Hosting Features

25MB Webspace
At 5GL we don't believe in making you pay hundreds of pounds or dollars for web space and data transfer that you'll never use. Most small business web sites need less that 5MB of webspace but we give you 25MB to allow plenty of space to grow. [Close window]

500MB Data Transfer
Most small business web sites use less than 100MB of data transfer a month. We give you a massive 500MB of data transfer which is enough for approximately 50,000 average page views a month! We'll let you know well in advance if you come anywhere close to your limit and give you the opportunity to add extra data transfer capacity to your account. [Close window]

99.9% uptime guarantee
Our systems are so reliable that we offer you a 99.9% uptime guarantee. If for any reason your website is down for more than 0.1% of any month, we will refund you the percentage for which you have over paid, e.g., if your website was down for 5% of the month, we will refund 5% of your payment. Until now, not a single website has been down for even 0.01% of any given month, which goes to show our commitment to customer satisfaction. [Close window]

Web based control panel
Control every aspect of your website, in real time with our easy to use web based control panel. From your control panel you can set up email addresses, autoresponders, install free scripts such as hits counter, form mail, message boards, guestbooks, etc. You can also add databases, install FrontPage extensions, password protect parts of your website, set up your free secure pages, check your traffic statistics in depth, customise your error pages, and much more. Your control panel lets you take control of your website, allowing it to change as your needs grow. Everything you'll find in your control panel is free to use. Please feel free to try a demo of our control panel by visiting: http://209.51.153.150:2082/ using username demo & password demo. Please note: This is only a demo control panel and as such some functions have been disabled. [Close window]

Unlimited email aliases
Enjoy unlimited email aliases with full control over there actions, i.e., say you have the domain name www.mysite.co.uk, unlimited email aliases mean you can have anything@mysite.co.uk, e.g., sales@mysite.co.uk, info@mysite.co.uk etc etc. Via our easy to use control panel, you can have all your email aliases sent to one mailbox, i.e., all incoming email goes to one easy place for you to retrieve and read, or, if you prefer you can set individual emails to go to other people. For example, you can easily set up your email preferences so that everything goes to you, apart from e.g., bob@mysite.co.uk, this can go to another mailbox or even forwarded to another email address. There are no limits to what you can do with your email accounts. You can even set up lists with your email address, e.g., a visitor sends an email to info@mysite.co.uk, this email is then sent to everyone on your list, e.g., bob@mysite.co.uk + joanne@mysite.co.uk + steve@mysite.co.uk - the possibilities are limitless, and it's all set up with a few clicks in your control panel. [Close window]

Web mail
Via our easy to use yet powerful control panel you can view all your emails and even send emails via a browser. This useful facility means you can access your email from any computer in the world. [Close window]

Unlimited autoresponders
With unlimited autoresponders you can reply automatically to any incoming emails, e.g., if someone sends an email to sales@mysite.co.uk, your website can instantly reply to them with no human intervention, with a thank you message, e.g., "thank you for contacting us, we will be in touch within 24 hours" etc. Different reply messages can be set up for every email alias, e.g., one reply message for emails sent to sales@mysite.co.uk and a different one for bob@mysite.co.uk. Autoresponders can also be used for sending information to people without the need for any human intervention. For example, "please send a blank email to: more-info@mysite.co.uk" could easily be set up to send them the information via the autoresponder. [Close window]

10 email lists
We don't just supply 1 or 2 free email lists like our competitors. We offer 10 email lists. With an email list, visitors to your website can join / leave your list at any time. For example, if you have a website about local news, people can join your email list and you can then email them all in one go. The email list is set up and controlled via our easy to use control panel which makes administration very easy. [Close window]

Customised error pages
Have you ever visited a website to find that the page wasn't there, only to be presented with a horrid black and white, windows default 404 error message ? Unfortunately, most visitors will look elsewhere when they see an error message like this. This is where your easy to use control panel can help. You can create a single webpage, anything you like, then pop the html code into the control panel and whenever someone gets a 404 error message on your website they see your pre-designed page and not the default error message. The great benefit of this is that your error page could be your home page, thus taking the visitor back to your site and not forcing them away. An easy yet effective method to retain your visitors. For example, say the page the visitor wants to look at is www.mysite.co.uk/my-info.html and they type it in wrong, they will see your home page or whatever you want them to see. Another brilliant feature of our control panel is our error logs. With these you can see where such 404 errors have occurred, which will allow you to easily find any bad links / code in your website and fix it ASAP. [Close window]

Raw access logs
Via our easy to use control panel you have complete access to your raw access logs from your website. These can be used in many programs to analyse the traffic to your website. [Close window]

Free shopping cart systems
If you're going to be selling from your website, chances are you'll need a shopping cart. A professional and reliable shopping cart system can cost anything from £100 to £1500. Thankfully you wont need to spend anything as we include 2 free shopping cart systems with every account. Our 2 free shopping cart systems are: Interchange Shopping Cart & Agora Shopping Cart and can be setup and administered via our easy to use control panel. [Close window]

Free secure server
A secure server means that the webpages are encrypted for security. The same system that all major companies use to take payments over the Internet. To set up your own secure server you would normally need to purchase a security certificate and have this installed on your website. However, we provide a free shared secure server free of charge, a saving of around £100 a year. This means that you can collect sensitive information from your visitors with the same security as the major online retailers. Your free 128 bit (very high security) secure server is set up via our easy to use control panel in real-time. You can have anything you like in the secure area and your visitors system will show that they are in a secure environment. Essential if you are selling over the Internet. [Close window]

phpMyChat room
Via our easy to use control panel you can install your very own chat room so you're visitors can talk to each other in real time. [Close window]

No minimum contract - cancel at any time
Unlike some of our competitors we don't tie you into any minimum contract agreement. We are so confident that once you try our service you will want to become a loyal customers, that we offer you the facility to cancel your website at any time, penalty free and we will refund the unused portion pro-rata to the nearest full month. [Close window]

Password protected directories
Password protected directories means that you can place passwords on any areas of your website as you wish. For example, you may wish for anyone to look at your webpages, but only want family and friends to look at other information. This is simple to do via your easy to use control panel and you have full control over the passwords. Password protected areas can be added, changed or deleted at any time via your control panel. When a visitor tries to gain access to a password protected area, a box pops up asking for their password. No access will be granted unless this password is correct. There is no limit on how many areas you can make password protected. [Close window]

No hidden charges guarantee
Unfortunately, many of our competitors tend to make the decision of which package to buy and the costs quite confusing and charge extras for registration fees, email facility fees, scripts, statistics, etc. Others offer various options at different prices, making it difficult to pick the correct package. That's why we offer everything you could ever need in one simple package. You obviously don't need to use everything, but it's nice to know that if and when your website grows and requires new features, you already have them available. If you need extra web space or additional data transfer, no problem, simply bolt them on. We'll let you know in advance if you get close to your limit. 5GL set out to create an easy to use, honest pricing structure with clear information. Our no hidden charges guarantee means that the price you see is the price you pay. [Close window]

Detailed traffic statistics
Via your control panel you can access your traffic statistics and see exactly what's happening. You can simply view month by month information, such as number of hits, number of visitors etc, or go into great depth and see who looked at which page on every day since your site was launched. You can also see how your visitors found you, e.g., a link from another site, a search engines etc, what page they were on when they left your site, what people are typing into search engines to find your site, plus much more. Traffic information is supplied in graph form and numeric form allowing you to analyse your data in any way you prefer. If you want to increase visitors to your website, then our traffic statistics are essential in showing you what marketing efforts are working well and those that are not. [Close window]

PHP
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic Web pages. When a visitor opens the page, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor’s browser. With PHP your website can enjoy far more user interaction and it can be used for a vast amount of applications. [Close window]

MySQL
MySQL, the most popular Open Source SQL database, is a very fast, reliable database management system. You can use MySQL as the database layer for your dynamically generated web pages. Like most Open Source programs and languages, MySQL has a very practical set of features developed with contribution from many users world-wide. The connectivity, speed, and security make MySQL highly suited for accessing databases on the Internet. Your MySQL database can be fully managed via our easy to use control panel and you can set up unlimited databases. [Close window]

10 Free sub domains
Having free sub domains is like having free additional websites. For example, if you had www.yoursite.co.uk you could also have www.sub1.yoursite.co.uk - www.sub2.yoursite.co.uk etc etc. A sub domain is a separate website that you control via our easy to use control panel. Another great thing about sub domains is that search engines consider them to be a separate website. For example, if you had www.yoursite.co.uk you could also submit www.sub1.yoursite.co.uk - www.sub3.yoursite.co.uk to the search engines as well, resulting in even more hits to your site. [Close window]

Microsoft FrontPage extensions
To upload your webpages via FrontPage, a website needs to have FrontPage extensions installed, something not all website hosts offer. FrontPage extensions can be installed, in realtime via your easy to use control panel. Other supported web site editors include Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, 1st Page 2000, and just about any other website builder software solutions. Using such website editors makes designing your site very gratifying, and very cost-effective. [Close window]

SSH shell access
With SSH shell access you have direct access to your mail, website and files and can manage and edit your files directly on our servers. Use the installed applications, or compile & run your own. Access is set up via our easy to use control panel. [Close window]

Search engine submission tools
No longer do you have to visit the search engines every week to submit your website to them. Via our easy to use control panel, simply enter your website details and click submit and you're done. It's that simple. [Close window]

24/7 FTP access
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol which is an easy way to upload your webpages to your website. Having 24/7 access 365 days a year, means you can upload / change / delete your webpages at any time. Your account is also username and password protected so you don't have to worry about anyone getting unauthorised access and altering your information. FTP software can be downloaded from the Internet, such as www.cuteFTP.com - alternatively, you could search for "free FTP software". [Close window]

10 pop3 email accounts
A pop3 email account is where your incoming emails are stored, ready for you to retrieve them. The advantage of having unlimited pop3 accounts means that you can separate any email alias with complete privacy, for example, bob@mysite.co.uk could have their separate pop3 account which means they would collect their email with a different username and password. Then, all email sent to bob@mysite.co.uk could only be read by him. Pop3 accounts are set up via our easy to use control panel and take only a few minutes to set up. Each pop3 user has there own username and password which you set up and have complete control over. [Close window]

Cron jobs
A cron job is an automated process that operates at predefined time intervals. Unlike our competitors, we allow full access to perform cron jobs which are administered via our easy to use control panel. [Close window]

Free scripts
Scripts are more complex piece of website code which can be extremely useful. We have provided the most popular scripts free via our easy to use control panel, such as:

Visitor counter - shows on your webpage how many people have visited your website. This changes every time you receive a new visitor. You can place this counter on any webpage you like, you have full control over where to place our scripts.

FormMail - rather than asking your visitors to click on your email address that brings up their normal email software, FormMail allows your visitor to type their message in user-defined areas (boxes) on the webpage. They then click on send and it is converted into an email and sent to the email address you requested. The visitor can then be sent, automatically, to a new webpage saying "thank you for contacting us" etc.

GuestBook - your visitors can leave a message in your free GuestBook.

Message board - your visitors can leave messages for you and / or each other and other visitors can also join in. Great for discussion topics. Via your control panel, you simply click on which script(s) you'd like to use and in real-time they appear on your website. Unlike some of our competitors, we also allow you full access to your CGI BIN, a folder on your website that is required to run these types of scripts. With full access to your CGI BIN you can search the Internet for free scripts (there are literally 1,000's) and add them hassle free as required. [Close window]

Email virus protection
It seems that every week a new deadly virus is found that can do serious damage to your computer. In a bid to try and help protect our customers, our systems have email virus protection that scans your incoming email before you receive it. However, please note that we highly recommend you still use virus protection on your computer, such as Norton AntiVirus or McAfee Virus Checker. [Close window]

Server virus protection
A lot of our customers have been concerned over incidents regarding worms (a type of virus) gaining access to web hosts servers, infecting all their customers websites. One particularly big example was the "code red worm" which caused great concern. These security concerns were in relation to a well know server type which a lot of hosting companies currently use. However, we only use high performance UNIX servers for our customers which do not have these security leeks. All servers do have protection in the unlikely event of an attack and if we were targeted for mass attackers (hackers etc) then we could reboot the system within minutes and retrieve your website. To date, our systems have never been down, but rest assured that we are well prepared for any service attacks if they should happen. [Close window]

Your own CGI-BIN
A CGI-BIN is a special folder on your website that can perform certain tasks. You place CGI a script (slightly more complex code than html, webpage code) into the CGI-BIN for the scripts to work. Some of our competitors only allow partial access and some no access to your CGI-BIN. The advantages of having full, unlimited access to your CGI-BIN is that you can search the Internet for free scripts and install them yourself, hassle free. We also provide the most popular scripts free which are easily installed via your control panel. [Close window]

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