Top Ranked Web Design Resources

I’ve recently had a chance to review the most popular web design resources. Ranking factors that were used are listed below each resource. The categories include hosting companies, domain registrars, twitter marketing tools, freelancing websites, and icon resources.

#1. HostGator – 9.95

Reliable, trustworthy host that has been around for many years. They do free migrations from your old host, have cPanel and make it a pleasure to host with them. Their hosting support is rated #1. I believe they may be running a 20% off special at this time.

#2. JustHost – 9.91

This is a top rated web host with Bluehost China Reviews, unlimited space, free domain and free installation. We’ve heard many good things about JustHost from our web designer audience. Be sure to check them out when comparing web hosting companies.

#3. iPage – 9.89

Although it doesn’t have cPanel, iPage is nonetheless a terrific host. With the price of only $4.50/month, eco-friendly wind energy power, free domain, free migration, $75 Google Adwords credit, $50 Facebook credit, free SiteLock security suite ($100 value) and much more, iPage is a very solid web hosting company in 2011.

#4. FatCow – 9.84

Lack of cPanel is a disavantage, but the price is extremely attractive with the current hosting special for only $56 per year. Another huge plus is they transfer your website from your old hosting for free and even give you a free domain name when you sign up. If you are environmentally friendly, you should also know that they use green hosting 100% powered by wind energy.

#5. BlueHost – 9.2

Barely making our top 5, BlueHost has an attractive price and feature list. Their control panel is a modified version of cPanel which I found very easy to work with.

Domain Resources:

Ranking factors: i) cost; ii) reliability; iii) customer support.

#1. GoDaddy – 9.97

This registrar giant is the oldest and most reliable. Reliability is super important for your domain registrar because in 99.9% of the cases you let them handle DNS forwarding to your hosting company. If you use a cheap host, they can easily do something wrong with the DNS, which will make your website down despite your hosting company being up. Scary isn’t it? In addition to being very reliable, you can get cheap .com’s at only $7.49 each from GoDaddy. I use GoDaddy as the registrar for all of my domains.

#2. Domain.com – 9.79

#3. NameCheap – 9.77

#4. Moniker – 9.69

#5. 1&1 – 9.54

Twitter Resources:

Ranking factors: i) quality; ii) cost; iii) customer support.

#1. TweetAdder – 9.93

Highlights: best Twitter marketing tool to push your business forward. It gets you Twitter followers for your keywords daily on complete auto-pilot. Very inexpensive for the features you get. I use it on WebDesignDev’s Twitter account (http://twitter.com/webdesigndev)

#2. MarketMeSuite – 9.75

#3. SocialOomph – 9.42

#4. TweetDeck – 9.1

#5. TweetWhistle – 8.72

Icon Resources:

Ranking factors: i) quality; ii) cost; iii) customer support.

#1. IconFinder – 9.96

Highlights: more than 188,000 icons, very easy to use. This is the top icon site for web designing.

#2. IconShock – 9.75

#3. IconSeeker – 9.72

#4. IconsPedia – 9.34

#5. FreeIconsWeb – 9.20

Freelancing Resources:

Ranking factors: i) number of projects; ii) cost; iii) customer support.

#1. Elance – 9.98

You can get as much as 30% of your clients from this Freelancing site. Very easy to use.

#2. Freelancer – 9.89

#3. oDesk – 9.42

#4. Guru – 9.45

#5. iFreelance – 8.80

Font Resources:

Ranking factors: number of fonts, quality of fonts, frequency of updating, ease of use.

#1. Fonts.com – 9.97

Highlights: It is one of the largest font websites online with a total of 20,000+ fonts, with many different categories and almost any font you can dream of.

#2. DaFont – 9.95

Every designer knows DaFont.com as it’s one of the best free font websites. Why didn’t it make #1? It just doesn’t have the same selection as Fonts.com. Further, while the fonts are free, they are mostly for personal use and can’t legally be used on your clients’ websites, since that use qualifies as commercial.

#3. FontSpace – 9.90

#4. Urban Fonts – 9.78

#5. Google Fonts – 9.55

Google Fonts is a relatively new Google project and I hope it’s one they won’t abandon. While the collection is still very small, it has been growing. If Google takes their font service seriously this resource could be one to definitely bookmark.

Resource By: http://www.webdesigndev.com/reviews/top-web-design-resources