Yahoo Web Hosting Review

At first glance, the services offered by Yahoo’s web hosting section seem to be on the cutting edge of web designing tools, email applications, marketing offers, and data tracking. These features, and others, are exactly what website hosts are looking for when choosing a web hosting service. And the rates that Yahoo offer are in line with industry standards, as are their claims of unlimited data storage, bandwidth, and server reliability.

The fact that Yahoo is now partnered with (owned by) Google might seem to be a definite plus, especially for websites that will be depending on e-commerce functions to make their site a success. Who can deny Google’s imprint on the world wide web today? Yet this could also become limiting as to the marketing options that can be integrated into website business plan, since Google rivals Microsoft in their quest for exclusivity on the internet.

Getting down to brass tacks, the hosting plans that Yahoo offers feature some very useful tools that can help the individual site host as well as a medium-sized business. Larger websites, especially those involved in e-commerce, generally require dedicated servers and more marketing tools than most shared web hosting companies can offer, including Yahoo.

One of their lower priced hosting plans offers unlimited email storage, a spam protection tool, Norton anti-virus software, and other features along with their claims of unlimited bandwidth and disk space capability. As far as bandwidth and space accessibility goes, virtually every web hosting company on the planet makes these same claims, and truth be told none can actually guarantee this service day in and day out. Sharing server time with other customers will eventually cause delays in page loading and images to be lost, if not out and out downtime and crashes. It’s just a fact of life in the shared web hosting game, and any potential customer who expects anything else will be sadly disappointed regardless of the web hosting company they sign up with.

Yahoo also offers special marketing incentives to attract online business clients, such as discounts on search engine marketing and advertising, as long as it features Yahoo or Google primarily. Even their online tutorials on website marketing tend to guide the reader to use Yahoo and Google templates in advertising plans. This is understandable to a point, as any web hosting company would prefer their own name to accompany advertising campaigns and pop-ups. It borders on overkill when it comes to Yahoo web hosting.

Additionally, the customer tracking features that are offered provide the usual tools like hit tracking, keyword saturation statistics, and the like. These features reflect the same apparent agenda to steer the client to using Yahoo and Google search engines.

For instance, the client can track how they rank in the “top three” search engines. This would be a hint that the client needs to focus on those three exclusively for the best results. Who owns two of the “top three” search engines? Why, Yahoo and Google, of course.

Other features offered by Yahoo web hosting are those which, to the uninitiated, sound like deal makers. A 24/7 toll free phone and email support for technical problems sounds ideal, but again these are claims made across the board by all web hosting companies.

The fact is that no company can guarantee 24/7 accessibility to their customers, and they really shouldn’t. It seems to be nothing more than an advertising gimmick to attract those who don’t know any better. Any reasonable person who has experienced the frustration of waiting on hold for an answer, especially when their website is down, knows that depending on immediate results is an exercise in futility. Downtime will happen. It’s just a fact of life on the internet.

Undoubtedly, Yahoo does offer reliable service and usable tools to help website hosts build and maintain productive and versatile sites. They also provide sufficient service in email applications, script protocols, and database management. And there is no denying Yahoo’s presence on the internet, which can be beneficial if used properly to enhance business and widen the range of possibilities available to attract new customers.

As far as pricing, the current start-up plan costs $7.46 per month when a 12 month plan is purchased in advance. The fine print informs the potential customer that this rate only applies to the first 3 months, when it jumps to $9.95 per month thereafter. $10 a month is still a reasonable figure, yet there are web hosting services out there that provide more features and better software and hardware for that same $10 per month, which doesn’t automatically increase after 3 months of loyal patronage.

In the long run, it would only be fair to tout Yahoo’s prominence on the internet as a potential advantage in marketing and search engine optimization. And their level of technical support and server capability is at least as good as their competition, if not superior is some cases. Yet the lasting impression for this reviewer is one of Yahoo’s over-the-top self-promotion for products and services which are, at best, rather pedestrian.