HostBaby
In the vast sea of cheap hosting providers, each service can seem to blend in with the others. They all seem to offer a generic package, similar to others. But you're an aspiring musician, and you want something tailor-made for your needs, something to set you apart from the rest. Is there anything out there just for you?
Yes! Turn to HostBaby, catering to musicians and authors exclusively. Their tools and services will serve you well whether an expert or beginning site builder.
About HostBaby
The same people who founded CD Baby, the independent music distribution website, created HostBaby in 2000. The goal, in HostBaby's own words: “to give independent musicians, authors, and artists the tools they need to grow their careers online.” The great thing about HostBaby is how easy it is to get your cheap hosting website up and running!
Their CMS is kind of like WordPress, where users can create pages and posts in an organized fashion. Their site is easily customized with their powerful yet simple design tools, and custom apps add further value. It features a calendar to post your events quickly, an audio player for visitors to hear new tracks, photo gallery to showcase pics from your last show, custom bios for all band members, press pages, contact forms, and even an online store to sell your merch.
Speaking of selling, if you start a HostBaby account, you can use CD Baby and link it up on your website in order to sell your digital music on Amazon, iTunes, or other online music stores. You also are granted access to ListBaby, their email newsletter management system. Basically, if you use HostBaby, you get the whole shebang.
Benefits Of HostBaby
Just as with WordPress, theme choices abound. There are many pleasing themes, and each one brings a look of professionalism to your band's site. The tools for editing are very simple, allowing easy, basic customization in a flash.
HostBaby's features are also easy to use. With all of the functionality (the audio, photo gallery, calendar, etc.), you are given a wide range of useful features specific to a musician's website. The fact that all you have to do is choose the features you want to include and add your content, no coding required, is an added bonus!
Drawbacks Of HostBaby
Its simplicity leads to one of its drawbacks — it isn't as customizable as it could be. If you want to change a color of a certain component, you have to head to the CSS and alter it yourself.
Another slight problem: you can't really change up the layout of your site. All customization is done through widgets, meaning any further layout modifications must be done manually in the CSS.
Although most of what you do to your site is easy, the content editor and image uploading tools can be confusing to some users. On top of that, the blogging tool is a bit limited — if you relied on WordPress in the past, you are going to dislike HostBaby's blogging tool immensely.
Still Worth A Shot
If you haven't the slightest clue what you are doing when it comes to building a cheap hosting website for your band, HostBaby is a great choice. Pay $20/month or $199/year, and get 10GB storage space, unlimited bandwidth, emails, and mailing list recipients, along with all of the tools described above. Despite its few drawbacks, this is a great way for you to bring your music to the world!
Are you a musician looking to start up a website? Have you considered HostBaby?
