Host experiences and testimonials thread

[LOPS]

Tips on Purchasing webhosting space online

#1 tip - when purchasing anything online from any company always make sure they have a valid physical address and telephone number listed. Check the address and telephone number out to be sure they actaully exist in the real world. Also check that the phone number listed gets you a flesh and blood person and is not just a recording that puts you on hold for hours on end. You walys want to be able to telephone or write a company as alertnatives to online and e-mail support. Those potions are excellent and often do the trick on their own. If anything ever happens, god forbid, where you need to send a company written legal notice, file a lawsuit or submit a complaint against them with agencies like the Better Business Bureau, no one will be able to assist you and you will not be able to gain any recourse withoput a valid mailing address and telephone number for the company.

I figured this was common knowledge but reading this thread i was a little disturbed. Two of the most frequently recommended hosting companies (F5 and A Small Orange, which i checked out because they were recommended by so many people and looked very promising, did NOT have physical addresses or telephone numbers listed on their website. This is NOT a good sign. No matter how great of service you may be getting at the moment, stuff happens and it would be a pity to be stuck with no other option than to sit back and wait and pray for e-mail or online support.

That said, I am doing some pre-research on the off chance that my current hosting company will not upgrade their mySQL and I have to switch, so I have found this thread very helpful.

[pauloo]

SHARED WEB HOSTING: http://www.hostingzoom.com is good !



Disk Space w/ RAID Protected Storage:5000 MB
Data Transfer (Monthly):100 GB

Money Back Guarantee:30 Days
Email Accounts (POP3, IMAP, SMTP):Unlimited:
Web Based Email Client:Yes
Email Forwarding:Yes
Email Autoresponder:Yes
Catch All Email Address:Yes
Mailing List:Yes
Email Filter:Yes
Email Aliases:Yes
Spam Assassin:Yes
ClamAV Anti-Virus:Yes
Domains:Host Multiple Domains/Websites:6
Sub Domains:Unlimited
Parked Domains:Unlimited
Dedicated IP Address:Yes
CGI-BIN:Yes
Perl:Yes
PHP w/Zend Optimizer:Yes
Python:Yes
Imagemagick / GD:Yes
Server Side Includes (SSI):Yes
Microsoft Frontpage Extensions:Yes
Database MySQL:25
PostgreSQL:25
phpMyAdmin / phpPgAdmin:Yes
E-Commerce osCommerce Shopping Cart:Yes
Agora Shopping Cart:Yes
Cube Cart Shopping Cart:Yes
Shared SSL Certificate:Free
Web Statistics:
Urchin 5:Yes
AWstats:Yes
Webalizer:Yes
Raw Access Logs:Yes
Bandwidth Meter:Yes

cPanel:Yes
Server Specifications
CPUual Xeon Processors
Memory (Minimum):2048 MB
Operating System: Linux
Pricing:
Setup Fee:19.95/one-time
1-Month:9.95/mo
12-Months (Setup fee WAIVED):6.95/mo
24-Months (Setup fee WAIVED) (BEST VALUE!):4.95/mo

[rexus]

Getting ready to switch hosts and am looking at ASO but it strikes me odd that there is nowhere (that I can see anyway) on their site that shows details of what each plan offers. You click on a link and it starts taking you through the purchase process. Very odd.

Right. I took a look at ASO as well. For a host a lot of people praise, they have a terrible presentation.

[RaceJunkie]

I use fuse9 Good Company and no overselling They are about to start offering
Semi dedicated. dual opteron 262 (Dual Core) 2 GB RAM 2x 120 GB SATA (Runing in RAID1) They will only run 5 20gb accounts . per server.

I don;t know all the details yet as Is only went out to the customers. But I am sure it will be great..

http://fuse9.net/index.php

[rexus]

I use fuse9 Good Company and no overselling They are about to start offering
Semi dedicated. dual opteron 262 (Dual Core) 2 GB RAM 2x 120 GB SATA (Runing in RAID1) They will only run 5 20gb accounts . per server.

I don;t know all the details yet as Is only went out to the customers. But I am sure it will be great..

http://fuse9.net/index.php

I am going to challenge this. I've dealt with Fuse9, and they have awful customer service. I highly discourage anyone to use this host unless you want to deal with nonchalant responses and one-sentence replies.

[RaceJunkie]

I am going to challenge this. I've dealt with Fuse9, and they have awful customer service. I highly discourage anyone to use this host unless you want to deal with nonchalant responses and one-sentence replies.

Who did you speak to? Because I have never had a one line response..

Maybe you got them mixed up with block9

[f9-Gene]

I am going to challenge this. I've dealt with Fuse9, and they have awful customer service. I highly discourage anyone to use this host unless you want to deal with nonchalant responses and one-sentence replies.

rexus,

How long have you been a client of ours, do you have any ticket id's to provide me with so that I can take a look into them?

Providing unparalleled customer service is one of our main goals and if you haven't recieved the service that you expected then there is obviously something wrong that we should fix.

[rexus]

rexus,

How long have you been a client of ours, do you have any ticket id's to provide me with so that I can take a look into them?

Providing unparalleled customer service is one of our main goals and if you haven't recieved the service that you expected then there is obviously something wrong that we should fix.

Unparalleled customer service... right.

[rexus]

Who did you speak to? Because I have never had a one line response..

Maybe you got them mixed up with block9

It was Fuse9.

[f9-Gene]

Can you provide ANY evidence to support your claim? It would help if you list any ticket's you've submitted.

[southernlady]

Been with 1$1 Yahoo Business and Osis before going it solo. Of the three, the ONLY one I would recommend and return to is Osis.

1$1
Pros: Inexpensive
Cons: Hard to manage control panel
Almost impossible to get out of contract.
FTP is a joke.

Yahoo Business
Pros: None that I know of except it's well known and you get listed in their search engine
Cons: No true FTP
Control Panel is terrible
Outdated MySql and Apache and Php software.

Osis
Used the Starter package for one month and then decided I wanted to add a second domain so moved to Value package http://web-hosting.osishosting.com/web_hosting.shtml
Monthly Fee: 12.95
Setup: Waived
24/7/365 Phone/Email/Live Chat (and they MEAN IT)
Disk Space: 500 MB
Bandwidth: 10,000 MB
Domains Allowed: 6
Subdomains: 25
FTP Accounts: 25
Uses Hsphere not cpanel.
Yes, it is a bit more expensive than most but you get what you pay for.
They do NOT accept yearly payments unless it is requested.
They also do reseller acccounts.
I would return to them in a heartbeat except they do not do dedicated and I believe that is MY next step.

I host myself now thru Comcast Cable using Comcast Workplace Standard
I have 5 static IP's (1 is standard, I pay extra)
100 % Pure Broadband Connection
Up to 6.0 Mbps* downstream
Up to 768 Kbps* upstream
7 comcast.net e-mail addresses

FIRST, make sure your ISP will allow it. Not all of them will.

Then, make sure of your connection speed.

And here are some good links to follow.

Hosting from home
DSL/Cable Webserver - Run your own webserver from home on DSL or Cable!
Dynamic DNS, Static DNS for Your Dynamic IP
easyDNS.com

As far as what server software, if you are a linux fan, Fedora or CentOS are the best for servers. If you go windows, use a windows server.

Make sure you get TRUE static IP's and not STICKY IP's. SBC Yahoo gives out Sticky IP's not static.

Some places to look for a host:
Web Host Directory http://www.webhostdir.com/
Web Hosting Ratings http://www.webhostingratings.com/

Whatever you do, do NOT pay for a full year in advance.
Make sure that service is your primary goal.
There is NO such animal as UNLIMITED bandwidth.
Uptime Guarantee, 100% is a big fat lie! No company can claim that because even the best has to do maintanence.
Avoid a contract...be able to leave when YOU decide.
Free hosting has problems, if you decide to switch later you usually can't save your files and take them with you.
Never have your hosting provider also provide your domain name
Check the speed of your potential host:

* Click 'Start'
* Click 'Run'
* Type in "cmd" (if using Windows XP, 2000 or greater) and click 'Ok'
* Then type "ping hostdomainname.com" and press 'Enter' and wait for it to finish

Look for the average ping time. The lower the number the better and the greater the chance your website will load fast, if you should host with them. Any number around a 90 average would be good. Anything below a 80 average is EXCELLENT! and an number over a 100 can cause your website to load very slowly.

I hope this helps. Liz

[Brad Pierce]

Realwebhost

I just moved my site over to www.realwebhost.com a couple of weeks back and they have been fantastic.

[Jon.]

I was hosted at a free host for about 2 months, who were themselves hosted at Statichost.co.uk. Then they closed, and i've moved to statichost themselves. I've had no problems at all. There's the occasional bit of downtime, but the server needed some new ram (which has now been fixed ). The support is excellent, usually within a day of asking a question it's sorted, and problems that take longer to solve are worked on for me up until they're fixed. I was on the cheapest package, but i've since upgraded to a year of the next package up.

I'd reccommend them to anyone! (Note that i'm advertising them on my forums too )

[NEXCS-Greg]

Whatever you do, do NOT pay for a full year in advance.

Uptime Guarantee, 100% is a big fat lie! No company can claim that because even the best has to do maintanence.

Never have your hosting provider also provide your domain name

Check the speed of your potential host:
Look for the average ping time. The lower the number the better and the greater the chance your website will load fast, if you should host with them. Any number around a 90 average would be good. Anything below a 80 average is EXCELLENT! and an number over a 100 can cause your website to load very slowly.

You had a lot of great points and I agreed with you on most of them, I'd just like to touch on the four listed above.

1.) Any reason? A lot of companies offer money-back guarantees even if you purchase a full year in advance.

2.) Not necessarily true. True 100% uptime *is* possible but would involved more than one server and an advanced fail-over system in place and would probably be very costly.

3.) What's the reasoning behind this one?

4.) This is an *ok* rule of thumb, however, some hosting companies use several data centers in several locations and you might get great or poor ping times pinging the server that their company website is on, but this may or may not be the same server that they're going to place your site on. You might be setup on a server that gets good or bad ping time from your location. Another factor that may not help using this method to check a host's *speed* is plain and simple network congestion or problems anywhere between your local computer and their server.

Just thought I'd add my two cents and get some more info on your reasoning for a couple of them Good post though!

[Floris]

Thanks everybody for these great testimonials. It is good to read where vB runs and where customer services is up there, etc.

Constructive feedback and no referral links in posts are welcome