Well, right now I'm using Hostgator, Cloakhost and recently purchased 1 month of the most basic vps plan at vps4less.de so I can learn a little about vps but I think I should consolidate all my hosting packages to get more for the money. So far Cloakhost and Hostgator have been great, so I'm looking for something that can bring me at least the same quality as the above mentioned hosting companies. The things I will be running are mostly proxies, blogs and some small static sites. No cPanel is needed as I can configure apache/mysql myself. My budget to start is about $30-$40 monthly, what companies/plans can you recommend? Or some tips, like "no less than XX ram, XX bandwidth or no cogent BW. Thanks.
I am completely happy with www.lunarpages.com - I bought a year's worth of service this time last year, and plan on buying another year's worth when it expires. They have great support, and great plans!
Both lunarpages and hostgator are highly oversold! Consider a smaller network which is still reputable, but doesn't oversell. You'll see a vast difference in performance. The smaller hosts who don't oveersell have better and faster quality overall.
Yeah. If you have a few friends that run the same kind of websites you do, you could try chipping in to get a dedicated with them, otherwise I would suggest sticking with a vps.
Siteground, I love them. 500GB + Transfer a month, for dirt cheap! Fast servers to! Pm me for a referral link. I'll green rep you + 5$ Paypal if you signup through it =).
Anteros, thanks for your comment on CloakHost's services. Yes, you might be paying $$ combined for the accounts now, but this is quite good an acceptable. Remember they say "don't put your eggs in one basket"? Also, it's very unwise to host other sites along with proxies for obvious reasons. I'd advise you to get hosted with the specialists for each type of hosting. VPS is something which should be carefully chosen and configured. I own a few VPSs and so far it comes nothing close to a non-oversold shared hosting account for many situations. VPSs have high overheads and the final performance isn't as it should be. These days, VPSs are oversold too, squeezing more than permissible limit of VPSs in a host PC. So, currently your expenses might be a little high, but it is better IMO. (not beacuse you're a client of CloakHost and I don't want that you leave us). BTW, I see all noobs dishing out urls that are of no use. Pour in some valuable opinions or advice, guys!
Take a look at these VPS plan comparisons http://www.hostingdiary.com/2007/09/best-vps-hostin.html Andrew
After reading a little, I think it's better to invest a little more and get a dedi just for proxies if you plan on running a big network, but for only a few sites I still think it's better to try with shared or vps
my cuzn uses hostgator and said if you will you 1 domain then its ok, if you use more than u pay more