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- I've been with these guys for several months, and I have to say...I've been very impressed with them. They have a very appealing price point for their hosting packages (I'm paying $7.95/mo, but if you don't have any database-driven sites you can start at less than $5/mo), and I've only had one or two dealings with their support department....both have been resolved to my satisfaction (in fact, one was a problem that I'd created myself). I had to complain once that the server was very sluggish. They went in and identified the guy who was overusing services, and took him offline. Frankly, these guys have been a model of how a hosting company SHOULD BE RUN. Pros: 24/7 PHONE support (highly unusual in the budget hosting arena). Cons: Rather than CPanel (which I like because it's very familiar to me), their control panel is HSphere. It works, but the whole integration just doesn't feel very intuitive. But frankly, this is just a minor point of irritation. STATUS: UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION
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. 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. Unfortunately, I couldn'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. (update) Final determination...for my purposes, support is just too hard to reach. Account cancelled. STATUS: NOT PERSONALLY RECOMMENDED
3. Hostmonster - One hosting package, $6.95 a month (2-year prepay...but still very reasonable!). Loads of disk space, 999 gigs of transfer bandwidth...and 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). 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. For a Shared Hosting arrangement, they're pretty solid. If your domains are very busy...you can expect to get them switched off temporarily for consuming too many resources. But for an average web site, they do a fine job. STATUS: UNQUALIFIED 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. UPDATE: As this company grew (obviously at a rate for which they were unprepared), they tried to keep up, but page load times and especially sluggish MySQL database response time finally drove me away. Account Cancelled. STATUS: NOT PERSONALLY RECOMMENDED
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, but their support department is extremely responsive via a trouble-ticket style system (I have seen response times within 2-3 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 was with these folks for a link time, and have only good to say about them...especially their service. I am not currently using their services, however. STATUS: UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION
6. BlueHost - Owned by the same folks who own Hostmonster (above). I've been using this company for several months now, and I must admit, they are rock-solid for shared hosting. Good price, great package. 24/7 chat support that's almost always there. I have recommended them to several friends who also signed up. They are not everything for everybody...but they are most everything that most people would need. I am using them now as a solid base for my less-critical and mid-bandwidth sites...and I am more likely to throw up new experimental ideas here than anywhere else. If your domains are very busy...you can expect to get them switched off temporarily for consuming too many resources. But for an average web site, they do a fine job. STATUS: UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION
7. LunarPages - I signed up for a two-year deal with these guys. Very attractive price point for the disk space and bandwidth. Unfortunately, someone on their staff took it upon themselves to "go all cowboy" on some of my biggest and most important sites. They were pulled offline at critical times and left that way FOR DAYS without any notice to me...costing me hundreds of dollars (more than I'd paid for the hosting in the first place). I attempted to contact the head of company or someone above the level of the Average Joe about the situation, but my little shared hosting account apparently wasn't worth their time. Very disappointing. Account cancelled (although it's still paid up thru fall of 2009). STATUS: NOT PERSONALLY RECOMMENDED
8. LiquidWeb - I was with these guys for a few months and was very impressed with them. Frankly, I only left because of a small issue of incompatibility with my particular needs for which I couldn't find a workaround. What I have to say about them is that they provided the ABSOLUTE BEST customer service I have ever received from a hosting company. I had a Virtual Private Server with them, but they have other options as well, included Shared and Dedicated Hosting plans. STATUS: UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION
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.