Help me choose barebones Windows hosting

December 23, 2010 1:09 PM

What is a good bare-bones hosting for ASP.NET / IIS 7 / SQL Server? This is for someone who's just messing around.

I am in the process of selecting a new hosting provider. My needs have changed, and I am now seeking a hosting provider that would support Windows IIS 7 and allow me to code in ASP.NET in conjunction with SQL Server. I'd need support for 2 domains at a minimum (option to add more would be great). I am not looking to pay a lot - I don't require 24/7 service guarantees or all that jazz.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I've used 1&1 and they were fine for my purposes (at the time, no need for any Windows support). I also used webfaction for my Ruby hosting needs, but they are too expensive for my personal-mess-around site.

I looked into ASP Spider, and even registered for an account with them, but they are too restrictive for my needs. I may still use them in tandem but they don't allow any commercial sites (I have one commercial -- in dev -- will switch to something reliable later, basically a sandbox FTM; one personal).

I am comfortable coding in other languages, but due to some work-related stuff I'm working on improving my Windows skillz in the aforementioned technologies.

Thanks in advance for your advice, and happy holidays.

posted by xiaolongbao to technology (4 answers total)

What you probably want is a VPS. You basically get a virtual machine and root access, and you can do whatever you like with it, including shooting yourself in the proverbial foot. I can't recommend a specific provider (I have a Linode account, but they're linux only), but this is a good way to shed the shackles of shared hosting without taking on too much risk.
posted by klanawa at 1:17 PM on December 23, 2010

Thanks for your response, kianawa. Good food for thought!

At a glance, VPS looks really expensive. But is this almost certainly the way to go given my desire to run ASP.NET apps using IIS and SQL Server? I may need to rethink this :o)
posted by xiaolongbao at 1:44 PM on December 23, 2010

If you're doing .NET MVC coding, you really need to go VPS- shared servers have huge problems with wildcard mappings needed for the url routing to work right.
posted by jenkinsEar at 2:37 PM on December 23, 2010

Thanks for the advice, all. I could really use some more...it seems I have grossly underestimated the complexity of Windows hosting. I am have a new-found respect for my sysadmins at work.


jenkinsEar, I don't believe I'd be coding using MVC (never have before), but good to keep that in mind. When you speak of wildcard mappings, is that an MVC-only thing?


So, would you guys:

1. Advise me to steer clear for the big chain name hosts for Windows hosting? My max budget is probably $15/month, for perspective.
2. Or, would you recommend I just keep on keeping on with my .NET coding and buy me some cheap non-Windows hosting to code in a different language (probably CSS/HTML/jQuery/JavaScript/whatever I feel like)?

Again, I'm just looking for a sandbox here. I've got a machine that begs to be set up as a server, but my ISP (the big V) prohibits it. Sadly, changing ISPs to one that would allows this isn't really an option where I live.


Thanks again for any and all advice, and for sticking with me, here.
Merry Christmas to all (or happy holidays, anyhow)!
posted by xiaolongbao at 9:41 PM on December 25, 2010