| Hosting Plan | Features | Disk Space | Bandwidth | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economy Shared |
|
3GB
|
100GB
|
$3.00/month
Usual price:
|
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Lithium Hosting Introduction
Lithium Hosting was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. The team behind Lithium doesn’t believe good hosting should also be costly, and they have adopted staffing strategies from the “lean startup” and “agile development” methodologies to keep services intact without needing to increase costs.
Unlike many of its competitors that offer a large variety of hosting options with additional services, Lithium keeps it very simple for its customers: hosting services and web security solutions.
Hosting services from Lithium cover the needs of all users, personal to enterprise. Included in its hosting services are shared hosting, reseller hosting, virtual server (VPS) hosting, and Windows hosting (or ASP.NET if you want to be non-commercial about it). They also offer two security solutions – SSL certificates for ecommerce and encryption needs, and a solution for secure content delivery and distributed DNS services.
Lithium Personal Hosting Services
While Lithium’s personal hosting services seem to target individual bloggers and webmasters, their services are fit for businesses of all sizes, as well. To make their offerings attractive to businesses and developers, they offer unlimited SQL databases, email accounts and FTP logins with each personal hosting plan. They have a variety of package options that include varying amounts of storage, bandwidth, and domain addons based on your needs.
The server hardware is supported by a gigabit uplink from two secure datacenters (depending on your geographic location), redundant power supplies, redundant power, HVAC and fire protection.
From a software standpoint, the standard issue server for personal web hosting appears to be Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP for personal hosting. However, Lithium is flexible enough to also provide Perl / CGI-Bin, PostgreSQL, Python / DJango, or Ruby on Rails if you (or your developer) prefers. SSH access and Cronjob support are also available.
On the control panel, Lithium uses the latest version of cPanel for personal web hosting. From cPanel, users can install a wide variety of scripts and softwares from a major autoinstaller, build their site using RVSitebuilder, monitor updates with Trac, or use a variety of other tools for SEO, web stats, email or backups.
Lithium Reseller Hosting Services
The addons, hardware, software, and control panel options available to personal website hosts are also available to resellers at Lithium Hosting. As an added bonus to resellers, they can provide 100s of scripts and software via autoinstaller and also white label their hosting manager, control panel, and domain name server. There are no limits to the number of domains or accounts a reseller can manage under its hosting environment, either.
Lithium Hosting provides three different package plans for resellers. Similar to the personal hosting plans, each page increases the overall storage and bandwidth per month.
Lithium Windows Hosting Services
Windows hosting is expected to be more expensive than standard Linux-based hosting, and this service from Lithium is no exception. Like it’s Linux-driven packages, Lithium offering unlimited SQL databases, email accounts, and FTP logins with its Windows hosting. However, the comparables pretty much end there.
The hardware platform contains 2x the RAM and more storage. There are still gigabit uplinks, redundant power, HVAC and fire detection available from two secure datacenter locations, but Windows hosting includes hardware virtualization that Linux hosting does not.
Software and control panel are completely different, as well. Lithium powers its Windows hosting with Windows Server 2008 – a suitable server software, but not the most recent version. PHP and MySQL are available, but Windows servers perform at their best with ASP.NET programming and MSSQL databases.
The control panel includes a wide array of security features: anti-spam and virus protection, password protected directories, secure FTP access, and IP blocking are the highlights.
Lithium Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting Services
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting from Lithium is scalable and more affordable than spinning up a bare-metal dedicated server.
The redundant power, HVAC, and fire detection is always available from Lithium, but their VPS service is unmanaged unless specified by the user. This allows each VM to be more quickly setup and keeps the user in full control of the server.
Like all of its other hosting packages, Lithium’s VPS plans increase in monthly cost based on the amount of RAM, storage, CPUs, and bandwidth required each month. There are six open source operating systems available from the start – CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, OpenBSD – but custom installs are also available.
Data Center
Lithium uses two secure data centers – one in Tampa, Florida and one in Nurnberg, Germany – to serve its clients across the globe.
Billing & Payments
All payment plans are on a monthly basis. SSL certificates almost always include an annual renewal fee.
Summary
Lithium Hosting appears to be a ‘no-frills’ hosting provider that would match up best with personal website owners, bloggers, and small business owners who need hosting for their website – but nothing more than cheap hosting. Resellers are likely to enjoy the customization and extensive list of scripts and software available through the autoinstaller that Lithium’s platform provides them, as well.
There are a lot of full service hosting providers that can help their users take an idea for a website, online store, or blog from idea to completion – Lithium is not that kind of hosting provider.
If you are already on your way with a website and are simply looking to keep your hosting fees at a minimum, then Lithium may be worth a review. If you are in the early stages, this might not be the best hosting provider for you.