Good web host?

[notjustjay]

P.S. Dreamhost sucks too. But I guess one important thing needs to be considered: if a person just wants web space and doesn't really care about some sporadic downtime, slowdowns, poor support, consistent backups, or other niceties (and there are plenty of hosting reasons why don't need to) then there are terrific deals like the one above which are worth considering. I would just give a few pointers: 1) they don't offer unlimited bandwidth even though they say they do—they'll kill you for using resources; 2) keep a backup of your files; 3) never buy your domain name through your host.

True, nobody really offers "unlimited". If you're running any kind of website which has enough bandwidth transfer that you really need to take advantage of an "unlimited" clause, you may want to look elsewhere. For everyone else, "unlimited" is a feel-good marketing term. Same with uptime. If my site were to go down for a few hours, it's annoying but no big deal. If I had a mission-critical website, I'd be shopping very carefully.

Agreed about backups and domain names. The only reason I'm with Dreamhost now is because the host we were previously using just shut us off one day. No explanation given. We had paid our bills, our site was not offensive in any way. Repeated emails from me were ignored. I considered threatening legal action but who wants to stay with a company that treats you like that? In the meantime we needed a website so I found a Dreamhost coupon deal similar to the one above and switched over. Luckily our domain name was registered with someone else so all I had to do was change the DNS records.

On our previous host I made the mistake of thinking that it would be relatively permanent. We had started setting up an internal wiki and converting our documents into it, and we had been using the email server to archive important emails. All of that disappeared in a flash.

We're happy with Dreamhost now, but we keep our own backups.

 

[neopickaze]

I was with Site5.com a couple of years ago before I went VPS for 3 years, never really had a problem for shared hosting it was pretty snappy, I do know they have changed owners since then though.

 

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

True, nobody really offers "unlimited". If you're running any kind of website which has enough bandwidth transfer that you really need to take advantage of an "unlimited" clause, you may want to look elsewhere. For everyone else, "unlimited" is a feel-good marketing term. Same with uptime. If my site were to go down for a few hours, it's annoying but no big deal. If I had a mission-critical website, I'd be shopping very carefully.

Oops. When I wrote that bit about unlimited being a lie, I meant to point out that this applies to all hosts (including the two I recommended). If a website on a shared hosting environment ever gets stuck with a real spike in traffic it will go down quite quickly (for resources) or they'll basically tell you that a [semi-]dedicated server solution is required. Try to use up a lot of bandwidth in personal transfer and you'll quickly find it is against the ToS. They have plenty of ways to weed out people who really use the service.

And an occasional two hours of downtime can be dealt with for the typical personal website, but intermittent connection issues and slowdowns can be far more annoying.

Agreed about backups and domain names. The only reason I'm with Dreamhost now is because the host we were previously using just shut us off one day. No explanation given. We had paid our bills, our site was not offensive in any way. Repeated emails from me were ignored. I considered threatening legal action but who wants to stay with a company that treats you like that? In the meantime we needed a website so I found a Dreamhost coupon deal similar to the one above and switched over. Luckily our domain name was registered with someone else so all I had to do was change the DNS records.

Problem is that this is the exact same sort of problems people can run into with Dreamhost—but probably not to the extent you encountered with the previous host. Dreamhost isn't a terrible host by any means and they're great for most people, and offer a good price. They're just not best of breed (a breed which is usually pretty crappy). Fortunately it isn't too hard to switch hosts. And people running websites should make it a point to know how to move anything they've got running before something goes south (like a forum).

We're happy with Dreamhost now, but we keep our own backups.

That's what it really comes down to. A host is fine as long as they're working great, and the customer is fine as long as they're ready to pack up and move on as soon as that host fails big on them.

 

[Angelo95210]

I am very happy with hostgator, both shared and VPS offers.

 

[jpine]

ix web hosting dot com. I've used them for years and they have great 24 hr customer support that is not "outsourced."

 

[YanniDepp]

I've been using Maylene for the last 2 years. Small British host. I don't have any complaints.

I recommended a friend to Maylene and since she's not very technical, their guy installed WordPress for her without charging anything extra.

http://www.maylene.eu

 

[yk2366]

I just wanted to float in and give a vote against GoDaddy.

3) never buy your domain name through your host.

May I ask why you are against godaddy.com? I just bought both the domain and host from them and now I'm getting worried.

Also, why can't I buy the domain name through my host? As offered in ipage.com and many other services

 

[chirpie]

May I ask why you are against godaddy.com? I just bought both the domain and host from them and now I'm getting worried.

Also, why can't I buy the domain name through my host? As offered in ipage.com and many other services

Not sure what his reasons were for not liking GoDaddy, but these are mine.

1. They push a lot of nickle and dime features that should probably be included in the prices

2. They have safeguards in place for themselves to protect against spam sites setting up under their services. Only thing is, it makes it more difficult to get work done as an honest user. I sometimes have issues with e-mail forwarding and cgi script processing as a result.

You can totally buy the domain through your host. The reason why he says not to is a lot of cheap websites will basically hold the domain name hostage from you if you see a spike in traffic and they shut your site down. You want to move the site somewhere else, and they fabricate a reason why you have to pay them to either release the domain, or pay them to upgrade your service with them.

This is almost universal across the board with cheaper providers.

 

[sparky7]

im happy with sharkspace, if you google sharkspace 50% off there's some 50% off for life promo codes, think their on webhostchat..

 

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

May I ask why you are against godaddy.com? I just bought both the domain and host from them and now I'm getting worried.

Also, why can't I buy the domain name through my host? As offered in ipage.com and many other services

Go Daddy isn't the worst a person can do. You don't build up such a large customer base by doing everything wrong. They are, however, an example of a company which generally does just enough to make ends meet but little more, and charges more because their brand is well known and accessible. It is very easy to find a cheaper provider which cares a little more about its customers and is generally faster/more reliable.

Just follow the basic rule of making sure you can always pack up and leave if something goes wrong. This will happen more often than not in the cheap oversold shared hosting world.

Which brings me to the next point. It is very difficult to pack up and move along when your host controls your domain name. Go Daddy probably won't be a bad offender here, but you should read up on their policy regarding transferring that domain name and move it to an appropriate solution (e.g. Dotster, or there are cheaper options) when you can. Too many eggs in one basket; too much leverage given to the domain host. This is very dangerous with many hosts because their terms of service will state clearly things like 'you may not transfer your domain until we have had it two years,' waiting periods on transfers, and other factors which can become nightmares when something goes wrong and you want to move. This is intentional—some providers use it as a hook to keep you with them even though, due to whatever screwup they've made, you want to move on.

You can totally buy the domain through your host.

Even when you can (e.g. when buying from a provider which does not have predatory terms) you shouldn't. At least not in the shared hosting world. The only time a person should ever consider it is if they're in a truly professional hosting environment working with a company that really does care about their reputation, individual incidents, and each customer as something beyond a small statistic. And in those cases there's no positive reason to do so as the small additional cost of maintaining a domain name through a reputable registrar (another subject worthy of research) becomes a non-issue.

But I have a feeling you know this.

 

[yk2366]

Go Daddy isn't the worst a person can do. You don't build up such a large customer base by doing everything wrong. They are, however, an example of a company which generally does just enough to make ends meet but little more, and charges more because their brand is well known and accessible. It is very easy to find a cheaper provider which cares a little more about its customers and is generally faster/more reliable.

Just follow the basic rule of making sure you can always pack up and leave if something goes wrong. This will happen more often than not in the cheap oversold shared hosting world.

Which brings me to the next point. It is very difficult to pack up and move along when your host controls your domain name. Go Daddy probably won't be a bad offender here, but you should read up on their policy regarding transferring that domain name and move it to an appropriate solution (e.g. Dotster, or there are cheaper options) when you can. Too many eggs in one basket; too much leverage given to the domain host. This is very dangerous with many hosts because their terms of service will state clearly things like 'you may not transfer your domain until we have had it two years,' waiting periods on transfers, and other factors which can become nightmares when something goes wrong and you want to move. This is intentional—some providers use it as a hook to keep you with them even though, due to whatever screwup they've made, you want to move on.


Even when you can (e.g. when buying from a provider which does not have predatory terms) you shouldn't. At least not in the shared hosting world. The only time a person should ever consider it is if they're in a truly professional hosting environment working with a company that really does care about their reputation, individual incidents, and each customer as something beyond a small statistic. And in those cases there's no positive reason to do so as the small additional cost of maintaining a domain name through a reputable registrar (another subject worthy of research) becomes a non-issue.

But I have a feeling you know this.

Thank you for your reply! My questions is then, do most people just buy yearly domains and pay as they go, and monthly for webhosting services? I'm totally new to the website world so I bought a 10-year domain for $75 and 4 year delux web hosting for $143. I think I got it for a lot cheaper using coupons and deals, but I thought everyone usually bought many years at at time to get a cheaper deal. Do most companies not give you a refund when you want to move web hosting? I bought it thinking there would really be no need to move. (I'm guessing for domain names when it's bought it's bought- and theres not much more you can do with it).

I would need to buy more domains in the future and my webhost allows me to do multiple domains (I think unlimited), so can you recommend a good domain site? if I should buy it for long?

Also , I totally understand your concept of always being ready to move by backing up. My question is: how do i back up? As in.. I should just dl the html codes and put it away somewhere so that once my website is down, I wouldn't be at loss? But I don't get why any big company like godaddy.com would shut down anyone's site.

Also, can you recomed a webhosting company?
Thank you! I really appreciate your help.

 

[notjustjay]

I bought a 10-year domain for $75 and 4 year delux web hosting for $143. I think I got it for a lot cheaper using coupons and deals, but I thought everyone usually bought many years at at time to get a cheaper deal. Do most companies not give you a refund when you want to move web hosting? I bought it thinking there would really be no need to move. (I'm guessing for domain names when it's bought it's bought- and theres not much more you can do with it).

That's totally fine, and yes, you can pay for longer services in one shot to save money. The risk is that your hosting company might disappear overnight (or any number of other things can happen, including you outgrowing the service or not being satisfied for whatever reason), and the question would be what happens to the money you paid if you decide to leave (or if they decide to drop you). Check your hosting company's refund policy carefully, they will vary from "full refund" to "no refund" but most will probably be a pro-rated refund of the time you didn't use.

Remember my story about the "bad" webhost that dropped me without notice or reason? I never could get in touch with them to ask why. Nor were they particularly responsive about giving me a refund of any sort.

Now with GoDaddy you're probably OK because they're a big and well known company. The thing with the internet of course is that anyone could put together a slick looking website and sell you hosting services. How do you know if the company you paid money to has a big air-conditioned data center like they show in the picture, or if it's just some guy's server in his basement?

Personally I pay for domains on a 2-3 year renewal, and I renew the web hosting yearly. I have no intention of leaving Dreamhost and as far as I know they aren't going anywhere, but if anything happens, I'm ready to move on in a moment's notice.

Also , I totally understand your concept of always being ready to move by backing up. My question is: how do i back up? As in.. I should just dl the html codes and put it away somewhere so that once my website is down, I wouldn't be at loss? But I don't get why any big company like godaddy.com would shut down anyone's site.

Yes, keep a copy of your entire website somewhere on your computer. Also if you use MySQL databases, back those up regularly too. Most hosting companies have a way to manage MySQL databases through their website control panel.

 

[yk2366]

thanks so much for your help! really appreciate it.