Green web hosting reviews

Please allow me to introduce another Noobpreneur-style project – Green Hosting Estate.

Green Hosting Estate is a site dedicated to the emerging green movement in Web Hosting industry. It contains green web hosting reviews, news and tips – and of course, an informative blog.

This green web project is actually has a “been there, done that” concept. However, I notice that site owners of similar sites are not effectively touch the “green” issues themselves – Most tend to use the go-green as a marketing tool, rather than the main reason they setup their sites.

So, with Green Hosting Estate I’m trying (hard) to put up much information that basically answer this question: “What on earth is green web hosting and how it can make me a better environmentally conscious site owners?”

Why green web hosting is increasing in importance these days?

If you think the Internet and anything related to it are eco-friendly, think again. Consider this new study by mcKinsey and Company:

Data centers produce higher gas emissions than the countries of Argentina and the Netherlands and are projected to surpass the airline industry as carbon emitters by 2020 (mckinsey.com)

Pretty surprising, isn’t it? Here are more facts about web hosting today:

• Studies show that by 2005 the web hosting industry used as much energy to power their servers as the equivalent of 14 major power plants (GreenGeeks green web hosting)
• The average server produces the same emissions as a 15 mpg SUV (HostGator web hosting)
• The data centre where the server is located which consumes on average as much electricity as 30,000 households (Super Green Hosting)

…and so on. To me, as a webpreneur, this is one of the major concerns we need to address more seriously.

What has green web hosting got to do with small business?

As we all know, we are at the Information Age, where the Internet plays a major role – Internet business giants (i.e. Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are still growing at unbelievable pace. I view them as the sign of times – e.g. as long as Google is still growing well, the Internet will grow at rapid pace.

The growth is great news. However, it also brings pitfalls – one of them is the polluting of web servers powering the Internet.

Many, if not most, small businesses today are having websites, and they rarely run their own web servers on office – Most of them are renting web spaces, partnering with web hosting providers in doing so, in exchange for a smallish amount of money.

To go-green means small business websites are hosted and powered with green or eco-friendly energy, in such a way that the whole small business website’s operations are carbon neutral (or, in layman’s term – are not having negative impact to the environment.

By hosting your small business website with a green-powered web hosting provider, you have made a small move that can greatly impact the environment in a big way.

Please visit my green web hosting reviews site to see what I’ve been working on, and do let me know your opinions :)

Ivan Widjaya
Green web hosting for your small business websites