| As the webmaster of a whole bunch of web sites, I have been spending a lot of money on web hosting for the last few years. In fact, it's been costing me almost $400 a month over the last few years. This is for two dedicated servers thru two different companies, and a very good server admin located in the Ukraine. |
| However, while I've been busy working and making money, hosting costs have continued to become more competitive. So, frankly, it would be pretty stupid of me to continue to pay that kind of money if I can get quality services more cheaply elsewhere. |
| Hosting can be a many-faceted issue, depending on your needs. My needs are generally rather simple...but they are also fairly specific. Many of my sites are bandwidth-intensive, because of the large number which feature free, legal MP3 downloads. |
| So I have been shopping for deals, and have already begun working with some companies to see how well they do for me. I thought I would take this opportunity to share my experiences with you, in case you might find them helpful. But...these are only MY experiences. They are not a professional analysis of hosting by someone who checks out all the features. I am looking for reliability and a solid basic feature set...at a good price. There are certainly some amazing deals out there. But, are the companies reliable? |
| Here are the companies I've tried, along with what attracted me to them, and my experience to this point: |
1. IX Web Hosting - These guys seem to be a solid competitor, with a reasonably-priced array of hosting packages. I signed up for the $12.95 per month Unlimited Pro package.This gave me the ability to host 16 domains, with unlimited disk space and 2GB of data transfer. The bandwidth would be woefully inadequate for many of my sites...but I also have some sites for which stable, functional email, server uptime and overall speed outweigh other concerns. So I thought I would try them anyway. After all, they offer 24/7/365 support via phone or chat...so what could go wrong, right? Well, not really. I went ahead and transfered 3 of my domain, including my prinary business domain, over...and waited several days to see how the service was working. Page loading time was moderate...adequate, but not impressive. Mail handling seemed quite sluggish. And then, there was the spam. As of this writing, I tried a number of times over at 12-hour period to reach someone thru their live chat feature (at least 3-4 times...beginning in the early morning on a Sunday), but only raised someone at around 7pm. And, that was just part of the bad news. I was getting KILLED with email spam, and I looked all around their hosting control panel trying to find some sort of server-based filtering. During the 5 hours before I reached someone this evening, I received 252 emails...only TWO of which were not spam. When I finally reached Andrey, the support agent to ask about spam filtering, he uttered the fatal four words: "We don't offer it." Because of my unique business needs, I need server-based filtering. I use a Blackberry, and anything not filtered at the server ends up cluttering up my inbox there. Outlook has some decent filtering...but catches some good stuff, too...so I still have to manually go thru all of it, which is a huge time-waster. And I can't use one of those "confirm your email address" solutions, because of the nature of my business contacts. So...it's goodbye to IX Web Hosting. Sorry, Andrey...we hardly knew ye.
STATUS: NOT PERSONALLY RECOMMENDED |
2. Dreamhost - These guys are quite the odd bird in the hosting field. Employee-owned, heart out on their sleeves, gripes from customers are aired right out on the front page. Unless they REALLY suck as a company, you've got to give them credit, at the very least, for bravery! Their packages are amazing. When was the last time you heard of bandwidth allowances measured in TERABYTES?? That's THOUSANDS OF GIGS, for us slow folks. I signed up for a great package called Code Monster...normally about $40 a month, but with a two-year prepay, I got in for $15.95 a month. This give me 400 gigs of disk space and 4 terabytes of bandwidth per month. Quite impressive. And, they offer a 97-day money-back guarantee. My only real complaint so far is that I can't use the account for at least two days. Because they have been stuck with fraud, they are punishing me, the user...by making me fax them an impression of my credit card after completing the ecommerce credit card purchase...and then waiting til they can approve it by hand on the next business day (2 days, in this case). I've never been thru a situation like that before. And it's not a great way to start a relationship...especially since they don't warn you ahead of time. This is an area that deserves their attention. However, it wasn't enough to scare me away. More on them once I've actually been able to use them. (update) I've transferred my first two domains to their server...and the first one can't be found online. It's just gone. This is a bad idea. I have been in touch with their support department via email, and gotten a response. However, this kind of thing is completely unacceptable. We'll see. Final determination...for my purposes, support is just too hard to reach. Account cancelled.
STATUS: NOT PERSONALLY RECOMMENDED |
3. HostMonster - This is an impressive-looking service, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to offer. They only seem to offer one hosting package, which is an (unbelievable) $4.95 a month (2-year prepay...but still less than $120!). Why unbelievable? Because it includes 50 gigs of disk space, 999 gigs of transfer bandwidth...and yes, server-level spam filtering (specifically, Spam Assassin, which is what I have used with reasonable success via Cpanel in the past). With that one account, you can host unlimited domains...which is very nice. The control panel is laid out very nicely (you can see a demo on the site). After getting set up on the site, I have found some of the normal operations to be somewhat confusing. However, it seems that a lot of this is due to the fact that they almost force you to transfer the DNS settings for your domains before you can even set up the domain on their servers. This isn't very efficient. They should really have a "Force Add Domains" for that purpose. However, they do have VERY good people available on Live Chat. Both the guys I've spoken with there (Tim & Matt) have been helpful. Working in this so-called "shared hosting" environment definitely has a different feel from working with dedicated servers. But this is a fraction of the cost, so I can tolerate some inconvenience. I'm still fairly impressed with the value of the deal. So far, I am somewhat disappointed with page-loading time...which seem slightly below average with the one domain I have successfully transferred so far. We'll see how it goes from here. (update) Things are improving. Two domains online and working well, and more on the way. Server speed seems better than I first experienced. I have decided to stay with these guys. Other than the desperate need for a "Force Add Domains" feature built into the control panel, I am pleased with their value and the timeliness of support.
STATUS: QUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION |
4. Media Temple's Grid Server - A solid package for 20 bucks a month...somewhat less if you prepay. A sophisticated shared hosting arrangment that spreads the load in ways that give everyone the best possible server response time. 24/7 PHONE support is very nice. Their response to tickets isn't quite as fast as live, but it's not awful. Their admin section lacks a bit in terms of clear navigation, but it's very nicely laid out. And the server speed when doing admin tasks is very sluggish, although they expect that to improve. These guys are getting the lion's share of my business. The only downside to a service like this is that you really need to be handling all the site maintenance yourself unless you're willing to hand out your master password to all your clients...which I'm not. I really like these guys and have moved my larger bandwidth sites to their service. I'm not quite sure that I am as comfortable with their mail handling. I have decided to move my critical email accounts to another service for the time being. But there's a lot to love with this service. I am excited to have found them.
STATUS: UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION |
5. Acenet - I've used these guys for the last couple years to host one of my more important sites, and have always noticed that their server speed was very good. Now I find that they provide a nice package called Reseller Plus, which runs between 20 and 30 bucks a month, depending on whether or not you prepay, and how long. If you, like me, are coming from a dedicated server environment, it's nice to be able to handle your site and server administration using WHM and Cpanel. So this is very much like a smaller dedicated server...much like what is referred to as a virtual dedicated server. I don't care much for their own site navigation (although they've indicated that they are in the process of planning a redesign), but their support department is extremely responsive via a trouble-ticket style system (I have seen response times within minutes, which is exactly the way that such a system should be used...not as most companies use it...as a SHIELD to hide behind). I love the speed of this place...and my most critical sites have ended up here. Also, I've upgraded to the larger reseller package. Here, you definitely pay for quality, rather than quantity. But that's perfect for some of my sites...including the all-important critical email functions.
STATUS: UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION
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| Yes, in most cases, you'll find my affiliate code in the links above...so I stand to profit slightly if you sign up for any of these services thru these links. But these are my honest opinions, and I hope you find them helpful. I am a busy webmaster, and it cost me a fair chunk of change and a lot of wasted hours to form those opinions. |
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