I'm giving up on Dreamhost. Webhosting recommendations welcomed.

March 13, 2006 4:41 PM

I've had it with the intermittent email service that I (and many others, apparently) have been experiencing with Dreamhost.

Storage and bandwidth aren't really an issue for me (I never come close to exceed what's offered). Trouble is, I'm hoping to find another service that offers WebDav as well as multiple domain support without having to pay through the nose via extra fees. Textdrive is one option, I'm considering, but I'm a bit concerned by the number of negative posts I've seen of late regarding their service. Also considering asmallorange.com, but that's in spite of the fact that they don't offer all features I'm looking for. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

posted by runningdogofcapitalism to computers & internet (15 comments total)

I'm on asmallorange. I like it because whenever I have a question, I can chat with someone about it right away. Or, if I fire off an email, I get one back in about 10 minutes. They are pretty flexible, you could email them and see if they can help you with anything you need. Good luck.
posted by maxpower at 5:23 PM on March 13, 2006

I would encourage you not to write off Textdrive, quite yet. While the company has not been without their share of growing pains they are improving every day -- Textdrive really is trying to create another type of hosting and it's not a simple task. The community is without parallel. The servers are also chock full of bleeding edge (no doubt the cause of the too frequent outages) goodness for even the lower end customers.

It's also worth noting that, as with any service, the complaints are in direct proportion to the increasing number of customers. It doesn't necessarily mean that the service has declined -- someone is always going to be unhappy and now there are more of them.

Disclaimer: Well, not really. I don't have anything to disclaim except that I'm a loyal long time customer and the folks at Textdrive have gone far beyond the call of duty in addressing some pretty bizarre issues I've created. The parent (co?) company, Joyent, is usual doing some neat stuff and some will begin showing up in Textdrive shortly.
posted by cedar at 5:36 PM on March 13, 2006

I use Dreamhost and haven't experienced any email problems. At least I know of no problems, which concerns me. Is there somewhere that is talking about this? Thanks.
posted by tayknight at 5:46 PM on March 13, 2006

Thanks, maxpower. I discovered that today when I emailed ASO with a question. That kind of hands-on support is what has me leaning toward choosing them.

Thank also to cedar. I haven't ruled Textdrive out just yet. They're the ones offering WebDav, so that keeps them in the running. I'm curious to know more about what they're going to be up with Joyent.
posted by runningdogofcapitalism at 5:57 PM on March 13, 2006

I really like Cornerhost, which I know supports multiple domains and unlimited subdomains for free. I don't know what WebDav is, but I don't see it on the compare features page. You might email the guy and ask. The customer service is excellent.
posted by librarina at 6:33 PM on March 13, 2006

I'm in a similar boat. I saw Zeldman recommend MediaTemple recently. I've been watching them as well. Anyone have anything to report on MediaTemple?

Although DH has some service issues, my hunch is that they won't vaporize one day. My fear with small/new hosts is that they'll realize that things are not working and just disappear one day.

As for service, I recommend Westhost. Their technology is not cutting edge, but you can usually get a support response pretty quickly.

I don't use it, so I'm not sure about WebDav. Sorry.
posted by jpep at 7:05 PM on March 13, 2006

Verve Hosting
posted by undertone at 8:07 PM on March 13, 2006

asmallorange is awesome.

very reasonable prices, unlimited everything (well, not storage and transfer, obviously), and almost suspiciously helpful staff.

no WebDAV, though.
posted by poweredbybeard at 10:51 PM on March 13, 2006

I second Verve Hosting. Never had any problems with them at all, and they're fairly responsive for support questions.
posted by antifuse at 2:18 AM on March 14, 2006

TextDrive are amazing in virtually every area - support, server features, communtity - except the one - actually letting people see your website - that is the whole point of web hosts. I was on their bidwell server, and that was rumoured to be particularly bad, so you might be lucky. Also, they are to be admired for their approach to hosting. If you're going to try them, I'd wait a while until their rumoured service improvements materialise.

I'm on Dreamhost and can't fault them.
posted by pollystark at 2:27 AM on March 14, 2006

Huh.
I'm on Dreamhost (have been since August). I manage nearly 50 email users on my domain. No complaints whatsoever except for a period of about three days in November when spamassassin did some crazy things.

I'm a relatively email user (tens of thousands of messages in dozens of folders), and I really have no problems at all with Dreamhost's IMAP.

Maybe it depends on what mailhub you're on?
posted by dmd at 9:29 AM on March 14, 2006

I'm a happy MediaTemple user. 4 years, 2 outages, both with followup emails. They share the same building as Dreamhost, but run different servers. My support has been excellent on most occasion, and simply average a few times. I'd recommend them for the urchin stats alone though.
posted by madmanz123 at 3:58 PM on March 14, 2006

dmd, pollystark et al: My problem is such that I have not had a single weekday in *months* without some kind of email outage ranging from minutes to hours. And I started logging the problem in mid-December. The best answer I could get from DH was "gee...things are running fine here." Duh. Thanks.

My complaints aside, I'm glad that others are getting good service out of that provider because as a package (email problems notwithstanding) their offer is pretty hard to beat. As it is, I'm leaning to asmallorange as my new host. Even when just kicking the tires, I'm astounded at how quickly and how thoroughly they answer questions. Which goes to show you, price might win customers, but service is what determines their loyalty in the long-run.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to write. This place still knows how to kick the llama's ass.
posted by runningdogofcapitalism at 4:50 PM on March 14, 2006

Different people have different results on different hosts (for the most part, some host truly are awful). People go years on dreamhost with no problem, others have nothing but problems (I've had none over 5 years).

I've heard horror stories about every single host in this thread except for asmallorange (I've actually never heard of them at all). If they're small, you might want to take a chance. The problem with host is that they offer everyone the world, tons of people join, and the once great service becomes sketchy.

For what it's worth the host I've heard the best things about is pair.com. They've always been a little more expensive than host such as dreamhost, and more than I want to pay, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
posted by justgary at 7:29 PM on March 14, 2006

One more thing to consider about TextDrive is the "Mixed Grill" offer. For a one-time fee of $499, you get access to:

• TextDrive hosting
• Strongspace secure file storage
• Joyent hosted collaboration suite

Get the full details here.

Seems like an interesting offer, to me. (I've been thinking about it for a few days.)
posted by Mike C. at 1:10 PM on March 17, 2006