REVIEW: Eco and Green Web Site Hosting – Solar VS Carbon Neutral…

REVIEW: Eco Web Site Hosting – Solar VS Carbon Neutral

Trying to choose web hosting for your self or a client can be challenging. Choosing Green hosting is a bit less challenging as there are less hosts to choose from but you still want to make the right choice.

Let’s compare two leading green hosts:

The Solar Powered Web Hosting Company (AISO)

The Carbon Neutral Web hosting Company (DreamHost):

• MAKING A DIFFERENCE:
  • Solar Powered:
    • AISO: Currently has their own solar panels and runs their own energy efficient servers in their own energy efficient building. They are working on a Green Roof. This shows amazing dedication and shows they are definitely trying to make a difference on every level. This is a tough act to follow. You even see a web cam of the solar panels HERE.
  • Carbon Neutral:
    • DreamHost: Is a GREEN Hosting company because they are carbon neutral. That means they purchase renewable energy certificates that offset the carbon emissions generated by all of their business activities. They hold a Certificate of Carbon Neutralization from http://www.thegreenoffice.com. Their site HERE details more about their commitment and how they approach being green.
• VALUE:
  • Solar Powered:
    • AISO: Currently they offer a tiered program that offers 750 to 1.5GB for storage and 5 to 25 GB of traffic bandwidth for $10-50 a month. The hard drive storage is for the website and your email accounts. You can buy more storage and bandwidth also.
  • Carbon Neutral:
    • DreamHost: DreamHost is offering unlimited bandwidth and storage for about $10 a month if you pay yearly. This one size fits most approach seems refreshing. Plus no worries if your site starts to take off and get popular.
• FEATURES:
  • Solar Powered:
    • AISO: Currently they offer Linux, Mac and Windows plans and their more expensive Windows plans offer advanced features like Live website traffic reports, ASP, ASP.Net 1.0-3.5 with AJAX extensions, and Cold Fusion MX 7 Enterprise. These features can be essential to some of you who are still in the proprietary world of Windows.
  • Carbon Neutral:
    • DreamHost: DreamHost is offering unlimited bandwidth and storage. They also offer a number interesting features like “one click installs” of programs like WordPress, Gallery, ZenCart, PhpGedView, Pligg, dotProject, Moodle, Joomla, phpBB, MediaWiki, WebCalendar, Advanced Poll. This means installation is very easy. DreamHost seems to excel in the area of Open Source offerings and their servers are all Linux based.
• CONTROL PANEL:
  • Solar Powered:
    • AISO: The control panel is coming along. There was a long time where there was no panel and we are glad to see that they have added one.
  • Carbon Neutral:
    • DreamHost: The control panel is very advanced with countless features like “one click installs” media streaming and cron jobs.

PANELS SCREEN CAPTURES: (click images to see a larger view)

If you need hosting, go Green with solar powered AISO or with one of the leading Carbon Neutral Web hosting Companies DreamHost.

VitalBodies would like to thank both companies for giving us all some excellent green and sustainable choices.

Which did you choose?