Hosting Feedback - Where can I get hosting...

I think I have finally found happiness with a host. Shared hosting was just not doing it for me as I am not a big PHP user and I really enjoyed having more control over my environment, so last year I jumped the ship to Rimuhosting and got myself a VPS. It is expensive compared to the majority of shared hosting out there, but I get my own Debian environment to myself (I have a plan with 4 GB space, 256 MB guaranteed RAM, and 40 GB transfer). At the price I am paying it almost makes more sense to get cheap dedicated hosting (I pay $30-something) but I am not complaining.

Support has been responsive and helpful the times I needed them. Most recently, I requested them to drop a fresh Debian 4.1 image onto my server. Turnaround time was within 1-2 hours of my ticket request. I had a minor resource issue with my initial setup last year, but that was quickly resolved with an email. They were very helpful when I asked questions prior to deciding to buy hosting from them.

Plus they have a rather useful wiki-type site to help you with common issues and configurations if you need some unguided support.

Still, to get my mod_python/django and postgresql-powered site under way, great. Spoiled me on shared hosting, and I have had very positive experiences with most of the shared hosts I have been with.

I would recommend Rimuhosting if you were in the market for a Linux-based VPS.
 
http://a1whs.com
-Hosted me a couple years for free as a friend and recently
paid for a hosting service.

-A very good webhost, The owner will help you in every way possible
and the hosting is both fast and comes with a lot of features. He usually
has coupon codes to save money off your hosting which is nice and he's a great guy.

Recommended to anyone!!
 
http://www.ismywebsite.com

Been using them for a few months, and I'm extremely happy with them. Cpanel, hosting that grows with your website, mysql, email, frontpage extensions, probably as many or more features than a paid host, for FREE. Speed, and reliablity is great, the only requirements are your site has to be personally approved before they accept and host it, and there are required ads that you design and place yourself. You have your choice of Google adsense, or an inhouse advertising system. Theres also a very nice community growing around the hosting company, on thier forums and chat, which is very helpful and responsive. On top of all this, email and IM support is almost instantaneous, and next to none in terms of quality. Check it out, if your looking for a professional hosting company, that grows with you, with the benefit of being free.
 
http://www.hostsnake.com/

Signed up with them a week ago to start farting around with a web site. Free hosting, five mysql databases, if you got a domain you can use that address, no popups, no site adverts... so far great! Being it is 'free hosting' I am concerned what the down side is, but so far nothing yet..
 
I switched from GoDaddy (horrible host, they blocked a substantial portion of my inbound e-mail because "it looked like spam" and refused to remove the filters) to Site5.com about a month ago, and I've been quite happy with them. IMAP support on the e-mail server, insanely good plan, and prompt support replies.

A warning about the free hosting sites: I've seen a lot of those come and go over the years, and when they go they generally do so in a hurry, and without warning. That means your MySQL databases and e-mail accounts and everything else can disappear at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying don't use them, I'm saying be smart about how you use them.

I bought my Site5 service on Christmas day and caught a discount off their $7.50 plan. I think I ended up with two years for $135.

750 GB disk space
750 GB bandwidth
unlimited everything else (e-mail, DBs, subs, et cetera)
 
PopeKevinI said:
I switched from GoDaddy (horrible host, they blocked a substantial portion of my inbound e-mail because "it looked like spam" and refused to remove the filters) to Site5.com about a month ago, and I've been quite happy with them. IMAP support on the e-mail server, insanely good plan, and prompt support replies.

A warning about the free hosting sites: I've seen a lot of those come and go over the years, and when they go they generally do so in a hurry, and without warning. That means your MySQL databases and e-mail accounts and everything else can disappear at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying don't use them, I'm saying be smart about how you use them.
Click to expand...

They seem look a good choice. I'm still looking around for a good host, and I really like what they have to offer. Explanations on everything, and customer support seems excellent.
 
PopeKevinI said:
I switched from GoDaddy (horrible host, they blocked a substantial portion of my inbound e-mail because "it looked like spam" and refused to remove the filters) to Site5.com about a month ago, and I've been quite happy with them. IMAP support on the e-mail server, insanely good plan, and prompt support replies.

A warning about the free hosting sites: I've seen a lot of those come and go over the years, and when they go they generally do so in a hurry, and without warning. That means your MySQL databases and e-mail accounts and everything else can disappear at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying don't use them, I'm saying be smart about how you use them.

I bought my Site5 service on Christmas day and caught a discount off their $7.50 plan. I think I ended up with two years for $135.

750 GB disk space
750 GB bandwidth
unlimited everything else (e-mail, DBs, subs, et cetera)
Click to expand...

So realistically, how much of that can you use? Do you find server and site performance to be good and responsive? I don't know if you ever used Dreamhost, but they pretty much offer a similar plan in resources but have been notorious for server performance issues, probably from a combination of them putting several hundred users on the same server and all of them running script- and database-heavy sites like forums.

Do they offer Python? Just curious.
 
I have dot5hosting and they have been good to me. The service used to be hit & miss, but last month they moved platforms and now it's all done on Linux [debian, I think] and the control panel is vDeck 3, which is steller

Includes PHP, mySQL [unlimited databases], FTP access, email, 25 subdomains, and countless other goodies for $125 for 2 year [includes .com domain].
 
BillLeeLee said:
So realistically, how much of that can you use? Do you find server and site performance to be good and responsive? I don't know if you ever used Dreamhost, but they pretty much offer a similar plan in resources but have been notorious for server performance issues, probably from a combination of them putting several hundred users on the same server and all of them running script- and database-heavy sites like forums.

Do they offer Python? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Site5, at least the server I am on, is AWESOME.

I have tried many of the other shared hosting leaders and none have been as good or even close to Site5. I run Mambo/Joomla and it was always pretty slow on the other shared hosts, it now flies on Site5.
 
BillLeeLee said:
So realistically, how much of that can you use? Do you find server and site performance to be good and responsive? I don't know if you ever used Dreamhost, but they pretty much offer a similar plan in resources but have been notorious for server performance issues, probably from a combination of them putting several hundred users on the same server and all of them running script- and database-heavy sites like forums.

Do they offer Python? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Under servers and software here.

Dual 5130 Xeons (4 cores!)
At Least 4 GB RAM
PHP 4 & 5 (w/Zend Optimizer™)
MySQL 4+
Perl 5.8+ (w/Free Module Installation)
GD Graphics Library
cURL Library
Python 2.2 Language Support
ImageMagick 5+ Support
WAP/WML/Wireless Support
Server Side Includes (SSI)
CGI-BIN and Site-Wide CGI
Click to expand...
 
I'd like to state the excellence in the CS of site5 tonight. My account should have been automatically verified with the phone call verification, within 20 minutes of my email, I had received my 'welcome' emails, and a reply from the CS rep explaining the issue and the help.

Not to mention the assload of features I don't even need yet. I like it!
 
tgabe213 said:
I'd like to state the excellence in the CS of site5 tonight. My account should have been automatically verified with the phone call verification, within 20 minutes of my email, I had received my 'welcome' emails, and a reply from the CS rep explaining the issue and the help.

Not to mention the assload of features I don't even need yet. I like it!
Click to expand...

Yours must have had the leading 0 like I did. I had to open up a ticket to get my phone verification passed through too.
 
The downtime I've had recently of site5 has been ridiculous.

My server is down constantly!
 
tgabe213 said:
The downtime I've had recently of site5 has been ridiculous.

My server is down constantly!
Click to expand...

I was affected when Demeter when down early this year (right after I ordered my service) and had a few hours of downtime yesterday that resulted in a reboot, but other than that it's been good.

I'm thinking they're due some growing pains...hopefully it goes well, much more downtime and I'm going to start wanting to change hosts again. Ugh.

edit: looks like Demeter was down for about twelve hours yesterday, according to their forum posts.
 
It's one thing to claim 32 mins of uptime, but i'm just wondering why the monitoring service (http://www.site5.com/support/uptime.php?id=rhodope) seams to think the server has been doing much better than you stated. (98% uptime this month and 99% last...)

Oh, and Demeter was down yesterday due to file system errors... Granted 12 hours of downtime isn't any fun, but it beats losing all your data or the 490ish GB of other customers data...

I do agree they are having some growing pains that are being compounded with a fleetwide upgrade and migration (all new accounts are provisioned at the planet so no migration). Personally I think they are doing rather well under the load, but there is room to improve and they are doing that.

I'm coming up on 1 year of hosting with Site5 and have yet to have any serious downtime with my accounts. I currently have accounts on two servers, used to have three, but I was able to consolidate thanks to The Plan to End All Plans + Turbo option.

Anyways enough of me... I now return you to regular hosting feedback.
AMDbuilder
 
I've had hosting with www.mediatemple.net for half a year, and am pretty pleased with them.

My hosting solutions before mediatemple was through rackspace, and than with mosso (a venture company of rackspace), so it was a tough switch to make.

Mediatemple is an excellent host. There are times when some of the services are slow. And other times where services are just plain dead. But usually it's just a spike of dead service, and a refresh will bring it back.

They almost always have some sort of system status alert too, electrical system, load balancing, etc. Something is almost always being worked on. Though I've only encountered one instance where the alert actually caused a service outage.

Customer support is usually always very prompt and has always answered my questions.

Also, there custom control panel is excellent once you get used to it, though sometimes features and functionality are hard to find.

Everything considered, I plan to stay with mediatemple for a long time. Unless one day I can afford the switch over to Mosso, I don't see myself changing. Mediatemple has fulfilled all my hosting needs thus far.

I would rate them a 8.5/10
 
I joined site5 yesterday on some of the advice here and other places. I got put on nammuu server after signing up for the 10year plan.

rant
I uploaded a few files yesterday and tested the site, performance speedwise wasnt very good compared to the other hosts ive used, but was fast enough for most things and occasionaly i had to hit refresh on my pages, because it looked like they were timing out on the server (simple html pages in some cases). Today i tried to logon to the test site i uploaded and found that only 1-10 requests would actually pull a page from the server, all the others just getting the generic time out messages. To make sure this wasnt just my internet, i tested it from the 2 dedicated servers i have in another country and it was the same story.
/rant

Im glad i didnt try to use any live websites with them and unless they can rectify the issue quickly will be using the 60 day money back guarantee.
 
http://www.unlimitedmb.com
Been with Ulmb for 12 to 13 months now and I gotta say that their hosting is pretty good for your basic site. They've got PHP, mySQL, etc like you'd expect. The only thing that I don't like though is the support. Other forum members are generally helpful on site problems, but getting answers to your hosting problems can be a pain. If you need hosting help, you need to contact 'UnlimtedMB' (AKA Eric).

Due to the somewhat bad experience we at chatshack.us have experienced, we are moving to Bluehost. This concludes my Ulmb review. =)
 
modi123 said:
http://www.hostsnake.com/

Signed up with them a week ago to start farting around with a web site. Free hosting, five mysql databases, if you got a domain you can use that address, no popups, no site adverts... so far great! Being it is 'free hosting' I am concerned what the down side is, but so far nothing yet..
Click to expand...

Just wanted to update and remove my vote for host snake. They were recently bought by another company, slapped all html pages with a banner ad that messes up the code (even though they are still espousing they are "add free"), and have been down quite a bit. Not to mention their only customer intereactiong (their forums) have yet to see an admin on. At this point i would be happy if their banner stopped mucking with my stuff.

but then again.. free is free, right? In short, no longer a good service.
 
Set up an account with HostMySite about six weeks ago. So far, I've had issues with logging into FTP, uploading Wordpress themes via CPanel (they don't allow FTP access to the Wordpress directories, for whatever reason), viewing the basic stats and viewing advanced stats (cannot login). The online support chat feature is essentially useless: the status will indicate that the department is 'online', but it then boots me out after a few minutes stating that the department is no longer available and requests that I instead leave a message.

Phone support is okay, though wait times are typically high. Initial setup was quick, and pricing and features are more-or-less standard fare. Overall, I'm fairly displeased. There's just nothing here really worth getting excited about.
 
AMDbuilder said:
It's one thing to claim 32 mins of uptime, but i'm just wondering why the monitoring service (http://www.site5.com/support/uptime.php?id=rhodope) seams to think the server has been doing much better than you stated. (98% uptime this month and 99% last...)
AMDbuilder
Click to expand...

Its all about how often the monitoring service is set to check and what they are monitoring. Uptime stats are generally very vague.

Heres a good article I point out to some of our customers when they start saying so and so offers XX.XX % guaranteed uptime
 
Just signed up with dreamhost yesterday and have it hosting 2 sites - may be adding more soon. So far I'm very pleased - one click installs make it easy, plenty of storage space and bandwidth, and easy to use interface.

I haven't had a chance to test customer service or much else yet, but I'll add some info after a month or two.
 
Just thought I'd post this to prevent someone else from making the same mistake I did...

To summarize, tried to publish a site to 1and1 using Frontpage (I know, no comments), after having enabled the extensions.

Couldn't connect. Username and/or pwd not accepted, tho correct. Called "Tech support". "We know what the issue is, and need to run a fix. Will take about 3 hours." No problem.

Tried the next day. Same issue. Called "Tech Support". "Okay we have 2 fixes, the long and the short. The short didn't work, so we need to run the long" Are you sure this will work? "Yes sir, I will personally follow up and ensure this resolves the problem".

Waited another day. Guess what? Same problem. Called again. "The problem has been escalated to the sysadmin". Can I speak to the Sysyadmin, I want to get a time frame? "The Sysadmin doesn't accept calls. We will send you an email" Can I speak to your manager? "Hold".... "My manager doesn't have anything further to tell you, and can't accept the call."

Another day passes, still doesn't work, and I am now looking for a new host...
 
boatasiaus said:
Just thought I'd post this to prevent someone else from making the same mistake I did...

To summarize, tried to publish a site to 1and1 using Frontpage (I know, no comments), after having enabled the extensions.

Couldn't connect. Username and/or pwd not accepted, tho correct. Called "Tech support". "We know what the issue is, and need to run a fix. Will take about 3 hours." No problem.

Tried the next day. Same issue. Called "Tech Support". "Okay we have 2 fixes, the long and the short. The short didn't work, so we need to run the long" Are you sure this will work? "Yes sir, I will personally follow up and ensure this resolves the problem".

Waited another day. Guess what? Same problem. Called again. "The problem has been escalated to the sysadmin". Can I speak to the Sysyadmin, I want to get a time frame? "The Sysadmin doesn't accept calls. We will send you an email" Can I speak to your manager? "Hold".... "My manager doesn't have anything further to tell you, and can't accept the call."

Another day passes, still doesn't work, and I am now looking for a new host...
Click to expand...

What version of frontpage was this?
 
You know how theres that spreadsheet of OC processors on this forum?

It would be awesome if someone could make a spreadsheet about the web hosts in this thread...

:)
 
www.dreamhost.com

I moved 5 domains over to them about 6 months ago and they have been great. They have alot of great tools in the web management area and have alot of great "one click installs" where they will setup and config apps and requires very little management on your part (if you use the expert mode to install them). They offer ssh and ftp connections and increase your bandwidth and storage size every couple of days. Great company to deal with...will definitely be with them until the net dies.

-----------------

referral pimping not allowed. Post edited

--KingKaeru
 
I moved a site over to http://www.downtownhost.com last February after reading a number of great reviews. It's worked out well, so I moved a couple more sites over last week. I'm dealing with their shared and reseller plans, and I have nothing but positive feedback. You'll be able to find a 25% off coupon easily on google as well. It might not be the cheapest for the bandwidth, but it's been reliable and they seem like a good group of people. The site in my signature is one that I recently transferred there.
 
It would be awesome if someone could make a spreadsheet about the web hosts in this thread
Click to expand...

This is a great idea, it would make selecting a webhost a lot easier as im getting sick of being burnt just lately trying to find a good one.

Could you post a link to the OC one (i checked in the OC forum but didnt see it). Anything i can do to help this get off the ground?
 
tgabe213 said:
rhodope:

Uptime 32 minutes
Click to expand...

AMDbuilder said:
It's one thing to claim 32 mins of uptime, but i'm just wondering why the monitoring service (http://www.site5.com/support/uptime.php?id=rhodope) seams to think the server has been doing much better than you stated. (98% uptime this month and 99% last...)

Oh, and Demeter was down yesterday due to file system errors... Granted 12 hours of downtime isn't any fun, but it beats losing all your data or the 490ish GB of other customers data...

I do agree they are having some growing pains that are being compounded with a fleetwide upgrade and migration (all new accounts are provisioned at the planet so no migration). Personally I think they are doing rather well under the load, but there is room to improve and they are doing that.

I'm coming up on 1 year of hosting with Site5 and have yet to have any serious downtime with my accounts. I currently have accounts on two servers, used to have three, but I was able to consolidate thanks to The Plan to End All Plans + Turbo option.

Anyways enough of me... I now return you to regular hosting feedback.
AMDbuilder
Click to expand...

leezard said:
Its all about how often the monitoring service is set to check and what they are monitoring. Uptime stats are generally very vague.

Heres a good article I point out to some of our customers when they start saying so and so offers XX.XX % guaranteed uptime
Click to expand...


Sounds to me he looked at the server uptime since last restart. So he looked at it 32min after it had been turned online.

I have had great luck with site5, been with them a bit over 2yrs with no issues. I got migrated easily and my server has great uptimes.
 
tgabe213 said:
rhodope:

Uptime 32 minutes
Click to expand...

AMDbuilder said:
It's one thing to claim 32 mins of uptime, but i'm just wondering why the monitoring service (http://www.site5.com/support/uptime.php?id=rhodope) seams to think the server has been doing much better than you stated. (98% uptime this month and 99% last...)

Oh, and Demeter was down yesterday due to file system errors... Granted 12 hours of downtime isn't any fun, but it beats losing all your data or the 490ish GB of other customers data...

I do agree they are having some growing pains that are being compounded with a fleetwide upgrade and migration (all new accounts are provisioned at the planet so no migration). Personally I think they are doing rather well under the load, but there is room to improve and they are doing that.

I'm coming up on 1 year of hosting with Site5 and have yet to have any serious downtime with my accounts. I currently have accounts on two servers, used to have three, but I was able to consolidate thanks to The Plan to End All Plans + Turbo option.

Anyways enough of me... I now return you to regular hosting feedback.
AMDbuilder
Click to expand...

leezard said:
Its all about how often the monitoring service is set to check and what they are monitoring. Uptime stats are generally very vague.

Heres a good article I point out to some of our customers when they start saying so and so offers XX.XX % guaranteed uptime
Click to expand...


Sounds to me he looked at the server uptime since last restart. So he looked at it 32min after it had been turned online.

I have had great luck with site5, been with them a bit over 2yrs with no issues. I got migrated easily and my server has great uptimes (all well above 99% ;) ).
 
tgabe213 said:
They seem look a good choice. I'm still looking around for a good host, and I really like what they have to offer. Explanations on everything, and customer support seems excellent.
Click to expand...

In today's economy, part of the reason I use godaddy, even though, in fairness, they aren't PERFECT, is because I know that their entire company is us based and has 24/7 support.

I have a feeling that there might have actually BEEN a spam problem with that persons incoming mail. Would you prefer they completely ignore spam floods and virus attachments?
 
I would like to consider dreamhost or 1and1 but I prefer cpanel and neither of these services offer this control panel. Is there a hosting service with the same level of service that offers cpanel?

BTW I will only consider hosting companies that have a several year history.
 
BurntToast said:
I would like to consider dreamhost or 1and1 but I prefer cpanel and neither of these services offer this control panel. Is there a hosting service with the same level of service that offers cpanel?

BTW I will only consider hosting companies that have a several year history.
Click to expand...
The dreamhost panel is 100Xs better then cpanel is.
 
supergper said:
The dreamhost panel is 100Xs better then cpanel is.
Click to expand...

The problem with proprietary control panels is if you ever have to migrate to another host it might give you problems. cpanel isnt perfect but a LOT of hosts use it, switching from one cpanel host to another is pretty painless if the host your switching to offers cpanel tranfers, they just log into WHM as root, enter your info from the previous host (domain, username and password) and click transfer, as long as the host your are moving from doesnt have it disabled all your data gets copied to the new host
 
leezard said:
The problem with proprietary control panels is if you ever have to migrate to another host it might give you problems. cpanel isnt perfect but a LOT of hosts use it, switching from one cpanel host to another is pretty painless if the host your switching to offers cpanel tranfers, they just log into WHM as root, enter your info from the previous host (domain, username and password) and click transfer, as long as the host your are moving from doesnt have it disabled all your data gets copied to the new host
Click to expand...
I fail to see how it would cause any problems. :confused: I've used probably 50+ hosts, ones with cpanel and ones without and I've never had any issues either way...infact I find cpanel to be a pretty crappy piece of software.

Personally I'd rather do all my administration from the command line and is why I've moved off shared hosting and moved to dedicated servers.
 
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