Web Hosting for FIRST Teams

[Robert Hafner]

I got my start, way back in the day, on Team 96 (what was, at the time, The LEGO Maniacs, and is currently JESTER) and can honestly say that my life would have been completely different was it not for the influence of FIRST.

It was on that note that I decided to offer a discount for all FIRST Teams with my webhosting company, Soluna Enterprises. For details about that, look at our Specials page on our main site, along with our Hosting Prices (which is before the special is applied).

The coupon code for this special is "usfirst", and please include your team information in the "notes" section.

As a FIRST Alumni, I want to give back to the community, and I'm hoping this will help with that. If you have any questions, please email rhafner@solunaenterprises.com and include your team information.

[stevek]

ipowerweb has a pretty full setup and a few years of experience to back it up. Their hosting is extremely cheap and reliable.

[Robert Hafner]

Soluna Enterprises is also extremely cheap (for FIRST teams especially) and has quite a lot of experience. We also pride ourselves on reliability. Our servers have so far had literally 100% uptime, and the ISP through which we are contracted have incredibly high standards. We run FreeBSD systems because of their security and stability.

Having spent four years as the webmaster for my team (and having been the runner up for the website award numerous times), I know what it is that FIRST teams need with their web hosting, which I have passed on to the people under me in the company, and we at Soluna Enterprises look on the FIRST teams with special interest.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I love FIRST and think that everything about the program is amazing, and as such I was to give back to the program. We're willing to give special treatment to the teams, especially during the competition season when we know how vital it is that the teams have their sites up. We also know that a lot of teams use their sites for more than just placement of information. This is why we give FIRST teams unlimited MySQL databases, email addresses, and FTP accounts, along with large amount of control over their account. We expect teams to take advantage of this to develop web-based tools for their sites, and are even willing to help with that- while we can't devote all of our time to helping teams code, we love everything about it and plan on looking at the sites constantly to see how things are going, and even helping out when needing to. We're interested in hosting FIRST sites as a way to build upon and be part of the FIRST community, not just so be some lame company trying to stick its nose in.

I still remember the first national I went to, down at Epcot, and Dean Kamen gave a speech that has stuck with me ever since. He talked about the responsibility of companies to give back to the community, and how every person has a responsibility to change the world for the better. Dean Kamen is my hero, and part of what I'm doing here is attempting to follow a little more in his footsteps and to also give back to the community that gave me so much.

Again, if anyone has any questions, just ask them here or email me at rhafner@solunaenterprises.com

[stevek]

I'm sure everything you say is true, but nothing I saw on your site compared with this-

Current offer- (and the offers constantly get better avery few months)
• 10,000 MB Hosting
• 2,500 Email Accounts
• Website Builder
• Free Domain Incl.
• Host 6 Domains in 1

and it all costs 7 or 8 dollars a month! They also guarentee their servers 365, not just during the season.

I could tell you that I would make money if I set this up for you because I use them form multiple business sites as well a shsrobotics.org and I get discounts for using their service, but I wont. I'll tell you to go there and set up your own account and call me if you ahve any questions. I'd be glad to help for free.

[jyeung]

Overselling. That's mostly how iPowerWeb can make profit. There are many positive reviews about them, yet there are quite a few negatives as well. I haven't had any personal experience with them, but if I wanted hosting, I'd pay more for it.

[Robert Hafner]

At no point did I say that we only guarantee uptime during the season, I just commented that we are aware of how important it is to have websites running during the season.

I'm not here to argue over what hosting company is better than what, I'm here to offer a service to FIRST teams because I come from a FIRST team. With out discount, FIRST teams get hosting for only $3.75 cents a month, which includes unlimited email accounts and tools to help create your site. We also allow month-to-month payments, which if you want from the other provider you must pay an account setup fee of $30 (we have no set up fees) and pay higher prices a month. We also limit the amount of clients we put on a server, so there is none of the performance lag felt on overcrowded servers. While this does cost us more, because we need more servers for the same amount of clients, we don't feel it would be worth the performance cut simply to jam a few more clients on a server.

The point is, depending on what you want, you can go with either company. With Soluna Enterprises you get a company that knows first hand what being in a first team is about, and that is eager to help people on those teams. We are offering this to FIRST simply because we want to help, not out of some ulterior motive, and if you don't feel that its that helpful than free feel to go to whatever company you want. For those teams that decide they would like to try what we have to offer, just sign up for an account (and put in "usfirst" for the coupon code to get the discount) and try us out- if after the first month you decide its not worth it, then move on, we don't lock people in.

Regardless, I know that this Saturday the new game comes out, and I wish you all good luck in this upcoming season.

[Ryan M.]

Yeah, guys, quit trying to "prove" to him that some other company is better... if you truly feel it is, use them, but don't ruin it for others.

[KTorak]

I use Illusionhosting.org for my personal website...200MB space, 5GB Transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, a decent control pannel, unlimited email accounts, cron jobs ftp, and some random other stuff that ill never use (ssh, ssl) for $3.50/month. The only draw back is that their main business website is in French, but I use them becuase a family friend is a server admin for them. You also get pretty good tech support on their IRC channel (when the admin is around...usually a couple times a day).

[stevek]

I've used Ipower Web for several years for several buisness sites. I know other in the Tech/IT industry that use them as well.

The ability to host multiple domains is the reason they have such a large disk space. Prior to this offer they only offered 2gigs.

If you think that's overselling, then you may need to look at other options for the use of you we site.

Our team is at 90% capacity because we offer lots of images and multi media- from several years worth of robotics. As well as a large datbase that tracks student hours and the hours we spend on each activity.

My business website is constantly pushing the limit because I use it for client approvals (VIDEO and AUDIO FILES) and file transfers around the world.

So in the world where many people don't know the first thing about propper compression of images or video, (ala- 100-500MB downloads of team animations on the Animation Forum) I don't know why a robust server is considered overselling.

Plus- with the cost of disk drive going down and the capasity going up, I can t understand why any hosting company is offering less than 1GB. (and definately for under $10.) The last time I had a site that was 500MB or less was in the last centry- literally!

I wasn't knocking the first guy. I was offering an alternative. This thread isn't about one guy making money off FIRST teams- its about WEB HOSTING FOR FIRST TEAMS. If you want to talk about overselling, look at the 3rd post on the thread.

Instead of knocking someone for offering solutions, Try offering your own- Solutions not Criticism. I was not criticizing I was stating options.

I wish you all luck as well.

[Randy]

Figured I'd throw in a link

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=24872

Can't beat free

[fnsnet]

I also offer free hosting for FIRST Teams.

USFirstHost

Check it out. I'm primarily aiming at teams that can't afford hosting somewhere else, but I've got the space for anyone that's interested.

Use the built form to apply.

Look forward to seeing you.

Matthew