mangoHOST

REGISTER A DOMAIN

A domain is the "web name" that folks use to go to your website. For example: If you own the domain "mangohost.com" then folks can visit your website by typing www.mangohost.com into their web browser. Domain registration fees generally range from $9 to $50 per year.

You can register your domain at mangoHOST for as low as $15/year! We will maintain your domain for you, but you still own it! (Which means, if you leave mangoHOST, you can take your domain name with you.)

DESIGN A WEBSITE

Simply having a domain name is not enough. When folks browse to your domain, they will see nothing unless you design a website. This is where you put together the text and the images and the links that you want displayed on your website. You can design your own site, or pay someone to do it for you. Design fees can range widely, depending on lots of variables. Roughly speaking, you can generally expect to pay $50 to $600 for a typical site (nothing fancy), and upwards of $1000 for Flash, multimedia, or "killer" designs.

mangoHOST can work with you to design a website that is appropriate for your needs, whether personal, business, nonprofit, or other. We have a variety of options and reasonable rates for designing your site, starting as low as $75. And a 10% maintenance is automatically included with all sites we design. Let us know your needs, and we'll work with you to develop a website with cool, functional design!

HOST YOUR WEBSITE

Now that you have your domain and your website, you need a place to put it so that it is accessible to the world at large -- in other words, you want it on the "world wide web" ("the web" for short).

You could put it on your home computer, but the website's availability would depend on your home computer being on and properly sharing the website, and your connection to the Internet being maintained. For personal sites, this is probably okay. For most everything else, this is a Very Bad Idea™.

What you really want is to host your site on a server, which is a computer dedicated to hosting websites. Generally, these servers are in datacenters with a 24x7 Internet connection at speeds hundreds of times faster than even a "broadband" (cable/DSL) connection.

Like web design, hosting fees can range widely. The cost usually depends on the quality of the server and datacenter, the amount of disk space included, the amount of bandwidth included per month, and if any other services are included.

Disk space is how much room all your webpages, images, emails, and other files take up on the server. Transfer or bandwidth is how much data your website generates. Every time someone pulls up a page on your website, all the files and graphics needed to display that page are transferred over the Internet, thus using up bandwidth. Every time you send out an email, you use up bandwidth (usually very small bandwidth, unless you include email attachments). Depending on disk space and bandwidth, plus any other included services, hosting fees will generally range from $5 to more than $100 per month. Overages are when you go over your allotted disk space or bandwidth. As with cellphone minutes, you usually incur overage charges.

At mangoHOST, we provide a high-quality server in a world-class datacenter, and have a variety of plans starting at $10/month to fit almost every need, from personal to eCommerce sites. Even our overage charges are extremely reasonable. If our plans don't meet your needs, let us know what we can do to customize an individual plan for you!

eCOMMERCE

If you're a nonprofit organization or small business, and you want to accept online donations or sell your products/services online, eCommerce is the answer. Doing eCommerce is simple. In addition to the above, you need an online shopping cart, an SSL certificate, and a payment method.

SHOPPING CART

An online shopping cart allows you to easily create an online catalog of what you want to sell (products, services, and/or donation levels) and allow customers to select those items. The shopping cart takes care of calculating the totals and adding any applicable fees or taxes. Online shopping carts generally range from free to $700. (Don't assume that costly ones are always "better" -- some of the absolute best software is free!) mangoHOST includes a free, powerful shopping cart with all eCommerce-enabled hosting plans.

SSL CERTIFICATE

An SSL certificate encrypts data. To do eCommerce, you need to ask customers for private information (address, phone number, credit card info, etc.). In this day and age of IDENTITY THEFT, you want to assure them that their information is securely transmitted over the Internet. Most information transmitted over the web is in what we call "cleartext," meaning it can be read just like you are reading this webpage. You don't want private information to be in cleartext, you want it to be SSL-encrypted. SSL (secure sockets layer) simply means the information entered on a website is encrypted before being transmitted over the web. It is then decrypted on the other end. So if someone captured the transmission, they would not be able to read the information. It would take them years to crack 40-bit encryption, and even longer for 128-bit encryption (128-bit encryption is common for online transactions).

DON'T WORRY! Even if you didn't understand a word of the above, you can still easily setup SSL (secure) web transactions. All you need is an SSL certificate which, in turn, requires a dedicated IP address (this just means that your domain name gets its own unique Internet number). SSL certificates generally range from $40 to $900 per year. mangoHOST offers SSL certificates for as low as $40/year, even if you don't host with us. Or if you select one of our eCommerce-enabled hosting plans, we charge you a $40 setup fee to cover the first year's SSL certificate, and automatically renew the certificate for you for FREE in the subsequent years that you are with mangoHOST! And a dedicated IP address is also included with all eCommerce-enabled plans.

PAYMENT METHOD(S)

There are many ways to collect payments online. You can take checks and money orders, but the two most popular ways are via PayPal™ and credit cards. Some eCommerce businesses (like their "offline" counterparts) accept multiple payment methods. To do PayPal, you simply need a PayPal account. To accept credit cards, you need a merchant account (just like in the "offline" world). At mangoHOST, we can help you setup your eCommerce site with almost any payment method you choose. If you don't have a merchant account, we can even help you obtain one at great rates! See our extras page for more details.