Who to go to for web hosting

[David Harrison]

I've seen a few threads and posts in this forum where people have asked where to get hosting from, so I thought I'd make this sticky. If you have any recommendations or anti-recommendations as to who to go to (or not go to as the case may be) then this is the place to post about it.

I'll be heavily moderating this thread to make sure it stays on topic, if you want to talk to someone about something to get more details then do it via a PM, and maybe that person could come back and make an amendment to their post if neccessary. Remember, edit your already existing post, don't make a new one.

If I see anyone who's only post is in this thread then I will consider it advertising and delete it, if I see anyone who is obviously pimping their own hosting company then I will delete that.

Make sure that in your post you include details about the host you're talking about, 99.99% uptime and 6 TeraBytes of space for £1.99 per year doesn't count. While the hosting package and price is obviously worth mentioning it's not the be all and end all. Be sure to back up why you think they're good or bad with a short description of why you think that. I don't want to see recommendations for hosts that you're going to try out either, if you personally haven't used them then as a recommendation it doesn't carry much weight.

I'll start the ball rolling with an anti-recomendation, my current host is www.web-hosting.uk.com and they are ... not a good host. Quite often any pages that use ASP (which is pretty much my entire site) will simply stop working and no content will be sent to the browser. All normal .html pages will continue to be sent fine, I'm not sure if PHP pages still work during these "outages" as I've never had any to test. However, they are a pretty cheap UK based host and use the easy to get around helm CMS for their admin panel, so if you're just starting out and don't use a server-side language, they might be worth considering.

[JPnyc]

If you're in the U.S.A, godaddy.com. Best support around and it's 24/7. Great pricing/features. Website is a bit complex, but the support'll get you through that too.

[Jupac]

http://www.dreamhost.com/ a freind of mines has this its amazing

EDIT: A MOD TOLD ME TO EDIT THIS =)

Well the sign-up fee is pretty high, i didnt know about it because when me and my freind sign up it was wavied. The servers are realiable and fast. Also you get a free domain

[Sanim]

http://asmallorange.com

They have cPanel, unlimited subdomains (http://forum.mysite.com), unlimited email addresses, Fantastico (a part of cPanel that lets you install cool stuff on your site that doesn't have a flashy ad), and a lot more.

[Daniel T]

I use Mesopia and they have been very good.

If you desire ASP aswell as PHP, you won't be able to get their cheapest package, but their Windows hosting plans seem to be priced not excedingly high. And they also use Helm.

If you only need PHP, though, their Linux hosting plans start at $3.95/moth, and it uses cPanel

[Omaha100]

Try Lonex if your looking for a host, especially if you are new to web sites. What you get for $4.95/mo is a full service web hosting plan. I won't try to list all the features except to say site builder software comes with it and it is one of the best I've used. Service is fast and excellent although only through e-mail. I am very happy with it after setting up 2 sites. Go to www.lonex.com.

[cheersup]

i'll go for yahoo coz of the big name and they wavied the setup cost of $25. so around $11 dollars per month. it maybe more expensive than other sites , but it's more secure. i think it's worth to go for yahoo.

[BeachSide]

Originally Posted by JPnyc

If you're in the U.S.A, godaddy.com. Best support around and it's 24/7. Great pricing/features. Website is a bit complex, but the support'll get you through that too.

I'm sorry but after developing two sites that purchased hosting through them (godaddy) I will never recommend them again.

1. They tend to lag especially their databases
a. Not specificlly talking about my queries either I'm talking about accessing it through their phpmyadmin
b. Linking up to their FTP lags as well sometimes
c. I run ADSL 3Mb/s down and have no problem with many many other hosts that I have sites I develop on

2. They use back handed measures to attempt to "steal" clients from me
a. I have had at least 3 clients who were pretty upset with GoDaddy after I referred them there to purchase their domain name and upon completing their purchase GoDaddy called them and basically harrassed them trying to get them to go with their hosting. Fortunatly for me the clients told them that they were perfectly happy with their hosting then promptly called me to tell me of their experience with GoDaddy's pressure tactics.

3. Their interface is complicated to run people who are not as "web savvy" as we are through. You ever try to explain the step by step instructions of how to navigate GoDaddy's UI to a person who at one time has said something like "I didn't know you sent me anything in the email, it didn't have a paperclip next to it"

Anyway not to sound disgruntled... If you want cheap cheap cheap then ya go with them.

[intelligentfool]

my recommendation is Start Logic. My site's main purpose is for visitors to listen to streaming music, or download large files (30-200mb). I'm relatively novice when it comes to actual scripting code (php, asp) but their support for it seems excellent so far. Currently I pay 7.95/month for 5gigs of storage, 100gb of transfer, unlimited email, up to 20 databases. I've had them for 2 years now, and aside from their numbers, the other reason i picked them was that the first time i called their tech support (before i was actually a customer, just to check) i got thru on the first ring, and i can honestly say, unless you call at say, 9am est or 5pm est, then you'll get thru fast. I cant think of what else to say, but i recommend them to anyone getting a website. really top notch.

one con... i've noticed that when in dreamweaver, if i do a site wide sync, i get disconnected alot (and automatically reconnected with 2004 mx), but... i'm thinking it has more to do with dreamweaver than it does my server.

[smoker]

Hi,

I am reading this thread eagerly, as I came visitng with the exact same question. I have been with UK2.net for several years now and really need to change badly, they are ........... ! I wish I had changed earlier. I now need to transfer 25 domains because I am so sick and tired of their bad customer service and 'attitude'.

I have currently been trying to find out why 'Webdiversion' has stopped working on one of my domains, a simple task you might think, but I have been trying since the 15th of this month. It is not possible to contact them by anything other than e-mail, they never sign their names, their answers to client enquiries are blunt and often plain rude. Most of my mailed queries about the current loss of my webdiversion have been ignored.

When I first sent the query I had a one line reply which told me that my domain was not with them and so they could not help...... This was despite my domain being on my list of domains, on their nameserver, and if you did a search on it, it came up as "A UK2 domain", I transferred it in to them in 2003 and had the documentation.

Being rather puzzled by this response, I pointed out all of this to them; I was then informed that they had 'lost' my domain....... or it had been 'stolen', for the second time in two years, simply because they had not locked it despite it being a .com domain. I could go on and on, but it's too tedious.

They are utterly dreadful and I would not recommend them to anyone, they are cheap, but I guess this is a good example of the old adage that you get what you pay for.

Avoid UK2.net !

[smoker]

Does anyone have any recommendations for UK hosting companies ?

Thanks

Ray

[minority]

ukhost4u.com are pretty good i was with there cheap home hosting when they had it but that has sadly gone.

They have a package for 30 or 40 quid a year that has 1 or 1.5gb of space and 15gb transfer unlimited subdomains and dtabases and free domain last time i checked you can choose between windows or linux hosting with php and asp on the windows box (I think)

I had slight bit of down time but that was with the lowcosthost part of them soon as i moved to ukhost4u i have had no down time.

[vinoth]

www.ispcheck.com

check there you can find a nice bunch of hosts, my recommandations are to go with

http://www.hotlinkhosting.com

[Bryan G]

After reading all this, I guess I'm not going to switch to a different hosting provider.
I found this thread because my site went down yesterday so I thought I'd look around. The more I looked the more I liked what I had.....
As someone else stated, godaddy is not good, I was there for a year and didn't like it. You have little control and it's slow.
I've been with http://navigatoris.net/ for 3 years and they've only been down 2 times, once for a HDD failure (they were on it within minutes and were back up very fast) and yesterday from a DDOS attack. 2 times in 3 years is great in my opinion (that's better than 99.9% i think), no host can give 100% up time, stuff happens.
They have cpanel with fantastico and unlimited addon domains, subdomains, parked domains, email accounts, email forwards, MySQL databases, auto responders (email), mailing lists, email filters and FTP accounts.
There prices are not the cheapest, but close. There new prices includes 300megs space 6gigs bandwidth for $3.99 a month. I have a special package because they bought out my old host and promised to keep my prices the same, not gonna say, but cheap.
If you want to see there speed (please don't kill my bandwidth) you can d/l a vids here just to test http://oahu4u.com/_pix&vids/surf.shtml, please just download one. I'm not associated with them in any other way than just a customer, I live in Hawaii and I think there in NJ.

[Benji2005]

Does it matter if i sign up for a us site eventhou i live in the uk? Is this possible?