Help me choose a host

November 8, 2009 1:47 PM

Help me choose a webhost for my small business. Details on the inside.

Drowning slightly in the choices available to me. I have a teeny tiny business "doing sites" and will be hosting my clients under my own package. The sites are tiny enough (online brochures in principle) that a reseller account would be over the top.

On the "need to have" end of things I guess that means:
- multiple domains on one account
- handling of hosting and mail for those domains
- handy WP integration
- cheap but established (really max $20 a month I think)

and "nice to have" would be:
- easy ecommerce solution
- environmentally friendly/carbon neutral
- free wp templates

I am probably leaning towards Dreamhost based on their being so well established and correctly priced. I just heard of GreenReseller hosting today, so I have no real opinion on them, anyone know of them or similar companies?

What are other need/nice to haves I should consider?
Which company do you recommend for the most bang for my buck?

posted by Iteki to computers & internet (13 comments total)

I have been with BlueHost for a few years and really like them. One account, massive amounts of space and add-on domains available, easy program intergration - WP, Joomla, Drupal etc, good customer service, and way under $20pm.
posted by Kerasia at 2:01 PM on November 8

I've been with DH since 2000 and highly, highly recommend them.

If you do choose DH, please consider using me as the referral. I can give you a code for lots off.
posted by unixrat at 2:44 PM on November 8

I've used 1and1 since 2005, and have no issues with them at all.
posted by deezil at 5:20 PM on November 8

Seconding DH - they're very good for the money, very open & honest about everything.
posted by dflock at 6:09 PM on November 8

I've used Dreamhost, 1and1, and... sadly, so many other hosts.

DreamHost gives you a lot sometimes, and really is a decent solution for a bunch of people, but for client sites, you should be thinking about support and stability first, because you are going to be responsible for their sites if you choose to host them (as an aside, hosting client sites is not recommended for most businesses as it can suck up time for no pay)

Strongly recommend against 1and1 because of their domain policies, which make it extremely hard to transfer off of them, and their sometimes-nonexistent service.

SliceHost is the go-to for lots of sites, and you should definitely check them out, although the bar for technical experience (you'll need to set up a server yourself) might be more than you're in for.

Rackspace's Cloud Sites sounds up your alley, since it's good for having customers pay and letting you host a lot of sites on one account, and deal with the mostly-friendly rackspace staff.

As a sidenote, wordpress templates, integration, and ecommerce solutions aren't really what web hosts are... at most they're kind of the cheesy free-pen that you get when you sign up for a crap VISA card.
posted by tmcw at 6:20 PM on November 8

i have not heard good things about dreamhost. ever. i have not used them, but never heard a good thing.

i have bluehost right now and went with them back in january based on a bunch of research i did. they have great customer support. they have one-click installs of a few common cms (word press is one of them) and they do have some ecommerce stuff, though i haven't needed that. they use cpanel for their control panel, and i find that interface really easy to use and understand.

i will say that i agree with tmcw that if you choose a host based on their wp templates and ecommerce solutions, you're choosing based on the wrong things.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 6:47 PM on November 8

I like Dreamhost. I have been using them for about a year and have not had any big problems. They have always responded to any issues we have had... though I have not compared them to anyone else.
posted by bkeene12 at 8:16 PM on November 8

I'm going to anti-recommend DreamHost. They oversell. They know it, and they admit it, and their rationale as to why this isn't a problem, but it is.

Here's an example: their unlimited storage offer. It was a mere 200GB two years ago. They make this kind of offer betting that most people can't even come up with a use for half that (or, more accurate, courting the segment of the market that won't). They're right in that the vast majority of websites will never have more than tens of gigabytes of contents. But the problem is, if you offer a service, eventually, some significant number of people will find a way to use it. I noticed that this made them the cheapest game in town for backing up a lot of data to a remote location. So did a lot of other people. Suddenly, people were actually using what DreamHost sold them. They imposed new rules: you had to pay extra (3-4 times) to use that amount of space if the files stored weren't part of a website. That's right: different prices for different bits on the same disk.

Since I found the distinction pretty arbitrary and annoying, I decided to see what would happen if I did a bit of coding and essentially produced a simple web interface for what became a personal backup website. I'd pretty clearly met the letter of the aw. DreamHost didn't agree, and said it didn't matter whether or not I had because my intent was clearly just to get around their restriction. They didn't back down; I paid their additional fees, but after a few months, found it irksome enough that I left.

I'm fairly lucky, because I had plenty of time to take my ball and go home. People who have found their accounts suspended and even deactivated because of spiking demand -- not even demand that saturates a pipe or exceeds any of the limits they tell you about when they're selling, mostly just enough demand on shared boxes that causes Apache to crash or lock up -- have not had as great of luck.

On top of this, I don't know what it is, but they had a lot of hiccups in the time that I was with them. Some of the explanations really did sound like things beyond their control, and if I hadn't experienced better, I would assume that this just happens sometimes. The network is down, their connectivity is cut off, email servers fail, they change their subdomain host naming system without telling you... uptime and predictability were not their strong points.

But the bottom line for me is that because of their admitted overselling, DreamHost accounts have two sets of rules: the ones they sell you on, and the other ones they're counting on you adhering to. If you cross the later line -- even well before you get to the former -- it's pretty clear they will not only accept your departure but in some cases they will actively throw you over the side of the boat. This is an annoying but possibly acceptable state of affairs for a personal website, but if you count on someone like this for a client website, I think it's likely that you or the client will eventually regret it rather strongly.

I have heard good things about BlueHost. I have also heard good things about WestHost. I don't have any direct experience with either.

As far as stability goes, I have had an account with Hurricane Electric for over 11 years. They don't have multiple domains per account or I'd recommend them unequivocally. Rock solid, 99.999% uptime easily, I haven't seen them go down more than once in that time , and that was short, and over 7 years ago. What they offer is substantially less than others, but I've had the opposite experience from them as DreamHost: they stand behind every last measure of what they offer and sometimes beyond. They're not a solution for someone looking to put a lot of domains on a single account, but they're probably better for client accounts.
posted by weston at 10:39 PM on November 8

Un-recommending Dreamhost and MediaTemple (it'll come up) because they both oversell horribly and don't have half the infrastructure they need or claim to have.

Endorsing 1&1 and Hurricane and RackSpace, but those might all be out of your price range.

I have no experience with SliceHost or BlueHost or GreenHost or WestHost.

These companies need more creative names.
posted by rokusan at 12:22 AM on November 9

Seconding that you absolutely do not need Media Temple. It's spendy and nothing special, other than being where all the hipster apps host their shit.

Some of their customers are really cool though.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:39 AM on November 9

I'm going to strongly recommend TigerTech. Have used them for years on many domains, and they're awesome. They're also a small enough company that if you need support, you can get it pretty much right away.
posted by jbickers at 4:50 AM on November 9

Ah, the usual Dreamhost whoring.

Have you looked in the paper for a local internet service provider?

A Small Orange has a good reputation, doesn't oversell the crap out of their boxes like Dreamhost/1and1, and they have excellent customer support.

I do not have any affiliation with them, but I did used to operate a web hosting provider. A Small Orange is the company that I would be using if I didn't still manage my own stuff.
posted by drstein at 8:31 AM on November 10

- Also, I'll chip in points for West Host. I built a newspaper site and have them host it on WestHost, and uptime is very good.
posted by tmcw at 5:29 PM on November 11