Static IP Address

While some hosting companies will claim that IP-less hosting is the same as having a static IP for your virtual domain, nothing could be further from the truth. Without a static IP, the HTTP 1.0 protocol is not supported for the IP-less virtual domain. Without a static IP, you are unable to maintain a level of independence for your website. In general, you should not host your website with a provider using IP-less virtual hosting.

We pride ourselves with a high level of service, and would never use IP-less virtual hosting for our clients. All clients enjoy exclusive use of their own IP address, which starts with 209.15.x.x. Colchis currently has available /17 worth of address space (32,768) assigned from ARIN.

Anyone using the HTTP version 1.0 protocol will not be able to visit your website. This includes all Netscape 2.x and MSIE 3.x browsers, along with some AOL browsers. This is the main reason we do not offer or support IP-less virtual hosting, it is a poor quality service.

The answer to this question can best be described by the problems with not using a static IP as given below. With non-IP based hosting, you do have an underlying IP address, the difference is that the use of the IP is not exclusive, but shared with hundreds of other virtual domains.

A static IP address allows you to access your website while your new domain name is in the process of propagation or while your domain is being transferred from another provider. This is not possible with IP-less virtual hosting.
The HTTP 1.0 protocol, still used by some web browsers, completely unsupports IP-less virtual domains.
The IP-less hosting method will limit the possible email accounts you can use.
Use of the underlying IP address is not exclusive.
A reverse lookup on your domain name under the IP-less method will result with a hostname probably not in any way associated with your website.

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