Cheap, friendly, reliable webhost?

January 5, 2011 4:22 PM

I'm looking for a new webhost. Help me find one!

I'm looking for cheap, friendly and reliable.

Here's what I've been used to (Cornerhost): $50 a year for 500MB disk space, 5GB bandwidth, 5 pop3 mailboxes, access via SFTP...

Anyone out there have a similar offering?

note: i've just started using NearlyFreeSpeech.net but am a little confused as to how the payments will work out... also, they don't seem offer anything for email other than a forwarding service which, again, i'm not clear yet on how that works

posted by jammy to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

I've had decent luck with Dreamhost, but to be honest web hosting is almost a commodity right now. How much is price a consideration? How much traffic do you get monthly? Do you have any special requirements (i.e., IRC, gaming server, accessible from China, so on and so forth)?
posted by brool at 4:35 PM on January 5, 2011 [4 favorites]

I asked this question awhile back.

Ended up going with BlueHost and I've been a happy camper.
posted by royalsong at 4:37 PM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

The FTP is not secure FTP, but 1and1's Linux Beginner package for 10GB of space, unlimited bandwidth, and 600 mailboxes is $48 a year, and includes one domain registered through them, and unlimited external domains (domains you own elsewhere, not registered through 1and1)
posted by deezil at 4:38 PM on January 5, 2011

Err, revision, not unlimited external subdomains, but 25 of them.
posted by deezil at 4:39 PM on January 5, 2011

Bluehost is cheap, reliable, and highly awesome.
posted by arnicae at 4:42 PM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Been on Site5 for years, works great.
posted by massysett at 4:49 PM on January 5, 2011

I have used Brinkster for as long as they have been around and have never been disappointed.
posted by Calzephyr at 4:54 PM on January 5, 2011

Another vote for Dreamhost here. You can get as much or as little as you want from them.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 5:32 PM on January 5, 2011

another Dreamhost vote here. our organization is so happy with them that we wrote them a gushing message on how much we like them!
posted by kuppajava at 5:50 PM on January 5, 2011

Dreamhost. Rock solid, inexpensive, lots of goodies.
posted by brownrd at 6:23 PM on January 5, 2011

Please do give NFSN a chance if you think it might work. I'm a happy customer for over a year. It's kind of a DYI place, but they're no-bullshit and they know what they're doing. Also, for low traffic sites, the pricing is pretty great. Have you tried the Pricing Estimator yet? That may give you a better idea of how payments will work out.

That being said, the email forwarding service and lack of vanilla email accounts may be the dealbreaker. I think you may be able to set up Gmail via Google Apps (if you trust Google enough) using your domain if you want, but I'm not sure how that all works.
posted by nrobertson at 8:20 PM on January 5, 2011

Been very happy with Dreamhost for the last five years. Noticed very little downtime, they have "unlimited" bandwidth and storage. I pay $130 a year and it's great to have webspace that I can use to just sling up new sites on. Nice auto installs of WordPress and other popular pieces of software, nice integration with Google Apps, Git and Rails support. You can ssh in (but not as root).
posted by maryrosecook at 3:56 AM on January 6, 2011

You really can't beat the value for money that NFSN provides. But unless your requirements are very simple and not more than few static web pages it's better to go with someone else.

Try HostingTrade or asmallorange.
posted by WizKid at 9:26 AM on January 6, 2011

I use (and like) Dreamhost (I pay -- I think $140 every 2 years), and have heard equally great things about Bluehost. I wouldn't hesitate to go with either of those.

1and1, on the other hand, I've heard very mixed reviews of.
posted by coolguymichael at 12:40 PM on January 6, 2011

Response by poster: i manage a handful of websites for other folk & need to move them all so i may try more than one suggestion here - i plan on sticking with NFSN for at least one site, and maybe another that is pretty static - looks like alot of votes for Dreamhost and Bluehost so i think i'll investigate those two first for my other sites

thanks everyone - i really appreciate it
posted by jammy at 7:39 AM on January 10, 2011

Please do give NFSN a chance if you think it might work. I'm a happy customer for over a year. It's kind of a DYI place, but they're no-bullshit and they know what they're doing. Also, for low traffic sites, the pricing is pretty great. Have you tried the Pricing Estimator yet? That may give you a better idea of how payments will work out.

That being said, the email forwarding service and lack of vanilla email accounts may be the dealbreaker. I think you may be able to set up Gmail via Google Apps (if you trust Google enough) using your domain if you want, but I'm not sure how that all works.

I'm late to the party on this one, but just a data point, I use Google Apps for Domains email with NFSN (and have for a couple of years now) and love it. It's really easy to set up—you just have to configure some DNS records on NFSN's end (instructions pretty straightforward) and you're good to go.
posted by limeonaire at 12:47 PM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]