty quid a year, which really isn't a lot of money when you consider that you won't have to pay it again until this time next year. We guarantee you will be pleased with your purchase - once you start playing about with all the scripts and programs and seeing what this package can really do, eighty quid will seem like a pittance, and you'll never have to worry about using up too much data transfer or running out of space. 4. Again, talk to us! We mean it! It's in our best interests to try to get you onto a hosting plan that suits you, rather than just automatically recommending the Gold package to all and sundry - fleecing customers is a very short-sighted business plan, and we're in this for the long run and always have been. Click here for our E-mail addresses. We look forward to hearing from you.

And now, on to the more in-depth details.

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THE ESSENTIALS Because this stuff's really, really important.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Setup Charge	1p	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free
Monthly cost This is how much the package costs per month.	Nil	£1	£3	£4	£4	£6	£8	£10
Yearly cost This is how much it will cost to buy one year up-front. With most packages there's quite a big discount.	Nil	£12	£30	£40	£40	£60	£70	£80
Yearly savings This is how much you save by purchasing a year of the chosen package up-front.	Nil	0	£6	£8	£8	£12	£26	£40
Yearly cost, illustrated monthly This is how much the hosting works out to per month when you buy a year's worth up-front.	Nil	£1	£2.50	£3.34	£3.34	£5	£5.84	£6.67
Storage space This is how much space you have on our servers' hard drives. Graphics-intensive sites, or ones offering video or audio downloads, will need more space to store their files. A reminder - 1GB = 1,000MB.	50mb	100mb	100mb	100mb	2.5GB	2.5GB	5GB	25GB
Monthly data transfer This is a measure of how much data is transferred through our lines, which affects how many visitors your site can handle in any given month. Sending and receiving E-mails, and uploading files, also counts towards your monthly quota.	N/A	500mb	500mb	500mb	10GB	10GB	50GB	250GB
Data Transfer Illustration - Example 1 This row shows how many times a five megabyte website could be downloaded completely (IE visited by people who looked at every page, picture, sound file etc.) in a single month.	N/A	100	100	100	2,000	2,000	10,000	50,000
Data Transfer Illustration - Example 2 This row shows how many times a five megabyte website could be looked at in a month - but is adjusted to reflect the fact that barely anybody will visit every single page on a website. This is not intended to be at all accurate, because these things never are, but it serves well as an illustration of concept.	N/A	2000	2000	2000	40,000	40,000	200,000	1,000,000
Fully-integrated Domain Management Update your WHOIS data, point your domain at another, that kind of thing. DNS-related issues.
ACCESS Because a web hosting account isn't much use if you can't actually upload anything.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Web-Based control panel This state-of-the-art control panel lets you perform all the day to day functions of running your website. It's an online program, so you can access it from anywhere in the world through your Web browser. Features include webmail, automatic script installation, file management and lots more. You're probably going to end up using this control panel quite a lot, so we've made it as intuitive as possible.
Master FTP account The FTP account lets you upload files to your website using a web development program like DreamWeaver or FrontPage, or a standalone FTP client like FileZilla.
Additional FTP logins Additional FTP accounts are most commonly used to give others access to an account for the purpose of sharing a web development project - without giving them control over the entire website. By restricting their access to their home directory, you can ensure they can only modify files within this particular space.							10
SSH Telnet Access SSH server access allows you to log directly into the server your website is hosted on. You can manipulate your website files using Linux commands, and perform the extra-techy tasks that most people will generally never have to use. This feature is for advanced users and mad people only.
PROGRAMMING Because you all know we love that techy stuff.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Miva Miva Empressa scripts language supported.
Sun ONE ASP (Chilli!Soft ASP) Sun ONE ASP (Chili!Soft ASP) allows you to use the Microsoft ASP programming launguage on Linux.
RealAudio RealAudio programming supported.
Perl, PHP and Python Full support including the most commonly used modules for Perl, PHP and Python.
MYSQL Databases Pronounced My Sequel, MySQL is a true multi-user, multi-threaded SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. SQL is the most popular database language in the world. MySQL is a client/server implementation that consists of a server daemon (mysqld) and many different client programs and libraries.	1	1	10		5	10	40
MYSQL Web Interface Directly manipulate the tables in your SQL databases using this online interface powered by PhpMyAdmin. Very handy for debugging and testing, and a great tool to help you learn PHP/SQL.
MAIL Because it's good to talk. Type. Whatever.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Mailboxes This feature allows you to add mail boxes to your account. A mail box stores mail on our server until you download it using an email client like Outlook Express or ThunderBird.	4	4	4	10,000	20	20	100	10,000
Webmail We offer one of the most powerful and flexible WebMail systems. Features include your own address book, search features, customisable interface and scheduling.
Mail forwarding This feature allows you to forward any email address @yourdomain.co.uk to any email address you choose, for example a hotmail or Gmail address. You can forward each address to up to three different addresses.
Catch-All E-mail Forwarding This feature allows you to forward ALL email from yourdomain.co.uk to any email address you choose, for example a hotmail or Gmail address.
Spam filters Junk mail filters use analytical technology to strip out junk mail before you receive it. This feature also allows you to set an address to send the junk mail to so that you can check this address to ensure that only junk mail is being caught.
Autoresponders This feature allows an email address on your account to automatically respond with a specific message.					10	10	40
Mailing Lists Email distribution lists allow you to have a simple form on your website with which your users can subscribe or unsubscribe their email address. You can then send an email to all members of the list using our simple system.	1	1	1	10,000	2	2	20	10,000
STATISTICS Because we're nosy and curious.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Error & Access/Referrer/Agent logs, including log file download This feature allows you to download your server access log as a zip file. You can then manipulate the file locally on your computer to get any specific data you need.
Webalizer graphical statistics Webalizer is a highly powerful and easily configurable web site statistics package that analyses the access log files that we automatically create for your website.
AWStats graphical statistics AWStats is a powerful and fully featured tool that generates advanced graphical web server statistics.
Advanced graphical and text counters This feature allows you to add a plain text or graphical counter to your Website. You also get a full set of statistics for the page the counter is on.
ADVANCED Because telling people that we're "Playing around with the Advanced options" makes us sound big and clever.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Subdomains Sub domains allow you to have new web addresses for separate areas of your Website. For example you could have support.yourdomain.co.uk and point this at your yourdomain.co.uk/support/ directory. You can use sub domains in conjunction with additional FTP accounts, creating in effect simple hosting accounts with a sub domain and an additional FTP account.					10	10	1000
Microsoft Frontpage Extensions If you have used Microsoft FrontPage to design your website you will need to install the Microsoft FrontPage Extensions to use all the features.
Online File Manager If you have no FTP access or are behind a firewall, this handy front-end allows you to download, edit and upload files to your website.
Free search engine submission Submit your site to 10 search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN!
Backup and Restore your website This feature allows you to download or upload your website as a zip file. You can use this feature to make a regular backup of your website in case you make any serious mistake.
Advanced website password protection This feature allows you to password protect a directory on your website. By keeping the password a secret you can let only people who have the password into this area. You can also dictate usernames for individuals.
Locked Area Lite Locked Area Lite is a sophisticated password protection and membership management system that gives your users access to a password protected members area. Locked Area Lite manages the users login details and allows the webmaster to email and manage users from a simple web interface. It's like the password protection program listed above, but far more powerful.
Scheduled Tasks This feature enables a program to run automatically on the server. You can set your program to run hourly, daily, weekly or monthly.
IP Address Blocking This feature allows you to block certain IP addresses from visiting your website. VERY handy for sites running Content Management Systems such as Geeklog or Joomla, or for forums - ban comment spammers directly from their IP address.
Website Directory Auto-Indexing If you upload a folder that doesn't contain an index.html, index.htm or index.php file, you can elect to show the content of that directory as file listings or show a 403 forbidden error.
E-COMMERCE Because we've gotta pay the rent.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
Shared Secure Server access You can make any document on your website secure using our shared secure server, which mirrors your website.
Shopping Cart (Agora Cart) Agora Cart is a simple shopping cart script, ideal for smaller businesses.
Shopping Cart (osCommerce) osCommerce is a free fully featured shopping cart solution that includes many features including templates, customer logins and support for Paypal and Worldpay.
Shopping Cart (Zen Cart) Zen Cart is arguably the world's most popular shopping cart program, and with good reason. It's FAR more complex than the other shopping carts here, but if you take the time to explore all of its features you'll find that there's not much it can't do. Simply put, it's the business.
D.I.Y. SITE BUILDING TOOLS Because it's nice to build your own site rather than pay somebody a lot of money to do it for you.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD
£300 worth of software including Link Evaluator, Site Submitter, Traffic Wizard, Password Manager and 12 other popular titles.
Graphics Archive
Fifty "Premium" website templates
Sixteen Flash-based website templates
One hundred "Professional" website templates
Four hundred "Basic" website templates
Twenty-two thousand, five hundred royalty-free stock photos
*More web art than you can shake a very* big stick at**
Fifty Flash Banners
Banner Templates
WEBSITE BUILDER This is really special. So special, in fact, that we can't fit a decent description of this program into this little box. So, click here to go to another page that'll tell you all about it and which packages support it.	FREE	STEEL	STEEL PLUS	STAINLESS	COPPER	COPPER PLUS	SILVER	GOLD