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As we move forward into 2021, I wanted to do our quick look back on 2020 and talk a little about some of the enhancements we introduced.
EmailBackup – Your Email Backup Solution
We introduced a cost-effective EmailBackup solution that can automatically backup virtually any email box – from your email hosted at Winhost to other email boxes at other hosts to Gmail and Office 365.
We are also offering email backups for 30 days free so you can test it out and see if it is right for you.
O365Backup – Your Office 365 Backup Solution
For those using Office 365, we launched a comprehensive Office 365 Backup solution. This service will automatically backup your email, attachments, calendar, contacts, tasks, OneDrive, SharePoint, Groups and Teams. There are search and restore tools available.
You are welcome to test the O365Backup solution for 30 days free to see if it is right for your needs.
.NET Core
We’ve kept up with the .NET Core releases – making .NET Core 3.x available on our platform. Recently, we introduced support the .NET 5 (or ASP.NET Core 5 – Microsoft is dropping the “Core” moniker)
SQL 2019
We introduced SQL 2019 into the mix of databases we support.
PHP
We added support for PHP 7.4 and updated PHP 7.3.x and 7.2.x
Application Installer Updates
As usual, we kept as up-to-date as possible with the application versions in our Control Panel Application Installer
Maintained Our Great Service
When the Covid 19 pandemic hit, we quickly transitioned to a remote workforce and we’ve been operating this way since March 2020. Of course, we had to deal with a variety of issues and learn how to better operate in this type of situation. But I’m glad to say that we’ve been able to still deliver on our hosting service promise and even introduce some useful services in 2020.
THANK YOU!
We thank all of our customers and we wish you a safe, healthy New Year!
Visit Winhost to learn more about our ASP.NET hosting solutions
As we move into 2020, in this post we do a quick look back on 2019. Here are some of the features, services and enhancements that we introduced in 2019.
Power Plan
Based on customer comments and feedback, we launched our fourth Power Plan to help address the realities of evolving application requirements for modern applications that are consuming more server resources.
SQL 2017
We launched SQL 2017 as a new option for SQL Hosting.
.NET Core and ASP.NET Updates
We try to keep up to date with the .NET Core updates – so we introduced support for .NET Core 2.2 and .NET Core 3. You can always check our knowledge base for the .NET Core versions that are installed on the server. And if you don’t see the .NET Core version you are using, you can use Self-Contained deployment. We also added ASP.NET 4.8 support.
PHP 7.3
We added support for PHP 7.3. Moises even tested if PHP 7.3 runs faster on Windows Server as reported.
Application Installer Updates
We updated the application versions in our App Installer solution within our Control Panel. You can always check the application versions that are being installed with our application installer in our knowledge base.
Thank You for hosting with us!
We are honored that you trust Winhost with your websites, databases and applications. We wish everyone a very Happy New Year!
Visit Winhost to learn more about our ASP.NET hosting solutions
In this post I wanted to discuss some background about our recent launch of our new Power Plan.
We receive a lot of customer comments on ways to improve our hosting services, as well as suggestions on features customers would like to see implemented. We try to take all this feedback into consideration and, when possible, work towards turning it into something real.
For example, we received feedback from customers whose sites outgrew the Ultimate Plan because their application required more resources. Applications growing in their resource usage requirement is a general trend we are seeing. Every year, each new version of an application has more features, which typically leads to its need for more server resources to run. We’ve seen this happen with applications like nopCommerce, where the older versions worked fine on our Max and Ultimate plans, but newer versions required more resources than our Max Plan. With its recent conversion to .NET Core and new features, we recommend running nopCommerce on our Ultimate Plan but active nop sites are now hitting the resource limit of the Ultimate Plan.
So we launched our new Power Plan to help resource intensive sites that outgrow the Ultimate Plan. We also built a separate high performance shared hosting infrastructure just for Power Plan users. The servers have less site density and are optimized to run resource intensive applications.
Now let’s dive into some of the Power Plan details. The table below shows some of the differences between the Ultimate Plan and the Power Plan. You’ll see that the you get double the resources on key hosting features.
| Ultimate Plan | Power Plan | |
| Memory Allocation | 500 MB | 1 GB |
| Email Storage | 5 GB | 10 GB |
| SQL Database | 5 GB | 10 GB |
| mySQL Database | 5 GB | 10 GB |
| Idle Timeout | 20 min | 60 min |
For a complete feature list for the Power Plan, vist our website. If you have any questions about the new plan feel free to contact us or open a support ticket.
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We are starting a new year, but in this post we do a quick look back on the previous year. Here is a list some of the some of the features, services and enhancements that we introduced in 2018.
Windows 2016
We launched hosting on Windows 2016 with IIS 10.x as another server option for customer websites. If any customer wants to migrate to Windows 2016, just let our technical support team know and we can assist in the move.
ASP.NET Core Updates
We launched support for ASP.NET Core 2.0 and 2.1 on our hosting platform. Winhost supports both Framework Dependent Deployment (FDD) and also Self-contained deployment (SCD). We keep a list of the .NET Core versions that is supported on the servers here. The list of updated as we test and deploy new updates across our servers. If you do not see the .NET Core version you are using, then deploy your application using SCD.
Application Updates
Nothing stands still. We continue to check the Microsoft application feeds and update the applications in our application installer. As of the time of writing this post, here is the list of recently updated apps.
Thank You!
We are truly honored that you trust Winhost with your websites and applications.
We wish everyone a very happy new year!
Visit Winhost to learn more about our ASP.NET hosting solutions
As 2017 comes to a close, we reflect on the year that’s passed and look forward to a new year. Here are some of the new features, services and enhancements that we introduced in 2017.
Last year, we launched support for ASP.NET Core on our hosting platform. Since then, Microsoft has been busy with many minor updates and also a major update with ASP.NET Core 2.0. We’ve been working hard to support .NET Core and support the different versions that our customers may be using. Winhost supports Framework Dependent Deployment (FDD) and also Self-contained deployment (SCD).
While Microsoft continues to update their latest .NET Core initiatives, they continue to update ASP.NET 4.x as well. We kept up-to-date with Microsoft’s ASP.NET 4.x framework and support ASP.NET 4.7 hosting on our platform.
Since WordPress is one of the most popular apps on the web, we host a fair share of WordPress sites. Ans due to its popularity, WordPress gets a lot of attention from hackers, so we’ve helped many of our customers with compromises and hacks. To insure security, it’s important to keep up-to-date with WordPress updates, theme updates and plugin updates.
To that end, we understand that many of our customers may not have the time or the know-how to maintain their WordPress site – so we launched a Managed WordPress service. With our Managed WordPress service, we harden your WordPress application and will update your WordPress core, plugins and themes monthly. Our expert staff will also personally review your WordPress installation every month, looking for any signs of compromise or malicious files. And if any malicious activity is found, we’ll clean it up.
Due to customer requests, we added support for Node.js. If you are interested in using Node.js, get in contact with us.
We also increased the number of FTP users that can be created for each of our plans. The Basic plan supports 10 FTP users, the Max plan supports 30, and the Ultimate plan supports 100.
Although I didn’t highlight any of the behind-the-scenes activity in this list, you can rest assured that we continue to make improvements to our back-end infrastructure, security, processes, hardware and support.
We’re honored that so many of you trust Winhost with your important websites and applications, and we work hard every day to make you happy that you’ve made that choice.
Wishing everyone a very happy new year!
Visit Winhost to learn more about our Windows hosting solutions
How many sites do you manage? Guessing it might be a few, but let me ask you this: how many of those sites did you get paid for signing up at Winhost? Not quite as many, I’m guessing. So maybe it’s time to take a look at the Winhost Affiliate Program.
The Winhost affiliate program isn’t anything new, but I understand if it isn’t the first thing you think about when you come to Winhost. I mean you have to think about your current sites, databases and domains you may have with us. An affiliate program is probably the last thing on your mind. But let me tell you why you might want to move it up on your list, at least when setting up that new site with us in the future.
With the Winhost affiliate program, we will pay you a commission of 60% of the hosting fees paid at the time of purchase. I know, giving you just a percentage probably isn’t helpful so let me break it down for you. Say you sign up a new Max plan hosting account on the 1 year billing plan. The hosting fees paid at the time of purchase would be $119.40. As an affiliate you would receive a commission back to you of $71.64 (60% of the fees paid).
That commission can then be paid back out to you, or put towards your hosting account as credit, it’s up to you. We also offer special incentives for those who sign up 15 or more sites a month using the affiliate program, including higher commission rates and flat rate commissions.
You can get started with the Winhost Affiliate Program here. When you scroll down to the bottom of the page we have a quick form to fill out where we ask for the standard information (name, contact info) and have you create your affiliate ID and password. All affiliate payments are paid either via PayPal or as hosting credit, so we also require a PayPal address when signing up.
After you sign up you will have access to our Affiliate Control Panel where you can view reports on sales made with your affiliate ID as well as request payments and view marketing creative that you can use on your site if you wish to.
If you have questions about our affiliate program, we are always happy to answer them. Just drop us a line at [email protected].
This is the season when everyone is doing their annual recaps, so I figured we should do one too. We had a busy year on a lot of fronts, and here are just a few of the new features and services that we introduced in 2016.
ASP.NET Core (ASP.NET 5)
After a long wait and a naming convention change, Microsoft finally released their highly anticipated ASP.NET Core (formerly known as ASP.NET 5), and you didn’t have to wait for us to support it. We support ASP.NET Core on all our hosting plans that run on Windows 2012.
Microsoft SQL 2016
In 2016, Microsoft released their next SQL version and, of course, we made it available for you to use.
SpamExperts Email Spam Filter
You told us that you were frustrated with increasing spam, so we partnered with SpamExperts to bring you a cost-effective premium spam filter solution.
PHP 7
This year we introduced support for PHP 7. Even though we are a Microsoft-based host, we are keeping up with PHP too, so you can stay on the cutting edge of all aspects of web development.
New Top Level Domains
There are tons of new domain extensions available now, so we revamped our old domain registration system and introduced a handful of new domain extensions. We’ll be introducing even more in the future, and in the meantime we’re open to your feedback regarding other domain extensions you would like to see us offer.
Free Website Migration Services
We understand that moving a website can be a painful process and the prospects of moving can keep you stuck with a less than desirable host for longer than you’d like. We are making it easier to move your site to Winhost by offering free website migration services. Make it your new year’s resolution to finally rid yourself of your tired old host!
Have a great holiday season and a happy new year.
Did you know that a single company owns more than 90 hosting company brands?
Most of them are linux hosts, but in the Windows hosting world they own Arvixe, HostGator, WebHost4Life, EasyCGI, ReadyHosting and a few others.
The corporation that owns all of these hosts is a publicly traded holdings company (NASDAQ: EIGI). Now, theoretically, a huge corporation could provide the world’s greatest hosting experience. After all, they have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on infrastructure and staff. Theoretically.
That’s not the way it works though, at least not in the website hosting world. Which isn’t really surprising, since most publicly traded companies are primarily interested in one thing: making their investors happy. Which they do by maximizing profits, not necessarily by making customers happy.
Winhost is 100% employee owned and operated. We all work out of the same Los Angeles offices, including our technical support staff, many of whom have been here since day one. We show up every day because we love what we do: providing the best Windows server hosting available anywhere. We don’t answer to investors, we answer to our customers.
We’re not suggesting that all huge corporations are bad. But some of us have been in the web hosting industry for a long time, and have seen first hand how the quality of service and support typically decreases for the customer when their hosting company is gobbled up by the big fish in the pond. Sometimes dramatically so.
Which is a shame, since most of us only want a couple of simple things when it comes to our websites: reliability and a competent person to talk to when we have a problem.
If you miss “the old days” when you knew who your host was, we welcome you to join us here at the last of the independents: Winhost. Think of us as a lifeboat rowing away from a sinking ocean liner. Climb aboard. We always have room for one more.