new host

December 20, 2011 8:33 AM

Anyone recommend a good domain/website host ?

Finally getting a bit more net savvy after all these years - moving away from a use our template website type host - but where is the best place to move to ?

obv thinking affordability, good bandwith - that sort of thing.

thanks in advance.

posted by sgt.serenity to computers & internet (28 answers total)

I use 123-reg.co.uk for domains. Never had any problems and they are usually pretty cheap (.co.uk is only £3/year).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:42 AM on December 20, 2011

I have a suggestion of who NOT to use: Godaddy.com. You get suckered in by cheap pricing and then you have to deal with their website. The UI looks like it was created by a chimp with ADD and a cocaine habit.
posted by remthewanderer at 8:50 AM on December 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

m8, nothing can be worse than mrsite.
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:59 AM on December 20, 2011

I've always been extremely happy with Site5.

Their front-end is very easy to use and they've been extremely prompt and helpful in response to support tickets.
posted by alby at 9:00 AM on December 20, 2011

I can't recommend Dreamhost highly enough. They're great.

And, if you Google something like "dreamhost coupons", you can often find offers that give you nice discounts (BEKIND and DHSAVEMAX are the codes that come up on a quick search).
posted by Betelgeuse at 9:03 AM on December 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

Webfaction.com has been a relevation, after having used many other hosts and being various degrees of just satisfied. Webfaction is an absolute pleasure. (I buy and manage my domains at Namecheap.)
posted by gilrain at 9:04 AM on December 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

123-reg are great for domains. All the management tools are there, and they're pretty good at keeping you notified about domain expiries.

I've been using Xilo for a year or so now to host several sites. They've yet to disappoint in nay way, and are pretty good on the rare times I've needed support.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 9:04 AM on December 20, 2011

ditto dreamhost. I've been using them for years. Excellent uptime record.
posted by crunchland at 9:15 AM on December 20, 2011

Dreamhost was awesome for me for years. Really great.

I also really like (and use) Mediatemple, but the backend is WAY less user-friendly and not so intuitive.

If it's something bigger that you want to host, Datagram is fantastic.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 9:17 AM on December 20, 2011

I love nearlyfreespeech
Only pay for what you use, reliable, easy to use and no fuss setup. The UI is pretty much stripped down, with no thrills.

Haven't encountered a problem, yet and paying about $15 a year is cheap as shit for just a basic site.
posted by handbanana at 9:18 AM on December 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh god, how have we not mentioned Laughing Squid??? Good people. Starts at... SIX DOLLARS A MONTH, too.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 9:18 AM on December 20, 2011

I've had a terrible experience with 123-reg (well someone is bound to). I use Namecheap for all my domains and they have been faultless for 4 years now. Fast and friendly support.

Hosts - Dreamhost were good. Site5 were not good - I criticised something about their service in their forums and was sent a warning to not do it again. I also use NearlyFreeSpeech but they don't have cPanel or anything like it so it may not be as user-friendly as you might like.
posted by episodic at 9:21 AM on December 20, 2011

nthig dreamhost. I've run a small-volume web forum there for 5 or 6 years with no problems at all.
posted by chazlarson at 9:36 AM on December 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Nthing Dreamhost. I've been running my websites on their servers for probably 6 or 7 years now and have never had any issues. Their customer support team is typically very responsive, too, so I've rarely had to wait long for a response on the rare occasions when I did have technical issues (which almost always turned out to be the result of my own errors).
posted by asnider at 9:38 AM on December 20, 2011

Nthing Dreamhost too.
posted by StrawberryPie at 9:45 AM on December 20, 2011

I use NameCheap for domains and HostGator for hosting. Before I had all my eggs in one basket with NameCheap for both domains and hosting, but I got fed up with the slow FTP performance, and my site was always down/ran slow/had random timeouts, etc. I always wanted to play with Python/Django and HostGator offered that. NameCheap did not.

Now that I've moved to HostGator for hosting, things fly. I just have a small personal WordPress blog with caching and everything is instant. Never had downtime since the few months I've been using them (well the times I check). I've also read that the combination of NameCheap and HostGator is pretty popular, too. The customer support with both is excellent, too.
posted by jwmollman at 10:44 AM on December 20, 2011

I agree with NOT using GoDaddy. A few months ago I migrated all my sites to HostGator and have been happy with them so far.
posted by LaurenIpsum at 10:44 AM on December 20, 2011

I hear Dreamhost is good too.
yola is easy.
posted by ozone14 at 11:03 AM on December 20, 2011

ASmallOrange for hosting.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:21 AM on December 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

I use mediatemple. They have phone support, like that you can actually call, 24 hours a day, and get connected to a person in Los Angeles that can fix your problem.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 11:24 AM on December 20, 2011

Where ever you go, make sure you separate your hosting from your DNS/Registrar. I'd recommend Hover.com (formerly Tucows) for the later.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:56 AM on December 20, 2011

Where ever you go, make sure you separate your hosting from your DNS/Registrar. I'd recommend Hover.com (formerly Tucows) for the later.

This is generally a good idea. I'm hosted by Dreamhost, but my domains are registered with NameCheap.
posted by asnider at 12:05 PM on December 20, 2011

A Small Orange for sure!

If you are interested, send me a MeFi Mail and I'll provide a referral code worth 15% off. I also have a $5 off code.
posted by RandyWalker at 12:34 PM on December 20, 2011

Dreamhost has been great. They actually talked me out of spending close to $200 extra dollars with them because they told me I didn't need to, I could do what I wanted to do with just one basic plan. Not only that, I had already signed up and paid the extra $200 and they told me not to worry, they'd refund it. And they did! I have *never* had a company downsell rather than upsell me before. Also have had a very good experience with registering names with NameCheap.

Where ever you go, make sure you separate your hosting from your DNS/Registrar. I'd recommend Hover.com (formerly Tucows) for the later. I feel foolish, I had no idea this was recommended (and have since transferred my Namecheap domain registrations to Dreamhost out of convenience). Why is this so?
posted by stagewhisper at 1:13 PM on December 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

nthing nearlyfreespeech.net
posted by stebulus at 2:52 PM on December 20, 2011

Hostgator. Cheap, reliable, outstanding customer service.

Heard good things about NearlyFreeSpeech but they seem to do some things different. You will have to tweak already for installing and updating a Wordpress script, AFAIK.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 3:57 PM on December 20, 2011

Dreamhost. Webfaction is good too, but their email leaves a bit to be desired (mostly the inability of an email user to set up an auto responders. Only admins can do that. ). If you can use Google Apps for your domain, then the email thing isn't an issue.
posted by backwards guitar at 4:33 PM on December 20, 2011

http://hostingtrade.com/hosting/
posted by WizKid at 1:01 PM on December 22, 2011