I use www.ihostvm.com. Excellent customer service (whenever I call I get a person who speaks english and knows what they are talking about) and good plans. They have increased my storage space and added extensions I needed whenever I have asked without charge (they actually lowered my monthly price).

I also use virtualmechanics.com's sitespinner for my own site and the forum is useful and there are several who can walk you through setting up a server-side forum (Can't do databases with Sitespinner though you can do them in conjunction with it).

j razz

Check out StartLogic.

Also check out Westhost. I've been very happy with them.

Paul

Thanks for all the info. I'll check them out.

Tom

Whatever you do STAY AWAY from ipower.com

I've had nothing but problems with them. FTP going up and down, account logins disabled for days at a time during "upgrades".

Just awful.

Trying to switch providers even as we speak (er, type) so this thread is helpful to me as well.

I use and am a big fan of Lunar Pages. They have a program called Fantastico that automatically sets up php scripts on your site. They have scirpts for just about anything, fourms, blogs, etc. Also, free site building software. I have found their tech support to be excellent, I would recommend them on that alone.

I was wondering what the current thinking was on hosting companies?

I've had a run of the hosting going great for 6 months to 6 years and then the hosting company goes in the toilet. The latest is 1&1 great for six months, now at best slow and at worst unavailable. I'd like to be able to affordably host my own flash but I'll settle for reliable brochureware.

Thanks,

Konrad

I'm still happy with ihostvm.com fwiw.

j razz

1&1 is trouble, but lunarpages rocks in every good way: great ease of use, great performance in practice, great features that surpass the others, and great local support.

Curious about the 1&1 comments.
So far, I have had no problem with them. Coming up to a year now.
Their webstats leave a lot to be desired, but there are other products out there for analysis.
Tom

I'm sure they have a large server data center. I've had no problems until a week ago. I have two different major broad band ISPs (Home and Office) and that's not the problem. The responsiveness on my sites is at best slow or I get a request reset by server error or host unavailable or invalid host name. "IF" I can log in to update my site it's very slow. Tech support is aware of the problem and has been working on it for a week now. My experience is I started web mastering in 1993 and left the IT world in 2003 after 5 years with Microsoft.

1&1 has customer service problems.

That is sometimes worse than technical problems.

Like in their case, it can get expensive for you.

"Whatever you do STAY AWAY from ipower.com

I've had nothing but problems with them. FTP going up and down, account logins disabled for days at a time during "upgrades".

Just awful."

I too had massive problems with this company... my site and emails were down for almost two months. Customer service was non-existent…Long story.
I eventually reported them to the office of the Arizona Attorney General who forced them to refund my money (I was with them for 5+ years).
Whilst hunting a new host, I came across a lot of folks unhappy with iPower and was advised to report them. (They will try to lie their way out of it, so be warned).
Google “iPower sucks” for advice on how to deal with these people.

I am also with “go-daddy” now…. Seems OK so far….touch wood.

Ditto to stay away from iPower and Powweb (same corporate company). I had huge problems with Powweb!

I have a number of sites with 1&1, and for the most part, I'm actually rather pleased. Customer service has been decent. It's usually their Philippines call center when I have an issue, but I can understand them ok.

1&1 is the largest web host in the world. I'd expect them to have complaints based simply on having so many more customers.

Compared to Powweb, 1&1 has been golden.

While I have had problems with email accounts and they are far from the cheapest, I have had several sites operating on GeoCities.com (Yahoo).

As for the websites themselves, they are always up (as far as I can tell). They have a very usable web interface (file manager) which makes updates very easy plus the full scope of sub-domains, ftp, PHP, database, etc...

As I said, the only problem I have with them is email outages (they don't lose any, just the web interface has problems on a regular basis - usually during peak hours).

my $0.02 - GoDaddy has been the best company to deal with - and I've been doing web design since the latter 90's.

Top Notch customer service with GoDaddy and they Americans employed instead of farming out tech support jobs overseas. 1&1 was a nightmare for a client of mine - and they had a dedicated server no less.

I have both of my sites as well as all my clients sites hosted with GoDaddy and it has been a great experience - no issues to speak of - and if there are, customer service is available right away and the issues typically get resolved in short order.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com

GoDaddy has great customer service, and I highly recommend them for domain name registration.

For hosting, they don't compete on pricing vs. features though. Not on any level.
The leader in that area is lunarpages for most needs.

I highly recommend separating your domain name registrations from your hosting!!!

If you put it all in one basket and get problems with your hosting in the form of massive overbilling etc., they may not allow you to transfer your domain to another host...

1&1 customer service? I'm not complaining about their staff, That is not the problem. The problem is their preference for weasel wording. In essence, if you can't compare phone bills from different companies and don''t know how to evaluate compound sentences jam-packed with legal wording that "eschews clarity in favor of grammatical obfuscation," don't even think of signing up for 1&1 hosting.

You might find that your 90-day trial was a 2-year contract that you weren't aware of. I had to jump through hoops to get out of their clutches, and I know how to do it.

(Heck, I even got out of the clutches of NSI (Network Solutions), after they refused to transfer my $39.95/year domain registration to then $6.95/year GoDaddy.

After getting nowhere over two months with NSI's customer service, I composed a very clear one page letter and faxed that to their corporate legal counsel.

30 minutes later I got a phone call from NSI's customer service saying it had been taken care of. But I don't like having to do this kind of stuff, and I don't think anyone should have to.)

I've been with bluedomino.com since probably 2001 or so. Very good, very responsive. They have a great online chat system for support. When I called recently to see about a price match with either 1&1 or godaddy, I don't remember which, they were extremely prompt, spoke English, and filled our needs superbly. I know hosting is a commodity now and everyone is looking for a deal, but we have had great service with them.

Ditto on separating registrations from the actual hosting.

By the way, you can host your own websites pretty cheaply. I use Abyss X2 for the server function on my PC, and it runs 24/7 without any hassles at all. For DNS resolving (telling a computer trying to reach you that "acme.com" is really "98.33.172.30") I use a free service called EveryDNS. Finally, since I'm on a DSL service with a dynamic address that could change from time to time, I run another freeware program called "DirectUpdate" that periodically pings my server to verify the address, and if necessary supply the new address to the DNS service.

Admittedly, this is pretty nerdy stuff, and of course my PC could always go down, but for me it's fun to see how things work and frankly, my PC almost never goes down. Not sure I'd trust it with a website bringing in serious revenue, however.

Up until last year I had a site on Freeservers.com and never had any issues. I think I paid something like $4 a month, based on an annual plan.

"Ditto on separating registrations from the actual hosting."

I disagree. I have several domains registered at GoDaddy, and some web sites hosted there. As long as you aren't tied into contractual limits on moving your registration or hosting freely anywhere you want, then there's no problem using the same ISP for both.