I've been going through some of the old threads here and elsewhere and am close to pulling my hair out. For every "I love them post" there's almost an equal amount of "they suck" posts. So I thought rather than ask for recommendations, I would ask a slightly different question... Are you still with the same host (US based) you were with a year ago? Are you still using them? Even if you are still using them are you happy or just waiting to make a move? Any general opinions on grid, clustering, and cloud hosting? Don't quite understand what the difference between the 3 is; but am familiar with cluster technology from back in my mainframe days. Can't believe it's "new" for PC servers. I want to only do business with a principle - the people who own the machines. (NO RESELLERS!) I would love to find something kinda in the middle - not the $4-5 per month with unrealistic offerings and not Pair with $30 per month for their smallest plan. But, I am looking for uptime, communication, and even a little hand holding now and then. And I do not want a host that moves your sites from server to server, breaks your blog, and then tells you a site is up when it is toast. I've got that now. Please refrain from telling me about your product or service, I am only looking for customers here who have been happy with their current host. Hopefully, if worthy, your name will come up anyway. Oh, yeah, I will be checking if happy customers actually have hosting with the company they are recommending. I so don't want to be doing this again anytime soon. Sorry, this got a bit long. It's been a long weekend of research on this and I still have no ideas.
I tried several hosts. One was from Hell City. After trying several, I am not with HostGator and find them really good. I most certainly like their live support and have had to use them on several occasions. Kazba
I am using two separate hosts right now. I list them on the site in my sig. However, for your convenience they are what you are probably referencing because they both get a lot of their awesome and equla amount of they suck. BlueHost Hostgator Hostmonster Hostmonster and Bluehost are the same company. I have actually used all three and have been happy. Bluehost as been a bit more polished in their interface and have had solid tech support. They even validate personally their signups to verify legitimacy. Both times they called me the next day (as I have signed up at 2AM both times). Hostgator has been excellent and I think i have noticed better performance, but they have their rules and can't really bend them. The biggest thing has been that they don't allow you to signup the domain (or didnt when i started) unless the DNS already pointed to them. Well this causes an issue if you wish to limit any downtime. What I did to alleviate this was to first add them as additional servers and then remove my old ones once pushed over completely. Anyway, I know you didnt want too many personal stories, but consider it proof I have actually used the companies I am suggesting take care.
Thank you for your informative reply. Customer stories are useful information, it's the "I'm a webhost and I'm great" that I was hoping to avoid.
No. i change to a couple this year. its seem what i choose is bad i currently host with iwhic hopefully think go smooth as they advertised it. what i want is a stable host with good uptime, good support, and not oversell. there is too much oversell account right now. and they do it without thinking the condition of the server. so it always make the server unstable and go down...
My mother has been with TotalChoiceHosting for about 3 years now. They've been good. I used them every now and then, but I host myself now.
I've been with ixwebhosting for 1 and 1/2 years now and was planning on dropping them a while back but they have been stable since they moved/upgraded their datacenter earlier this year. I probably won't renew and just move my sites over to my lunarpages account which I have had no issues with. I've been with lunarpages since April 07 with 12 sites on it and still happy with them.
I was with HostPC for several years before switching this year, primarily to get more disk space for less. I am now using Bluehost with great success.
I have found this to be an interesting question. I posed the question to two different webmaster forums and both have received very few replies. Seems to me that is a very poor showing for web hosts in general or indicates that people aren't willing to share when they find a good one. Seems like if someone could really put together a great staff, fair offerings, and do business honestly that they could really clean up. I've always said that running an IT shop of any kind is not about simply keeping the equipment running but about providing a valuable service. It amazes me how many webhosts don't get that concept.
I think there's a couple of factors at work here. Most of the time, customers when they get a good host, they don't right a lot of reviews nor do they really say anything about it. However, if they get a bad host, then they'll make a point to tell everyone. That's one issue. The second one is that people's needs change, or their interests change. They no longer run the site that they had. Sometimes, they grow, and they grow to where they handle the hosting themself, or something else. I guess a question I would have, what's the life expectancy of a site?
Your thoughts that people's needs change is interesting. I would think the mark of a good host would be the ability to scale - if customers need more they simply pay for it and get it. The webhost I am dumping was continually adding more space and bandwidth to their offerings along with lowering prices. They've turned a fairly decent product into a discount piece of junk. Their uptime is amazing but their attention to detail (they broke my blog when moving servers) and their customer service sucks (they told me the blog works fine and I just need to clear my cache to see it - in truth it's down hard). This isn't the first time that they have caused me problems but I am determined to make it the last. The other commercial webhost I'm using has awesome customer service but has more downtimes. The downtimes are often less than 5-10 minutes but they are too frequent. A former writing client has kindly offered me space on his server; something he does for his clients and friends but does not do as a separate commercial endeavor. Asking my question in a forum with so many folks who do have the skills to run their own server (I don't) or have friends who do might also have led to the poor showing. From what I've seen all of the major hosting companies have their good and bad but it seems when things go bad, it's usually very bad.
True, a host should be able to scale. I think the issue right now is, I know several shared hosts which kick butt, they really do, but they don't offer VPS. I think a logical step for shared customers is it's Shared > VPS > Dedicated. There's a lot of good hosts that offer Shared, and Dedicated, but don't offer VPS yet. I think some customers don't even think or look at the upgrade path of the host. I think they buy what fits their needs at this moment, and for the near feature, as in like for the next month or two, but not like if their sites grow to VPS level. Maybe hosts need to market that a little more. Lately, a lot of the issue has been upgrade path. People are on shared, and need to find where to go next.
Yes. I provide my own dedicated servers to myself, and aI am very happy with my own customer service. -Raymond
I bought Lunarpages hosting for a year just over a year ago, and I was happy with them... so I paid another $80 for another year
Had to laugh. Good to see that you are good to yourself. Guess the showing here is indicative if you want it done right, do it yourself.
Yep, and in reference to the earlier question, that might also be why people are going or aren't staying with their old hosts. They want to cut out the middle man. Because honestly, although I don't host any more, I won't host with anyone. I'll always host my stuff on my own. It's easier that way, and I'm always available to answer my own support tickets! Unless that is, if people want to pay me to hsot with them, maybe, lol
I am thinking of moving to another host once I master the art of moving files from one host to another. One of my sites was suspended by my current host for using more than 1% of the CPU.