Lets talk about hosting centers

[ridemonkey]

Argh shopping for a host is impossible. The tricks these companies use to sign people up is maddening. Lets have a discussion and see if we can cut through all the BS and come up with a short list of good hosts.

First some considerations:
1. You get what you pay for. There is no such thing as "unlimited bandwidth" or "free hosting" that is any good at all.

2. Sure company X has the goods, but what about customer service? My current host suits my needs from a technical standpoint but is atrocious in the customer service dept.

Sample scenario: lets say that I really messed up a clients project. My reaction would be along the lines of "I am very sorry about that, I will be sure to fix the problem AND I'd like to make up for this by giving you x hours of my time and/or a couple months free on my server. Same scenario, different players. My webhost really screws up my server config and causes me months of headaches. Their response: "well what do you want us to do about it?".

Surely there must be hosts that understand the service aspect of business?

3. The industry standard for each GB of bandwidth is 3 to 4 dollars measured on average usage. Therefore hosts that advertise that you get 400 GB of bandwidth per month with your 99 dollar account are misleading you. I have no interest in using any host that advertises these misleading numbers (so no rackshack.net).

4. Despite the fact that I expect to pay good money for good services, there is still a limit. A lot of the larger data centers charge an arm and a leg for their servers. I am looking for reasonable pricing.


Given all that...... who here can recommend a good host that meets the criteria above? I need to expand out of my current hosting center and these decisions can not be taken lightly.

Thanks!

[crouse]

I use addr.com

I pay $80 per year as a reseller for the following.

300MB space
30GB traffic
40 email boxes
ssl, mysql, perl, cgi-bin, and tons of other stuff.

Pros........ instant setup, cheap, tech support always answers within 24hrs of email. Phone support is GREAT when you get through. Friendly and helpful. Very little downtime.

Cons..... phone support is sporadic. Sometimes you can get right trough other times it takes a long time.
You are responsible for backing up your own site. I think they have backups....but I'm sure they would charge you to get it back up and running from thier backups.

That said....... I run ALL of my sites with them. I have looked into other hosting options...... and have decided to stay with them for now. At least until I have enough clients to get a co-located server and run that way. I haven't had any problems with them other than they don't want my mysql connections to exceed 20 connections. Not a huge deal until a site gets fairly large though.

Don't know if that will help you or not, but thought I would share my experience with them in case it did.

[John Prophet]

Who would a good host or hosting scenario be for the following situation.

One website used for guitar lessons. I assume it would have some decent MB of data being downloaded because all the "lessons" and examples would be MP3's. It would also need credit card capabilities although Im sure that is a part of the website and nothing to do with the host. I am thinking of starting such a website in the coming year but I have not done any homework on it yet....I am totally clueless about hosting solutions and fairly clueless about website building, hehe.

JP

[OuTpaTienT]

"You get what you pay for"

I don't believe that for a second. I know for a fact that's not true with the companies used for registering a domain name. Read

[ridemonkey]

Quote:

Originally posted by OuTpaTienT
"You get what you pay for"

I don't believe that for a second. I know for a fact that's not true with the companies used for registering a domain name. Read

1. This is not a related discussion.

2. read # 4 "Despite the fact that I expect to pay good money for good services, there is still a limit. A lot of the larger data centers charge an arm and a leg for their servers. I am looking for reasonable pricing."

Obviously I have expressed interest in value.