I forgot to include this in my last post which was getting kind of long anyways. Because Webhosting is so lucrative to affiliates its nearly impossible to read a review which is not affiliate biased. I am currently using a host I am fairly happy with, I say that because I have 2 accounts with them and 20 sites on each account. Both shared of course. The performance on one account is always FAST, the performance on the other account varies. Both have PHPBB sites on them. There are times that my board times out on the one group. So I believe that the "shared" portion of this server the bandwidth is being eaten by a user on the same server that has traffic peaks. I've written tech support many times on this issue and they always say "we are watching it". I also realize that I could just pony up and buy my own server. Anyhow: Can anyone recommend a shared host with consistent performance. Sure price is an issue. But to me there is little difference between $20 and $40 a month. Having my sites load quickly is very important to me. I don't care that much about 8 billion gigabytes of bandwidth and disk space. When I reach that level on any site I'll move it. I do care about: Tech Support (questions answered within 24 hours) Uptime/Reliability Ease of Use and SPEED (as mentioned). I am looking for responses from ACTUAL USERS, not people who run servers trying to sell me something (No offense intended). I'm considering Pair networks for this new project and have read good things about them. I don't believe they run an affiliate program so I assume (perhaps erroneously) I'll get more valid responses. I do care about location - I've had downtime due to Hurricanes in Florida, New Orleans and freezing cold in the North East. It seems where ever in the past I have chosen hosts there have been natural disasters. I have my fingers crossed this will never happen in California Please advise
ha! California just has to worry about breaking off from the rest of the mainland ;-) Not sure about the reviews of different places, I've used godaddy (B+), bluehost(A), globat(C-) for shared hosts. anything shared with other people all depends on who your neighbors are, unfortunately there isn't any way to control that, although for $40 a month you ought to be able to get a VPS somewhere which should limit your neighbors and give you more power. I recently bought my first dedicated server and splurged on the price to make sure it's reliable and in a great datacenter (Softlayer). Not sure if I covered all of your questions, but thought i'd chime in with the knowledge I've gained in the webhosting biz!
I recommend hostnine.com .... they are the best i have used. Fast servers, Live Support that seems to be on 24/7, fast problem resolvers