Reliable hosting provider

September 19, 2006 11:50 AM

A "reliable", affordable, robust and knowledgeable hosting provider

I currently have 2 domains hosted at CI Host. And up until recently, been having A LOT of downtime issues...web, ftp and Email services. A lot of Email issues. Not to say I haven't had major issues in the past, I was just too lazy to switch a year ago. But the recent downtime issues is just too much to take.

Can anybody suggest a "reliable", affordable, robust and knowledgeable hosting provider (hopefully on a Windows server).

Many thanks in advanced for any advice.

posted by zaibatsu to computers & internet (27 comments total)

I like www.godaddy.com
posted by k8t at 11:59 AM on September 19, 2006

I'm very happy with lunarpages.com
posted by HuronBob at 12:05 PM on September 19, 2006

TextDrive are certainly knowledgeable, but I can't imagine they'd want the hassle of a serving up websites and email via Windows. I take it you're using FrontPage extensions, or some such?
posted by dance at 12:06 PM on September 19, 2006

I'd wager you're going to get a pretty wide variety of hosts for this comment. As with any service (as opposed to an actual product), one individual's experience can be the polar opposite of another's.

For what it's worth, I've had business dealings with Dreamhost, 1&1 and a smaller company named HostColor.

I've heard some real horror stories about Dreamhost, especially lately. In my experience, I never had any major downtime (I once had a DB error that took about an hour to get resolved, since I don't do business with it, it wasn't a major concern).

1&1 isn't very well known and are pretty bare-bones. Their resolver teams have responded pretty quickly, and for awhile they were pretty affordable. For a long time they didn't offer databases as part of their standard 'consumer' plans, then one day I logged into my console and found I'd gotten DB access.

HostColor was...okay, at best. Their hosting interface was slow, not to mention poorly organized. Like you, I'd had a few issues with them but was just too lazy to do anything about it. Eventually I just let my domain expire.

At present I've consolidated my domains with 1&1 and either host or forward through them.
posted by owenkun at 12:15 PM on September 19, 2006

Also, you didn't make it clear if you used your hosting for business or personal purposes. Some of the minor annoyances I'd had with Dreamhost would have been a ZOMG MAJOR DISASTER if I'd been a business customer, I'd bet.
posted by owenkun at 12:17 PM on September 19, 2006

Dance.....nope, using ASP. However, I'm open to switching boxes and using PHP in the near future. But not to certain yet.

Owenkun....one domain is personal/freelance and the other domain is for a small business.

This is great feedback and taking notes, hope to get more. BTW has anybody had feedback with, ipowerweb.com. A friend mentioned it, but am a bit cautions about it. Thanks folks for your help.
posted by zaibatsu at 12:28 PM on September 19, 2006

I'm currently on Dreamhost. They have had some issues lately, which is bad, but they are very upfront about any downtime issues, which is good — they have a blog where they announce problems. They're also responsive to support requests. And they offer ridiculous space and bandwidth allocations.

Downsides (from my perspective) are that instead of the de-facto standard Cpanel admin interface, they have rolled their own, which is better in some ways and worse in others. Their install of PHP has a lot of useful (but potentially security-compromising) modules turned off, requiring various workarounds. Their spamassassin install is braindead—I'm considering switching hosts just because of this one problem.
posted by adamrice at 1:15 PM on September 19, 2006

I've been using Dreamhost for a couple of years now, and even though I see lots of downtime announcements on their status page none of them have effected me. I see this communication as a good thing.

The only problem I've had with DH is the strange email relationship they have with AOL's spam prevention abortion. Dreamhost is periodically relaying threats from AOL that they will soon start dropping forwarded mail originating from Dreamhost. Nonetheless, it seems to still get through. I tend to blame AOL for this, not Dreamhost.
posted by soundslikeobiwan at 1:35 PM on September 19, 2006

Just saw your "hopefully". Dreamhost is linux-based.
posted by soundslikeobiwan at 1:36 PM on September 19, 2006

Dreamhost have suspended their threats to cut off AOL forwards, although they don't allow new forwards, I think. They have suspended forwards to Comcast addresses. They seem to be quite susceptible to spoofing, somehow.

I'm going to attempt a mild piggy-back question rather than set up another hosting question - I'm hosting a site that's important but which I'm not gettin paid for, and yes, for someone who has to answer to other people (even pro bono), DH probs have been ZOMG MAJOR DISASTER and I need to move before the next chapter of accidents. How much do you actually have to pay to get reliability on shared hosting (not enough for a dedicated server) and who would you pay it to?
posted by Grangousier at 1:55 PM on September 19, 2006

1&1 isn't very well known and are pretty bare-bones.

1&1 takes out huge ads (they're like books) in various computer magazines. They also claim to be the worlds biggest web host. They're certainly very well known.

On topic, there's already been a ton of hosting questions, so I'd look in the archives. No matter the host you choose, you'll find those that love it and hate it. I'm with dreamhost now, and they've grown far too fast and having a lot of problems, but they're up front about them, rare in the hosting world.

Though I can't really recommend a host, I can say to stay away from hostrocket and 1&1. Both were nightmares for me, and in the case of 1&1 it will only take a little googling to have you running for the door.

If you want to pay a little more, pair is loved by many.
posted by justgary at 2:00 PM on September 19, 2006

Huronbob, do you use Lunarpages for Linux or Windows hosting? I can say nothing but extremely horrible things about their Windows hosting. Especially if you're trying to get away from email downtime issues. My email is basically down for at least two hours every day. Not to mention that I don't have a sent-mail folder, or a trash folder. Or any other folders. Emails to their 'support' team inform me that they're not available with Horde, despite the fact that I've used Horde for years under other hosts. I've basically given up trying to get anywhere with them after sending email after email and even snail mail letters addressed to the CEO. If you want more info, I'll be happy to provide it.

However, I have heard nothing but good things from people who use them for Linux hosting.

Still, their support is bad enough that I'd stay away.
posted by miniape at 2:29 PM on September 19, 2006

DreamHost has fixed their recent problems (none of which affected the vast majority of customers), and I highly, highly recommend them.

If you use the code METAFILTER, you get $95 off. (and I get two dollars).
posted by dmd at 3:06 PM on September 19, 2006

Very happy with asmallorange. Linux-based, ssh-access, very developer-friendly, python, ruby, php, you name it. Unlimited email, databases, addon domains, etc. Helpful staff and quick answers to problems.
And no, I don't work for them, just use them a lot.
posted by signal at 3:06 PM on September 19, 2006

Second asmallorange. Just started a small account with them and have had no problems. Haven't even had to talk to staff, and forums seem helpful.
posted by Roger Dodger at 3:23 PM on September 19, 2006

I have been using NetNation for about 10 years and recommend them to everyone. Their prices are pretty competitive for the services they offer but what really sets them apart is their customer service. They answer any question I throw at them, and if they don't know they answer they are very nice about helping me find another place to look. The hold time when you call tech support is amazingly short (you will want to pinch yourself) and you don't get that feeling that they are just flipping pages from a manual and reading it aloud to you. They respond to emails very quickly with an answer, not just a canned response that has nothing to do with your question.

I can't really say if they are better in terms of the quality of their hosting (I'm not technical enough to know the difference) but I REALLY appreciate their excellent customer service, especially tech support.
posted by kenzi23 at 4:06 PM on September 19, 2006

By the way, one of the great things about Dreamhost is that even when things fail, they're incredibly, ridiculously verbose in telling you exactly what failed and what they're doing about it.

A lot of hosts would just pretend nothing happened, or tell you that it's probably your problem and that you should reinstall Windows.
posted by dmd at 4:16 PM on September 19, 2006

I'm going to attempt a mild piggy-back question rather than set up another hosting question - I'm hosting a site that's important but which I'm not gettin paid for, and yes, for someone who has to answer to other people (even pro bono), DH probs have been ZOMG MAJOR DISASTER and I need to move before the next chapter of accidents. How much do you actually have to pay to get reliability on shared hosting (not enough for a dedicated server) and who would you pay it to?
posted by Grangousier at 1:55 PM PST on September 19 [+fave] [!]

Get a VPS in the $20-$50 range from Linode or ServInt.
posted by evariste at 5:42 PM on September 19, 2006

I second asmallorange. No problems here. Very affordable.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:42 PM on September 19, 2006

In the past, I've used Tilted Planet. It's more expensive than Dreamhost or 1&1. They are very responsive and offer a great discount to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.
posted by hooray at 7:03 PM on September 19, 2006

I like asmallorange as well. Good support. I'm not sure how good their email service is. I have control of the mx record for DNS, so I have all my mail pointing to Google's domain email.
posted by nickerbocker at 7:17 PM on September 19, 2006

I've used Verve Hosting for five years, and I cannot say enough great things about them. I convert my clients/friends needing non-profit, business, and personal site hosting to them (at least 30 entities) -- and they've all stayed with Verve.

The support is fab, prices are competitive and billed monthly, and they offer lots of online screenshot-style tutorials for the DIY-er who isn't too tech-y. Standard cpanel interface, Horde email if you go the browser mail route. Love Verve!

FWIW, I don't get any referral or incentive for promoting them.
posted by pineapple at 7:54 PM on September 19, 2006

Wow, thanks gang for all the great advice. Will be looking into all the the hosting providers listed.

I'm sooooooooooooooooo fed up with CI Host, can't wait to switch over. Many thanks all!!!
posted by zaibatsu at 7:32 PM on September 20, 2006

zaibatsu, a little tip: if you want zero downtime due to DNS during the switchover, sign up for a DNS Made Easy account (as cheap as $10 for 5 domains, I think). Point it at your current server, with a very low TTL (time-to-live), starting about a week before the switch. When everything is up and running on the new host, do the switch in DNS Made Easy, and up the TTL to a more reasonable number. The switch will be seamless for the vast majority of your users.
posted by evariste at 8:19 PM on September 20, 2006

The downtime I'm referring to is the time it takes for everyone's DNS servers to catch on that your server moved, usually 24-48 hours and sometimes up to a week.
posted by evariste at 8:38 PM on September 20, 2006

If you're willing to switch to *nix & PHP, I highly recommend Pair.com. I've been with them for years, after trying quite a few different hosts (including Dreamhost. ugh.)

I recommend them to all my clients, too. Uptime is great. Plus, they offer free setup if you transfer from another host and 24% off the cost if you pay for a year in advance.
posted by belladonna at 11:09 AM on September 21, 2006

ugh, i'm re-researching hosts after recently switching to pair.com, and if any value can come from the non-stop agony and blindsiding I'm going through with pair, maybe karma will help me find someone better.

I have three MT blogs, with a total of maybe 100k pageviews/day, and I had gotten smoked several times with outages on my previous host, totalchoicehosting. Also, the end of every month, as I was approaching my b/w limits, I'd be sweating and trying to reallocate bandwidth between the sites so they wouldn't get turned off [TCH had no mechanism for overages and would just shut you down w/o warning. but that's another story.]

What TCH never did, though, and which pair is relentless about, is disabling cgi scripts when they start using too much shared CPU and other resources. For shared hosting, the limit's like 16mb, and they automatically disable scripts--including, as it turns out, all the scripts MT is built with, search, comments, trackback, even the main one--ALL the time.

The kicker is, I never once shopped for or compared these resource limits from host to host. If I had had even the slightest idea that MT was considered a "resource hog," I would have shopped for a host completely differently. As it was, I was just solving my old bandwidth/uptime problem by walking into a whole new one.

So. that said, any good recs for hosting MT? heh
posted by gregorg at 2:41 PM on September 23, 2006