Host experiences and testimonials thread

[redraider]

I have had such a bad time with ASO and I wish you all dont have it. My site is down atleast 3-4 hrs week, due to either server problems or databse problems. It could be that I am on a bad server, but seriously!

I am deciding to move. Please suggest some good hosting service

[Gene Steinberg]

I have had such a bad time with ASO and I wish you all dont have it. My site is down atleast 3-4 hrs week, due to either server problems or databse problems. It could be that I am on a bad server, but seriously!

I am deciding to move. Please suggest some good hosting service

One question before you move: Did you contact your host's customer service. That would be the first thing to do before switching. See if they can solve your problem, and, if not, start looking for a new service.

I use DreamHost and have had good luck with them on my vBulletin forums and other database-driven stuff.

[UberMensch]

Host: 1and1.co.uk - Business Plan (Linux) - £8.89
URL: http://www.1and1.co.uk

Pros

• 99.999% Uptime (downtime was when they were upgrading my server)
• Reliable Tech Support
• Loads (LOADS!) of features
• Very speedy
• Very efficient
• Three free .co/me/org.uk domains

Cons

• Only two MySQL Databases (100MB each)
• No shell access (Higher plans DO have SSH)

Host: DreamHost - Crazy Domain Insane (Linux) - $119/Year
URL: http://www.dreamhost.com

Pros

• Almost unlimited everything (haven't hit ANY limits yet)
• Very friendly company/community
• Loads (LOADS!) of features
• Very well designed and laid out structure (users and domains)
• One-click installs
• SSH on all packages
• HUUUUUUUUGE storage and bandwidth (200GB Disk, 2TB Bandwidth)
• Very relaxed about customer-specific requests (they increased my friend's php max upload size, just for him )

Cons

• Not as fast for me (UK customer =/= US site)
• Fairly bad rep (not sure how this happened)
• My server went down the day I joined, but was fixed within the hour

[Gene Steinberg]

Host: 1and1.co.uk - Business Plan (Linux) - £8.89
URL: http://www.1and1.co.uk

Pros

• 99.999% Uptime (downtime was when they were upgrading my server)
• Reliable Tech Support
• Loads (LOADS!) of features
• Very speedy
• Very efficient
• Three free .co/me/org.uk domains

Cons

• Only two MySQL Databases (100MB each)
• No shell access (Higher plans DO have SSH)

Host: DreamHost - Crazy Domain Insane (Linux) - $119/Year
URL: http://www.dreamhost.com

Pros

• Almost unlimited everything (haven't hit ANY limits yet)
• Very friendly company/community
• Loads (LOADS!) of features
• Very well designed and laid out structure (users and domains)
• One-click installs
• SSH on all packages
• HUUUUUUUUGE storage and bandwidth (200GB Disk, 2TB Bandwidth)
• Very relaxed about customer-specific requests (they increased my friend's php max upload size, just for him )

Cons

• Not as fast for me (UK customer =/= US site)
• Fairly bad rep (not sure how this happened)
• My server went down the day I joined, but was fixed within the hour

I'm not sure about the UK variant. But the USA branch of 1and1 has a hideous reputation for customer service. There are other services with similar promises of service, high bandwidth and high storage.

One ought to look for a company with a better track record for support. Every company has detractors, but at least you'll have a better chance elsewhere.

[ruger47]

www.3rdcoastdomains.com ..never had any problems with them.

[Floris]

I've been hosted with ev1, and I had some poor support that lead to a week of data gone missing. No feedback after that, as soon as they noticed we moved to a new data center. We just cut our losses and moved forward with a better contract. The merger with theplanet didn't do them much good in my eyes. It was not the service I'm used with them from the past.

[Zia]

https://www.knownhost.com

simply fine...a life time fan of knownhost.com

[kelly12]

Host: 1and1.co.uk - Business Plan (Linux) - £8.89
URL: http://www.1and1.co.uk

Pros

• 99.999% Uptime (downtime was when they were upgrading my server)
• Reliable Tech Support
• Loads (LOADS!) of features
• Very speedy
• Very efficient
• Three free .co/me/org.uk domains

Cons

• Only two MySQL Databases (100MB each)
• No shell access (Higher plans DO have SSH)

Host: DreamHost - Crazy Domain Insane (Linux) - $119/Year
URL: http://www.dreamhost.com

Pros

• Almost unlimited everything (haven't hit ANY limits yet)
• Very friendly company/community
• Loads (LOADS!) of features
• Very well designed and laid out structure (users and domains)
• One-click installs
• SSH on all packages
• HUUUUUUUUGE storage and bandwidth (200GB Disk, 2TB Bandwidth)
• Very relaxed about customer-specific requests (they increased my friend's php max upload size, just for him )

Cons

• Not as fast for me (UK customer =/= US site)
• Fairly bad rep (not sure how this happened)
• My server went down the day I joined, but was fixed within the hour

Have used both 1&1.com & DH. Based on my experience..
-1&1 support is not as good as DH (at least not as fast on responding questions)
-I would agree that DH has quite A LOT of features; huge storage & bandwidth; & easy to navigate control panel.

On the downside, I've been with them for ~1 year and have had server downtime for COUNTLESS times (ranging from 1 hour to 15 hours )!!

Some of you might have a good experience w/ DH. They have a lot of servers and I guess I got the server that constantly having problems
You can read countless bad reps from their customers here

just my 2c..

[Floris]

Any experience with EV1servers.net (ThePlanet right now) ?

Some people have great experiences with ev1/theplanet, but in the last few months I've seen several people move away from them after they needed support.

[G3MM4]

A feedback on asmallorange (ASO). Worst experience I have ever had.

I launched my website in October 2006, and based on some opinions here, took ASO's services. This was one of the worst decisions I ever made!! Here are the details:

- I have a downtime of atleast 2 hrs / week
- Their response time in case of any problems is 60 minutes
- 90% of the times their response is: The website looks ok from our side can u send a tracert and we need to check your firewall. [This is when I already have attached a tracert results when I opened a ticket with them]
- Their final response is never what the problem exactly was ... They just indicate how they cannot find any problems

I have decided to move within next few months, I have to stick with them till then but I thought I can save you all some time and money.

regards,
redraider.

I'm with ASO and never had any major issues. Any issues that I did have were just for SSH to be turned on, and when I accidentally wiped my entire server content, they responded within minutes to my ticket and even restored everything for me. They've helped with a server slow down problem. Most of the time I've been responded to within 10 minutes. I'm happy with them, and have 3 accounts with them too.

[Gene Steinberg]

Have used both 1&1.com & DH. Based on my experience..
-1&1 support is not as good as DH (at least not as fast on responding questions)
-I would agree that DH has quite A LOT of features; huge storage & bandwidth; & easy to navigate control panel.

On the downside, I've been with them for ~1 year and have had server downtime for COUNTLESS times (ranging from 1 hour to 15 hours )!!

Some of you might have a good experience w/ DH. They have a lot of servers and I guess I got the server that constantly having problems
You can read countless bad reps from their customers here

just my 2c..

It's not "countless," but maybe a few dozen here and there, and without knowing specific causes, you can't assume the complaints are accurate or actually related to the host, rather than to lots of other factors.

My experience with DreamHost is not perfect, but downtimes in the past 3 months are not "countless" on the four servers on which the accounts I manage are located on. They fall within the average for such things, except for one long outage that was based on the need to repair a power line at one of their datacenters.

Peace,
Gene

[Teddifish]

Any advice for a complete newbie as far as administration? This will be my first attempt at running a message board, so I need a host with excellent support (and probably a lot of patience.) The good news is it will be starting small--probably no more than 100 members for several months at least. Anyone else start from scratch and have a good experience?

[Gene Steinberg]

Any advice for a complete newbie as far as administration? This will be my first attempt at running a message board, so I need a host with excellent support (and probably a lot of patience.) The good news is it will be starting small--probably no more than 100 members for several months at least. Anyone else start from scratch and have a good experience?

Are you talking about administration of your host's services, or the vBulletin message board?

Peace,
Gene

[mhackl]

We're about to bail out of GoDaddy here real soon and we've been considering surpasshosting.com. It looks like they offer Godaddy prices with better options. We were really enthused about their cpanel interface After wading through Godaddys marketing based control panel everyday. We've had over one-hundred hours of total down time since we started with Godaddy back on Sept 1, 2006. Most of that came in a 76 hour chunk when they screw up our dns settings and could seem to figure it out.

If anyone knows of any reason to avoid these folks (surpasshosting) please let me know.

[Marc Smith]

Some people have great experiences with ev1/theplanet, but in the last few months I've seen several people move away from them after they needed support.

I've been with the Planet for several years. While I haven't needed support in a while, I've had good experiences with them all in all. I have heard there were somewhat recent changes, and within the last 2 months there was a slashdot 'article' discussed by an ex-Planet employee who was, to say the least, not a happy camper (he quit - he wasn't fired).

I'm running a FreeBSD server and manage my own server so support experience I've had has been limited to a potential memory problem and a couple of hardware related issues. I have no idea what their support is like for managed servers.