A Small Orange vs HostGator/Namecheap vs MyDomain vs GoDaddy

godaddy has been nothing but good to me. I use free hosting http://www.000webhost.com/ I really like them, no problems, enough for my personal needs.

When I set people up I usually use godaddy and they are as I said nothing but great.

If you're only wanting web hosting, then ASO are highly recommendable. Their email hosting, however, is a lot less satisfactory and was a dealbreaker for me (they're far too fond of aggressive blocklists and were failing to deliver large amounts of legit email).

I've had good experiences with MyDomain, 1&1 and GoDaddy, though.

i had both hostgator and ASO and i gave up on both - neither were bad exactly, but they were not great either. i now use a no-overselling host called medialayer.com - exceptionally fast, much better uptime and issues are resolved in minutes. having said that, its a lot more expensive than ASO or hostgator. but what i have learned in my travels is that a cheaper host that does not work very well is worthless. i rely on my hosting as a part of my business (graphic design) and the extra money spent is well worth it.

and not to hijack the thread, i have always used godaddy but i am starting to wonder if that was a bad idea, there seems to be a lot of negativity around them... can anyone explain exactly why godaddy is not a good choice for domains?

Hostgator for Hosting & GoDaddy for Domain

Why not just buy domain with Hostgator too? I would recommend going with HostGator for hosting and then (if you must) GoDaddy for buying the Domain.

I actually did a comparison of these two companies found here: Go Daddy vs HostGator - HostGator usually comes out on top.

A lot of hosts will also give a free domain when you sign up for hosting.

And honestly...a host is a host. You might get a better deal some places, and GoDaddy is a massive pain to deal with as far as hosting, but in general there's not much difference from one to the other.

PHPGuru87 said:

Why not just buy domain with Hostgator too? I would recommend going with HostGator for hosting and then (if you must) GoDaddy for buying the Domain.

I actually did a comparison of these two companies found here: Go Daddy vs HostGator - HostGator usually comes out on top.

Click to expand...

It's usually recommended to buy your domains from a different provider than your hosting. You don't have to, but most people I've talked to recommend it. GoDaddy is garbage though, give NameCheap a try. I transferred my stuff to them from GoDaddy a couple years ago and haven't looked back.

For hosting, you can't beat A Small Orange. I've been with them for a while now and they are awesome.

I'm using HostGator for web-hosting, I totally vote for them.. They are not cheap but services are very good, servers are very fast, CP easy to use... I also use 1and1 webhost and i can say that they are a little worse then HostGator: their CP is confusing and slow sometimes, and they have been hacked several times..

And for the domain registrar, I'm using Namecheap and they are very good..

I've been with ASO for nearly a decade. I can only recall one incident that resulted in downtime; the server I was on experienced a hardware failure. It was resolved within a few hours, and they named the replacement server after one of my favorite characters from The Walking Dead.

Also highly recommend NameCheap for a registrar if you don't want to go through ASO. I can't stress enough that you should avoid GoDaddy at all costs.

I like and have used Hostgator AND Justhost ( to throw a new one in the mix for you ).

I usually just get the free domain name through hostgator or justhost. Never had a problem transferring them to another host.