More and more people are coming online and using social services like Facebook and Twitter or starting their own websites and blogs. Having your own web hosting with a personalized domain is probably one of the most effective ways of communicating with the world.Please consider the following before going out and buying your first or next web hosting account.

The data centers that are needed to run a web hosting company consume enormous amounts of electricity. In October 2009, US Infrastructure magazine did a study on data centers and compiled some interesting facts.

Between 2000 and 2005, the energy consumed by large data centers doubled worldwide.

In 2006, online data centers in the US accounted for 1.5 percent of the entire country’s electricity use.

The cooling equipment needed to keep the equipment from over-heating can consume 25% of the power that goes into the operation of a data center.

The good news is, more data centers are turning to green energy, mainly wind and solar, to power their operations. iPage web hosting is one of them.

A few years ago when eco-friendly web hosting was becoming popular, the pricing structure was at a premium, often more than double that of non-green hosting and with significant limitations on disk space and bandwidth.

In recent months, prices have been drastically reduced and web hosting companies like iPage can now offer green hosting accounts with unlimited disk space and bandwidth for only $3.50/month, under pricing most of their competitors. That low price also includes a free domain name for life and a free Carbonite account for online PC backups.

For webmasters not needing full hosting, iPage also offers blogging only accounts with a choice of blogging platforms, free domain name for life, 10 email accounts, online photo gallery software, enhanced security, and search engine submission so people can find your blog online.

If you are considering purchasing web hosting, take a look at carbon neutral web hosting from iPage.

Technorati Tags: blogging, carbon neutral, eco-friendly, electricity, environment, green web hosting, internet, ipage, web hosting, Website