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Web Hosting Recommendation


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I am going to create a site very similar to the coffee site but have no idea who to use as the web host. It is small enough that a shared service should be just fine but I want to be able to have secure directories for mysql and administration.

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I have used dreamhost and they are good host, they do NOT use cpanel so if you want or need that specific interface then hostgator maybe a better choice. DH uses a custom interface and utilities and do not have ioncube loaders but it is possible to use ioncube through custom installation in your webdirectory cgi-bin and entries in htaccess file for sitewide use or just specific folders. They do NOT support any customizations and wont help you. Their instructions on their site for how to install things like ioncube is a bit out of date and may or may not work without additional fooling around.

 

My current host, hostduplex.com has everything included in their hosting. Though they are extremely security conscious and you have to do some customization to make php work the way you would need it, like installing your own php.ini file and customizing it how you need and adding a line into your htaccess to point to your custom php.ini file. You have to do that for ALL your sites hosted with them or you use their default php.ini which is not going to work with most things you would want to use or do. They do have cpanel though and allow for reseller accounts which gives you ability to setup sites in their own space instead of sharing one web root and setting up addon domains with in that one location. Personally I don't like shared hosting this way, where all sites off of one web folder but that is how most hosts like hostgator work unless you upgrade to a reseller account. They are similar pricing to hostgator, the basic accounts are just regular shared hosting though. They maybe willing to work something out with you if you need something that is not included on their plan pages.

 

Dreamhost, also uses their own custom database installations where localhost is NOT an option instead they use a custom url for each of your databases. It is suppose to be more secure that way but I don't know about that, it is sort of a pia to set them up and connect your scripts to the DB's though. At least in my opinion, have a few hoops to jump through and you can't quickly make changes like a normal cPanel host can. Setting up email is a bit laborous through DH where cpanel I can do it in seconds.

 

1&1 is another host that uses custom control panel but unlike DH I can't recommend anything from 1&1. My personal experience with them is less than favorable.

 

Bluehost is good as well but I wouldn't use them for every site you have, bigger sites I wouldn't personally put at bluehost.

 

For small sites that you want to get up quickly without much bother I would go with the babycrock account at hostgator. You are not going to be able to get a huge amount of traffic to the site with their smaller hosting before they disable the account and force you to upgrade so if it is a site you plan on doing any serious traffic with I would upgrade to a larger plan.

 

Hosting costs range from 5.00 to 25.00 per month with the smaller priced hosting all your sites are going to be in subfolders off of ONE account, versus reseller hosting where you can setup each site in their own space with their own control panel via WHM or similar controls. The second common control panel out there is plesk, you will not have to pay anything extra for that where cPanel is an extra fee due to their licensing scheme. Plesk takes a bit to get used to but you can do the samethings whether plesk or cPanel they are just labeled different and in different places.

 

I mainly recommend three hosts, due to my own personal experience.

 

hostduplex.com -- they have many plans and price ranges and allow you to grow, they use virtualized hosting space where accounts are in their own memory space which means all their hosting is shared but if one site goes down it doesn't take out the whole server or mess with any other sites on the server. You do have to do some customization with your own php.ini file though to make php work right though mod_rewrite and most other modules you need or want are installed by default into server so you are good to go from that standpoint. Support is best I have ever seen, anywhere for hosting.

 

hostgator -- I have never used their shared basic plans I have always used either their reseller plan or dedicated server with them. Support is good, tier one is basically canned responses though. Live chat you get good responses and help.

 

dreamhost -- good host. I had personal issue with way some of their stuff is setup and handled but overall I used them for close to two years. There is no way to migrate from them automatically though so if you plan to migrate your sites from this host at some point I would go with one of the other two.

 

I can not recommend anything from godaddy in way of their hosting, in fact many scripts that work in regular hosts will NOT work on godaddy and you can't really do much customization or have really any control with how things work there. My personal view is godaddy hosting is a addon front to get you to use their services and buy domains from them, and isn't really meant for database driven dynamic websites. My personal view there but many agree with me.

 

Also 1and1 hosting I would strongly advise to stay away from. I have hosted with them and purchased domains from them but my own personal experience was far far far from pleasant experience and they control and wont easily allow you to move domains from them. Also their hosting is not cpanel, a custom version of plesk or was, which does not allow for many things cpanel can do in seconds. Waiting for 30 minutes to 2 hours to setup ONE email address where cpanel it is instant for example.

 

Those are my own personal recommendations but if you search you will find hundreds of hosts out there, many are small one person setups where they are just sharing their own hosting space for a fee to subsidize their own hosting. Look for support that offers live chat and bonus if have 800# or equivalent phone support, some charge for that the really good ones don't.

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Thanks, Terry, for helping out. Excellent post! I have used GoDaddy on a personal project (not my choice), and while it's serviceable, I wouldn't choose GoDaddy. Avoid Dotster like the plague. They are the worst hosts I've had in 12 years of doing this.

 

I would generally avoid any hosting company that does "hosting and..." or "...and hosting". Stick with a company that just does hosting.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have always used GlobeDomain! A few years ago, one of my fellow IT allumni

recommended it to me. It is very cheap - starting at $4.95/year, however, they

are quite professional and have all the necessities (C-panel, mySQL, full PHP

support, CGI support, etc...) I've heard that they are geared more for the

experienced web developer, so support is very limited (i.e. you need to know what

you are doing), but for anyone who is reading any of Larry's books, this shouldn't

be rocket science. For my Underworld website I use the G-2000 plan - 2000MB

disk space, 20GB data transfer/month, $62.00/year! I have had absolutely no

problem with them over the past 3 years. Once in a while the server goes down

for a couple hours, for what I presume to be upgrades, but other than that they

are fine! Having server downtime is obviously not good for an e-commerce site,

but since this is the only web host I've ever had any experience with I don't know

if this is common for other hosting plans.

 

When I hear that other hosts are charging PER MONTH what I pay PER YEAR, I am

shocked! It's like the average person doesn't know any better and are open to

getting ripped off! Again, reliable service is key, and if the other hosts have some

advantage I'm not aware of (zero downtime, more bandwidth, etc...) then perhaps

the higher prices are justified. I am always open to other options, but you really

can't beat $62.00 a year for what you get! Is there something I'm missing here?

I'd like to know if maybe I'm getting ripped off! Larry, Terry, or anyone else,

please check out the web site and let me know if they are as good as I want to

think they are.

 

www.globedomain.com

 

Thanks,

 

Matt

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Well, I pay $50/month, and am extremely pleased with what I'm getting. The key here is that what works for one person may not be appropriate for another. When I see $62/year and "Once in a while the server goes down for a couple hours", I think "cheap hosting" and not "cheap" as in inexpensive, but as in poor. For your personal project, your hosting is fine (and again, if you're pleased with what you've got, that's great; I'm not trying to talk you out of it). But for me, that wouldn't cut it. What I want in a Web host is uptime, support, performance, and security.

 

As for uptime, by comparison, my hosting company just let me know they'd be doing some maintenance and the server may be unavailable for up to 15 minutes. This was the first time in 6 months that downtime might have been expected and I'm not sure it ended up being 15 minutes after all. As for support, I can get any question answered within 15-30 minutes, normally, and any problem solved within 1-2 hours. Some people may not have or see the need for such support, but my Web site is the face of my business. And since I'm generally in the business of Web development, having a site be unavailable is a bad thing. And, naturally, the busier a site is, the more important good hosting is and the more damaging outages are. Secondarily, I've saved money on hosting before, and the result was that I spent a lot of time fixing problems or watching over the server and so forth. What I'm buying for $50/month is peace of mind. And, actually, when I think about how much money I make per hour, spending time on the hosting so that I'm saving a few bucks a month is a poor economic choice.

 

When it comes to choosing a host, I think everyone can completely ignore all specs about disk space, bandwidth, etc. All hosting plans will give you more than you ever need, and are often trying to amaze you with these numbers. It's like buying a car because the speedometer goes to 170, when you'll never drive it about 80 anyway. But as with everything, you get what you pay for. Let's say the cost of physically buying a server, putting it online, and maintaining it (i.e., what the hosting company covers, plus a profit) costs X. And let's say X is $500/month, for the sake of argument. If I'm paying $50/month, then there are probably X/50 clients on the server, or 10. If you're paying $5/month, then there are X/5 or 100 clients on that server. That means 10 times the people/sites using the same resources, the same bandwidth, and so forth. That's got to have an effect on performance. More importantly, that means 100 clients whose code could be introducing security holes that undermine the security of your site. To me, that's a big deal.

 

Again, I'm not saying you should change your hosting or that cheap hosting is always inappropriate, but I wouldn't be dismissive of paying more. You suggest that the average person doesn't know any better and is getting ripped off. I would argue that such people actually do know better than to just take the cheapest hosting they can find.

 

Because I like analogies, let's return to the car idea. You could buy a really cheap, used car that would get you from point A to point B and that is appropriate for person X's needs and fits his or her budget. Or you could buy a brand new Mercedes, that also gets you from point A to point B, and that may be appropriate for person Y's needs and fits her or his budget. But it'd be pretty asinine for person X to think person Y is getting ripped off for spending so much money just as it'd be ridiculous for person Y to think person X and everyone else ought to buy a new Mercedes.

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Of course. I've been using ServInt for three years or so now and I'm very pleased. They only do dedicated and VPS hosting, though, so the cheapest plan is $50/month (which is what I'm using).

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Again, I'm not saying you should change your hosting or that cheap hosting is always inappropriate, but I wouldn't be dismissive of paying more. You suggest that the average person doesn't know any better and is getting ripped off. I would argue that such people actually do know better than to just take the cheapest hosting they can find.

 

Larry I understand completely! Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to attack anyone on this forum for paying more for a hosting service per say. Rather, I was trying to elicit a response/justification for spending that much because I am obviously inexperienced in that area, and it worked!

 

I've basically come to the same general conclusion as you. For non-profit or development sites, I think my host is fine. For running any sort of web business, then I would definitely need to look elsewhere!

 

I always have my eyes and ears open for new and better hosting services, especially for starting a web business. The problem is that you have to wade through a sea of hosts, who all offer different variations on the same basic service, and who may or may not turn out to be good! And as I think you mentioned before, trusting online reviews can be unreliable at best. Therefore, I think that word of mouth is probably the best way to go! So ServInt it is then!

 

Thank you Larry!

 

Matt

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I have to switch my webhost and I found WebHostingHub.com, which appears to be great.

My old host won't release my domain name, so I don't yet have everything working at the new host. However, they give a temporary url and that is working.

 

They also have given me great customer service getting this far. For example, they told me how to do a backup of my current website using cpanel, directly to their server, then they restored it for me--and it was so fast and easy. Maybe everyone does it this way, but I just asked if they could move everything over for me and they did.

 

I talked to Sales before I bought, which I recommend that you do also. I also talked to CS several times already, and each time they've been very helpful.

 

They are very affordable for what I get. I paid for 3 years at once to get their lowest rate. But I will tell you that after 3 years their rate increases. But even that increased rate is still reasonable for what I get. I get a lot of things unlimited that before were limited. Especially, before I was limited to just 2 databases but now it is unlimited.

Even, I get SSL, included free. But it is shared SSL, which I didn't even know there is such a thing. You can get regular SSL for $99/year.

 

Take a look at the reviews around the web. That's how I found them.

 

I agree with Larry, if someone can afford that higher rate, you will no doubt be getting better. But I thought I would join the discussion, for those looking to keep the costs down. I was going to wait until I have everything up and working but like I mentioned, my old webhost guy is holding everything up.

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Matt, I would think twice before jumping from $62/year to $600/year. You seem to be happy with what you have now, and it seems to fit your site and budget, so please don't go making drastic changes and spending lots of money just because of what I wrote. At the end of the day, you have to do what's right for you.

 

Abigail, thanks for sharing. It's insane that your Web host won't release your domain name to you. That's just a way of forcing you to stay with them. I don't think I've written about this (or much), but it's important to manage your own domains through a registrar. It may end up costing an extra $15/year that way, but the freedom is worth it.

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Abigail, thanks for sharing. It's insane that your Web host won't release your domain name to you. That's just a way of forcing you to stay with them. I don't think I've written about this (or much), but it's important to manage your own domains through a registrar. It may end up costing an extra $15/year that way, but the freedom is worth it.

I know, Larry. It's a lot more problem than I thought it would be. He sent me the email late last night, 5/10, I first made the request 4/29. But I'm suspicious there will still be problems before I am freed up from him. There's more to it than trying to get me to stay with him. He doesn't even really want to do webhosting anymore--so I don't really understand. I never thought I would have this kind of troubles. Another thing is, although not perfect, my old webhost was giving pretty good service for the small amount I've been paying.

 

You are right, I didn't know anything about being my own registrar. But the other thing is, right now (and for some time now) money is a big problem for me so I will have to go along with my new webhost and they include the one domain free.

 

The one nice thing, after I get everything over to the new webhost it seems everything will be wonderful compared to what I have been dealing with.

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I agree with Larry when it comes to hosting and registering domain names they should be seperate. Reason is you are in control and if your host goes belly up you can redirect the domain to a new host in seconds without having to wait for a 3rd party to do something.

 

I used to bundle my hosting and domains but having similar experiences as abigail over the years I do not do that anymore.

 

Also it is good to have your websites with companies that just do hosting. Many hosts also offer various other services but usually through 3rd parties and they remain focused on one thing, HOSTING. Samething for domain registrars, though many also offer hosting their main thing is domain registration. I would not advise to bundle with one company no matter what their prices are because of situations where having all eggs in one basket can and will eventually come back to cause issues for you, maybe not now but later down the road at least from my own personal experience.

 

I use namecheap as my registrar I used to use gd, dreamhost, and several others including hostgator but over the years I have moved domains to consolidate under namecheap but it is probably good to have more than one registrar I just found issues of one kind or another with other ones I used.

 

It is also a good idea to have more than one host as your sites develop and you build up more sites having them all under on roof wouldn't take a whole lot to completely have your business literally vanish in seconds.

 

my 2 cents on that.

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Hello Terry,

 

That's a good point about having multiple hosts, especially as your business grows. My handful of (non-client) projects are all with ServInt, because I have a VPS account. If I ever felt like I outgrew one VPS account, a smart choice would be to get another VPS account with another host. That way I could also provide some redundancy.

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  • 1 year later...

I am going to create a site very similar to the coffee site but have no idea who to use as the web host. It is small enough that a shared service should be just fine but I want to be able to have secure directories for mysql and administration.

 

 

Hi if you are looking for reliable vendor to host your website online .Then i will recommend you to approach TuckTail.com here they are rendering shared hosting service in pacakgaes at cost starting from $3.99 per month and varies depending upon disk space ,bandwidth and so on .They also render good customer service and support ...

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