Joe Lennon Rants, Raves and Recommendations

Why is it so difficult to put an indication on the discs letting us know whether they are Disc 1 or Disc 2?

Something that has been a large source of irritation for me over the past number of days is the length of time it takes for some websites to send you the emails they promise you on their website. The main culprit of this is when you are a registered member of a website and you have forgotten your username and/or password, and you fill out the site's "Forgotten Password" form to retrieve/reset your password. What's supposed to happen is: You enter your email address/username or whatever, press submit, and an email appears in your inbox either telling you your new password or giving you some means of resetting your old password. This is a clever function and is relatively secure and I've had to use it on several websites in the past.

So when I went to use PayPal for the first time in a while the other day, I had forgotten what email address and password I had used for my Irish account. I tried several possible variations to no avail and eventually gave up and clicked on the "Forgot your password" link. The first thing it asked me for was my email address, and to fill in the value of a captcha box. Once you get past this stage you are given several options for confirming your ownership of the account: Phone number, Address or Email. For some reason, the Home phone number (of which it shows the last 2 digits to guide you) was not my own, or any phone number I have ever had. Similarly, the Street Number of the address was not that of any house I have ever lived in. I finally settled for the email option, and pressed the Continue button.

I have still yet to receive that email, and have no idea if that account even exists anymore. If it doesn't exist, mind you, why does it let me even try to find the password? And how come the email never got delivered? Luckily for me, the next email I tried happened to be the correct one, and had the right home phone number and street address, but I decided to test the email functionality anyway. Nothing. I checked my inbox frequently for a couple of hours and still got nothing. Eventually I managed to figure out for myself what the password was and logged in, before the email finally arrived, three hours later.

This morning I was attempting to cancel my membership to IGN, which was billed to my credit card last week despite IGN's "My Account" page reporting that they had no credit cards on file for me. Again I was having trouble remembering my account particulars so I used their forgotten password form. After filling it out I checked my inbox for the promised email, but nothing. So I waited, and waited some more. Then I tried several more username/password combinations before finally realising I needed to login via GameSpy or some other method. Whatever. I logged in and cancelled the subscription, and wouldn't you know it, the email came in almost immediately after, along with my cancellation confirmation.

Both of these experiences annoyed me. What should have been a simple procedure was made frustratingly complex, and didn't deliver the expected result in an acceptable timescale. Sure, users shouldn't forget their usernames/emails/passwords, but we do. So to make sure that your customers' experience isn't one where the user ends up with steam coming out of their ears, you have to make this function simple, secure and speedy. Otherwise, it's almost useless.

You may have noticed that I've been quiet in these past couple of days, which is more than likely something to do with my Apple iPhone arriving yesterday. I have documented the process of unlocking, activating and jailbraking the phone, as well as getting it to work with specific Vodafone Ireland settings like GPRS and Voicemail over on my "So, I bought an iPhone..." blog.

All prices in this guide INCLUDE VAT @ 21% unless otherwise specified. You can download a basic comparison chart in Excel format or in CSV format. I hope you find this article useful.

Register365 (Hosting365)

According to register365.com, Register365 is Ireland's "largest and leading" hosting services provider, with over 75,000 customer representing 35% of the Irish market. The company was formed in 2001 by Stephen McCarron, previously of Novara.ie, after a falling out between McCarron and former business partner Eoin Costello resulted in McCarron resigning as director of Novara. Since then the company has gone on to achieve turnover of approx. €8 million per annum.

I have several hosting accounts with Register365 and have been a customer for several years now. Although the personal nature of the service provided is not as it was when the company was smaller, I still find the service and support to be of high standard. They have suffered two major outages in the past few years, the most recent of which occurring on the 7th February 2008, where an electrical short in a fan coil caused the fuse supporting their cooling systems to blow. To be fair, the company responded well to the setback, although it did come under criticism from Michele Neylon, Managing Director of Register365 rival Blacknight Solutions, for the way the company dealt with the issue.

Register365's shared hosting solutions are available on both Windows and Unix platforms. Their Business Hosting package offers 5 gigs of storage, 50gb monthly transfer, support for the hosting of up to 25 websites, 250 500mb mail boxes and unlimited MySQL, PgSQL and Microsoft SQL Server (Windows platform only) databases, for just €4.78 a month, or €48.34 a year. Their Enterprise Hosting offering promises 10gb of storage space, 100gb of bandwidth per month, support for up to 50 websites, 250 1gb mail boxes and again unlimited databases. It additionally includes a dedicated IP address and SSL support, for €12.04 a month or €120.94 a year.

Rather confusingly, to find Register365 (or Hosting365)'s dedicated server offerings, you must go to the Hosting365 website, which for some reason, is different to the Register365 website. Their solutions range in price from €302.44 a month (or €3,629.27 a year) to €1,572.94 a month (or €18,875.94 a year). Their servers feature Intel Xeon processors, a variety of OS/database options, a variety of control panel options and Premium SLA support.

Blacknight Solutions

Blacknight Solutions is an Irish-owned web hosting, domain name registration and colocation provider based in Carlow, whose servers are located in Clondalkin and Amsterdam (EDIT: According to Michele they no longer have a server in Amsterdam, in spite of what the Blacknight website states). Michele Neylon, who was appointed managing director of who founded the firm in 2003, has been nominated for IIA Net Visionary Awards on several occasions, and maintains several blogs and websites such as Technology.ie, I Squatted Your EU, Michele Neylon :: Pensieri, Broadband Watch and the Blacknight Company Blog.

It seems that most hosting companies have caused been the subject of controversy in some shape or form, and Blacknight is no exception. Last year Tech blogger Tom Raftery reported on his own negative experience with Blacknight, who, it seems according to Tom, are not very open to public criticism from their customers. In Tom's case According to Tom, the hosting company had contacted him and requested that he move all of his websites from their servers after he criticised the company for losing his podcast archive and not informing him. This post sparked an interesting debate, check out the original post's comments.

At the lower end of the spectrum, Blacknight offer their Soho Hosting account, which boasts 500mb space, 15gb monthly transfer, support for up to 4 websites, 200 POP3 mailboxes and 2 MySQL databases. This package costs €42.35 per year on a Linux server, or €36.30 on Windows 2003. Their Basic Hosting package offers 1gb space, 25gb bandwidth, 300 POP3 accounts, support for up to 8 websites and 5 MySQL databases, for €119.79 (Linux) or €107.69 (Windows). The next step up is the Standard Hosting deal, which provides 1.5gb space, 50gb transfer, 400 POP3 accounts, 16 websites and 10 MySQL databases for €211.75 (Linux) or €180.29 (Windows). If you need more space/bandwidth, Blacknight also offer Professional and Enterprise shared hosting packages.

Blacknight also offer dedicated server hosting, with their basic package featuring a Pentium D915 processor, 512mb RAM, 500gb transfer and 2 80gb hard drives. This package costs €181.50 a month. If this doesn't suit your needs, Blacknight will tailor this solution to your exact requirements upon request.

LetsHost.ie

LetsHost.ie's website proudly claims to host over 11,000 websites since 2003. The company has achieved a reputation around Ireland for being very inexpensive, particularly with .ie Domain Name Registration. At the time of writing, LetsHost.ie were the cheapest .ie registrar I could find, at €24.14 a year. On the other side of the coin, LetsHost.ie have suffered some PR setbacks, most notably for suspending the account of a user who publicly criticised the company. That said, I've heard many positive reports about their service, and their prices are hard to beat.

LetsHost's main offering is their Complete Hosting Plan and offers 2gb web space, 99gb bandwidth per month, 99 POP3 accounts, support for 5 domains, 99 MySQL databases for €114.71 for 2 years or €71.87 for 1 year. If you prefer to pay monthly they charge €9.56 a month. LetsHost.ie also offer a Complete Reseller Plan which allows you to host up to 25 accounts, gives 3gb web space, 99gb bandiwdth, unlimited POP3 accounts and unlimited MySQL databases for €36.30 per month or €363.00 per year.

Novara.ie

Novara.ie, established in 2000, have consistently been in the top three fastest growing Irish web hosters, according to their website. They claim to be one of the best funded independent Irish hosting companies, with shareholders including the Dublin City Enterprise Board and the Dublin Business Innovation Centre. Novara.ie has a customer base of approximately 10,000, including high profile clients such as Jurys Doyle, 98FM and several government departments.

Novara's hosting offerings are quite expensive in comparison to the competition. Their Basic Hosting package features 150mb disk space (hardly huge by today's standards), 3gb monthly transfer, 150 POP3 accounts but no MySQL databases. If you want Linux hosting, this package will cost you €119.79 per year, with Windows customers receiving a 10% discount. They also have more expensive Business and Professional packages.

Novara's strength lies in their dedicated server offerings, via servers.ie. Starting at €281.93 a month, they have several servers available, from entry level Celeron servers to professional Intel Xeon powered servers.

Digiweb

Digiweb is one of Ireland's leading broadband and web hosting providers, located in its own premises which promises data centre grade hosting. Digiweb's StarterHosting package is about as cheap as they come, offering 2gb diskspace, 30gb transfer and 50 POP3 accounts for €24.19 a year. However, without support for PHP and MySQL, this offering will not be of use to many people. With their AdvancedHosting plan not only do you get scripting and database support (5 MySQL, 5 PostgreSQL), you also get 5gb disk space, 50gb bandwidth, 100 email accounts and support for hosting 2 web sites. This package costs €48.39 a year. If you require Windows hosting, or if you require more databases, disk space or support for further domains, Digiweb also have BusinessHosting and EnterpriseHosting plans, costing €120.99 and €362.99, respectively.

Additionally, Digiweb offer Linux and Windows Developer Hosting packages, which allow you to host unlimited domain names, with 30gb web space, 250gb monthly traffic, 1000 email accounts, 20 MySQL databases, 10 PostgreSQL databases, 10 SQL Server 2005 databases (Windows only) for €362.99 per annum.

Digiweb also offer colocation services, starting at €108.89 a month for a 1u server with 500gb of monthly transfer. They also have dedicated server offerings, also starting at €108.89 a month, with Dell servers featuring Celeron, Dual Core Xeon or Quad Core Xeon processors.

IEInternet.com

IEInternet.com is one of few Irish hosting companies that have been in existence since before the turn of the millenium, which may provide reassurance about their stability as a company. On the downside, their plans are quite expensive compared to the competition, particularly so considering they offer considerably less storage space than companies such as Digiweb and Register365.

Their SOHO Hosting Plan offers just 20mb disk space, 1 POP3 email account and 1gb monthly data transfer for a whopping €137.94 a year. The Business Hosting Plan offers 100mb space, 20 POP3 accounts and 2gb of bandwidth, with a single MySQL database for €290.40 a year. The Application Hosting Plan gives 250mb space, 100 POP3 accounts and 4gb transfer, but their website gives no indication as to how many MySQL databases it provides, it just merely states that "MySQL Functionality Supported". This plan will set you back €551.76 per annum. If you require Windows hosting, the Windows Hosting Plan offers 50mb space, 2gb transfer, a dedicated IP address and an IMAP mailbox for €290.40 a year.

Other Providers

There are of course, many other hosting providers in Ireland that I haven't included above. If you would like your company to be added to the list below, please let me know.

• WebWorld
• IrishHosting.net
• IrishDomains.com