Need reliable, affordable hosting service with cPanel
October 8, 2014 9:41 AM Subscribe
It's time to move on from my mail losing/delaying hosting service, despite their generally excellent support. In 2014, who would you recommend? Must haves: reliable, under $15/month, supports WordPress, uses cPanel. Nice to have: Canadian, green, some other awesome attributes of your choice. (I could get this domain hosted free at DreamHost as an add-on to my backup domain, but I can't stand their admin panel. As an alternative, try to sell me on the DreamHost panel!)
I use A Small Orange for my small personal website, and they've been great. Matches your requirements (depending on what service package you choose) and green, though not Canadian. Other awesome attributes of my choice, for full disclosure, are that they are a small company local to my current city of residence, and started by recent grads of my alma mater.
(I was just getting my pets together for ASO's cute Halloween pet picture promotion, actually!)
posted by Pwoink at 9:50 AM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]
(I was just getting my pets together for ASO's cute Halloween pet picture promotion, actually!)
posted by Pwoink at 9:50 AM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]
These guys seem to fit the bill (googled ethical green canadian hosting): http://www.ethicalhost.ca/ethical-webhosting-plans.html
I can't vouch for them, though, and their website isn't very attractive.
posted by michaelh at 9:51 AM on October 8, 2014
I can't vouch for them, though, and their website isn't very attractive.
posted by michaelh at 9:51 AM on October 8, 2014
I second the idea of moving to a dedicated email provider if mail is the issue. Polarismail is Canadian.
posted by COD at 9:58 AM on October 8, 2014
posted by COD at 9:58 AM on October 8, 2014
Have used Tigertech for more than 10 years and recommend them to everyone. Meets all of your requirements except for Canadian (they are carbon-neutral, FWIW). Their customer service is extraordinary.
posted by jbickers at 10:12 AM on October 8, 2014
posted by jbickers at 10:12 AM on October 8, 2014
Response by poster: Hmm. On the one hand, keeping a separate account just for email is a little bit more complicated, plus an additional expense. But OTOH, moving my web hosting would be a PITA at a very busy time of year.
I've had great experiences with Hover for domain registration, so I am considering their email service at $40/year for my two most important email addresses.
So let me clarify the new scope of this question:
1) Great hosting you have used or someone you know well has used and which you can honestly recommend
2) Great advice on learning to love the DreamHost admin panel
3) Great email providers who know how to take care of spam (oh, you don't want to know how horrible my spam problems have been!)
OK, let me tell you how horrible: over the past year, I've had to create and maintain a huge whitelist (which works erratically), a huge blacklist, extra custom filters, a nuke 'em from orbit policy for anything scoring over 6 and everything with a score of 1-5 getting parked in my spam account, which has now dropped to a more "reasonable" load of 80 spam emails a day I have to review and filter, because I usually get another 3-7 real messages trapped in there.
(Have added SPAM WARRIOR to question tags).
posted by maudlin at 10:15 AM on October 8, 2014
I've had great experiences with Hover for domain registration, so I am considering their email service at $40/year for my two most important email addresses.
So let me clarify the new scope of this question:
1) Great hosting you have used or someone you know well has used and which you can honestly recommend
2) Great advice on learning to love the DreamHost admin panel
3) Great email providers who know how to take care of spam (oh, you don't want to know how horrible my spam problems have been!)
OK, let me tell you how horrible: over the past year, I've had to create and maintain a huge whitelist (which works erratically), a huge blacklist, extra custom filters, a nuke 'em from orbit policy for anything scoring over 6 and everything with a score of 1-5 getting parked in my spam account, which has now dropped to a more "reasonable" load of 80 spam emails a day I have to review and filter, because I usually get another 3-7 real messages trapped in there.
(Have added SPAM WARRIOR to question tags).
posted by maudlin at 10:15 AM on October 8, 2014
I use Bluehost. They use cPanel, they support WP (and have a wizard that sets it up for you in minutes if it's a new instance). You can host as many domains as you want without extra charges. They have phone tech support (Dreamhost doesn't) plus email, chat, ticket tech support. And their tech support is good. I work in the field and I'm very happy with them.
Funny, you should write about spam, I just was setting up a series of blacklist rules with the cPanel in SpamAssassin to get rid of the huge amount of spam coming in from .eu and .link TLDs. Seems to be working so far.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 10:22 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
Funny, you should write about spam, I just was setting up a series of blacklist rules with the cPanel in SpamAssassin to get rid of the huge amount of spam coming in from .eu and .link TLDs. Seems to be working so far.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 10:22 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
+1 for A Small Orange; someone recommended them when I had a similar question and wanted to get the hell away from GoDaddy.
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 11:01 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 11:01 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
I also recommend A Small Orange.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 11:23 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Narrative Priorities at 11:23 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
Seconding Fastmail. I moved a corporate client to them a few years ago and have an account myself. It's fast and hasn't had a single hiccup, and the support was great. I've been happy with several Web sites on Dreamhost.
posted by maniabug at 1:36 PM on October 8, 2014
posted by maniabug at 1:36 PM on October 8, 2014
I'm another vote for A Small Orange - they've got good pricing, good packages, and everything works smoothly. In the years I've been with them I've had to contact tech support 2 or 3 times and have been really impressed with their responsiveness. This year I moved my employer's web hosting over to them, too, because ASO makes everything so easy. (I looked for a Canadian host and couldn't find one that fit all of my needs.)
posted by VioletU at 2:35 PM on October 8, 2014
posted by VioletU at 2:35 PM on October 8, 2014
Response by poster: Thanks for all the recommendations so far. I'm leaning Orange for the moment, but am tempted by Tigertech, which seems to have maintained an excellent level of service for 10 years and also seems to have a lot of clear, thorough help online.
One thing that could help me decide is how well these places handle spam. As mentioned above, I'm enduring unfuckingbelievable amounts of spam, probably from some Russian hacker getting access to a (now-deleted) disposable Yahoo mail account that had an address at my real domain as a backup. No matter where I go, my domain makes me a marked woman and I need real protection.
My current hosting service gives me access to MailScanner whitelist/blacklist/spam scores, plus mail filters. They have SpamAssassin installed, but they edit on my behalf. Yet I still get 80+ pieces of spam a day, as described above. Ironically, part of the reason for the massive delays in my mail this week has been the fact that their outbound spam filter provider is FUBARed and still not fixed.
So who's good at stomping spam without killing email service?
posted by maudlin at 4:26 PM on October 8, 2014
One thing that could help me decide is how well these places handle spam. As mentioned above, I'm enduring unfuckingbelievable amounts of spam, probably from some Russian hacker getting access to a (now-deleted) disposable Yahoo mail account that had an address at my real domain as a backup. No matter where I go, my domain makes me a marked woman and I need real protection.
My current hosting service gives me access to MailScanner whitelist/blacklist/spam scores, plus mail filters. They have SpamAssassin installed, but they edit on my behalf. Yet I still get 80+ pieces of spam a day, as described above. Ironically, part of the reason for the massive delays in my mail this week has been the fact that their outbound spam filter provider is FUBARed and still not fixed.
So who's good at stomping spam without killing email service?
posted by maudlin at 4:26 PM on October 8, 2014
gmail. By far the best experience I had. You could have gmail pull the mail off your account, and then pull it out of gmail using the client of your choice. But - since it is google - I decided a while back to leave them behind. The only thing I am really missing is the spam filter.
posted by nostrada at 4:31 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by nostrada at 4:31 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]
Spam filtering is hard. It takes a lot of work to keep up with the arms race (or a lot of money dedicated to good services to do it for you). I have yet to see a web hosting company that does it right. It's not what they're in business for. Similarly, I really don't recommend using a registrar for email (or web hosting). Putting all of your eggs in one basket is risky, and it also means you're getting the "jack of all trades" rather than the specialist. Seriously, think about running your mail on a service that specializes in mail.
posted by primethyme at 10:11 PM on October 8, 2014
posted by primethyme at 10:11 PM on October 8, 2014
Seconding Bluehost, with the caveat that I don't really use them for mail much. Unlimited domains and data and I've found their support to be very helpful. They use a 'skinned' CPanel interface and Wordpress is an auto-install, as are lots of other applications.
posted by dg at 4:57 AM on October 9, 2014
posted by dg at 4:57 AM on October 9, 2014
Response by poster: Update: I moved to A Small Orange last week and had a pretty smooth transition. They are as friendly and helpful as described.
BUT my domain and mail have been toast for the past two days because of a DDOS attack on my assigned server that started early Monday morning. It's still going on and I'm still relying on a backup site and Gmail account. I can't get moved to another server as long as they're getting attacked, obviously.
Looking through the forums, it seems as if they've had a flurry of DDOS attacks lately. I don't know who or what is being targeted, or why ASO seems to be unable to handle things, but if anyone else is tempted to move here, I'd advise waiting it out a bit.
(I can already see someone else in forum comments saying they moved to ASO last Tuesday based on recommendations in a trusted forum. If it was this one: sorry, dude. I'm not too happy either.)
posted by maudlin at 10:17 AM on November 4, 2014
BUT my domain and mail have been toast for the past two days because of a DDOS attack on my assigned server that started early Monday morning. It's still going on and I'm still relying on a backup site and Gmail account. I can't get moved to another server as long as they're getting attacked, obviously.
Looking through the forums, it seems as if they've had a flurry of DDOS attacks lately. I don't know who or what is being targeted, or why ASO seems to be unable to handle things, but if anyone else is tempted to move here, I'd advise waiting it out a bit.
(I can already see someone else in forum comments saying they moved to ASO last Tuesday based on recommendations in a trusted forum. If it was this one: sorry, dude. I'm not too happy either.)
posted by maudlin at 10:17 AM on November 4, 2014
Response by poster: Oh, and one more thing about ASO: the spam protection is pretty much filters and Spam Assassin only. I imported my filters, then took them off again, when I found out that ASO no longer uses MailScanner and its whitelist/blacklist. Without the whitelist, email from trusted recipients that tripped my filters was spambinned with no recourse.
When my mail IS working, I'm getting a fair bit of spam slipping by Spam Assassin at my usual domain accounts, about 12-13 messages per account per day.
My new account at this domain, just a few days old, hasn't had any spam at all, so it seems as if my spammer friends are just targeting my old addresses and not the entire domain.
posted by maudlin at 10:26 AM on November 4, 2014
When my mail IS working, I'm getting a fair bit of spam slipping by Spam Assassin at my usual domain accounts, about 12-13 messages per account per day.
My new account at this domain, just a few days old, hasn't had any spam at all, so it seems as if my spammer friends are just targeting my old addresses and not the entire domain.
posted by maudlin at 10:26 AM on November 4, 2014
(I can already see someone else in forum comments saying they moved to ASO last Tuesday based on recommendations in a trusted forum. If it was this one: sorry, dude. I'm not too happy either.)
Yep, that's me! Don't be sorry, it wasn't your recommendation. I guess it's time for plan B - bluehost maybe, although I have a general aversion to any service with lame stock photos of Business People on their homepage.
posted by theodolite at 12:13 PM on November 4, 2014
Yep, that's me! Don't be sorry, it wasn't your recommendation. I guess it's time for plan B - bluehost maybe, although I have a general aversion to any service with lame stock photos of Business People on their homepage.
posted by theodolite at 12:13 PM on November 4, 2014
Response by poster: Updated A Small Orange update: My site was successfully moved to a stable server by Wednesday morning and we got a long, apologetic and detailed email explaining why this DDOS took so long to resolve.
ASO had put a lot of us new customers to a new data center which didn't have the capability to handle Monday's DDOS attack. They moved us to new servers and will not be placing any new customers back to the problem data center's server. The close: "We deeply apologize for the issues of the past day and the length of time it is taking ASO to address the issues. We have a long history of quickly mitigating DDoS attacks and returning customers back to a fully functional state. We understand that this length of an outage is not what you expect from us, and it is not what we find acceptable."
So while I'm not thrilled with this first experience, if they typically handle DDOS better than this, I'm willing to stick around and see how things go.
posted by maudlin at 12:14 PM on November 6, 2014
ASO had put a lot of us new customers to a new data center which didn't have the capability to handle Monday's DDOS attack. They moved us to new servers and will not be placing any new customers back to the problem data center's server. The close: "We deeply apologize for the issues of the past day and the length of time it is taking ASO to address the issues. We have a long history of quickly mitigating DDoS attacks and returning customers back to a fully functional state. We understand that this length of an outage is not what you expect from us, and it is not what we find acceptable."
So while I'm not thrilled with this first experience, if they typically handle DDOS better than this, I'm willing to stick around and see how things go.
posted by maudlin at 12:14 PM on November 6, 2014
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posted by primethyme at 9:46 AM on October 8, 2014