Best Web Host? - Print Topic

I've had good experiences with:

Hostgator
One & One

Bad experiences with:
IXWebhosting < Worst in the world. Guaranteed downtime at least 15 minutes a day, same time each day. (rebooting? Why?). Taken my domains offline due to exceeding unlimited bandwidth?!? There are dedicated blogs and domains set-up for IX hating... :censored:
Heart internet < I had server space issues, not having ability to upload files when it's reported I still have diskspace. Also, some downtime, but nothing in the league of IX. And some guys here speak highly of Heart... :-/

It'd be interesting to read other peoples good and bad experiences.. .:)

I have also never had a single problem with Fasthosts.

I was going to add fasthosts along with some others off the top of my head but only 10 poll questions available.. :(

I used to host my websites with 1&1 but I recently switched to M6.net. One of my friends opened up an account with 1&1 a few years ago, but he got busy with college so he gave me the account. I never received proper ownership of the 1&1 account and I needed Windows hosting so I switched to M6. They have some pretty good rates and are very reliable with customer service and server uptime. So far, I have no complaints with them.

Hi  :)

I've had my huge site hosted with Esosoft for the past 9 years and they've never
been down.  Support is answered immediately and they offer everything!  Plus you
get 1000 MB of disk space, spam assassin, and so much more.  My site has a lot of
hits and download and there's never been a problem with transfer limits.  Great cgi-bin.

All the web sites I design and maintain I recommend to host there and the clients do.

My two cents worth  ;)

I can't comment on the other providers but Heart runs well until THEY disable it for using more than 5% of the CPU despite paying for an UNLIMITED reseller account !

They have shut down my forum AGAIN today - they say it was being spammed but guests are unable to post and new memberships have been disabled for 18 months now - I think I need to find a new host, please vote above so I know who to choose ;)

Quoted Text

Our systems administrators have had to disable this site. The forum was being spammed and causing a high load on the server and using more than 5% CPU. It may be worth considering deleting the forum and starting again with added security to prevent this from happening in the future

I can't say I'd vote for any of these. I try to stay away from the big bulk hosts and stick to personalized business class hosts that are small enough to forge a one on one relationship with. Their prices may seem larger on paper but a lot more service is included than is on the site usually. They work for some people but most people go around looking at the stats and high numbers and "unlimited" bandwidth these places say they provide, and half the people who buy into it don't have any clue that they'll never use anywhere near that amount. Not to mention everyone's so obsessed with paying the bottom dollar possible for hosting and then is surprised when something goes wrong. My personal take.

In response to jrjiri. I wouldn't go for a small host. In this competitive market, in the current economic climate, I wouldn't trust that a small host wouldn't go under and leave me stranded with my files lost.
I see the meaning in supporting the little guy, but I cannot take the risk in small hosts. As much as I resent myself for that...

In response to Uncle Jack, I tend to agree. My host has a limit of 25 processes and 25% CPU usage for over 60 seconds, (Which is INCREDIBLY hard to exceed. I run a niche search engine that's regularly crawling, several forums, many databases, mirror many many sites and have a couple of image hosting sites that convert images on user upload into 3 different sizes and have not exceeded the limit.).

In response to Marie2rob, I've never heard of them. If they're serving you well, then excellent. But 9 years in this business without being known is unusual. Stats say most fail or become big, if EcoSoft have maintained a roughly level grade all those years it's unusual, but nice one! :D.

I will try Hostgator :)

I have 5 different domains i own, two that use eblah. i host them all with http://hosting.aplus.net I have used them for the last seven years and cannot say enough good stuff about them.

Quoted from unclejack

I can't comment on the other providers but Heart runs well until THEY disable it for using more than 5% of the CPU despite paying for an UNLIMITED reseller account !

They have shut down my forum AGAIN today - they say it was being spammed but guests are unable to post and new memberships have been disabled for 18 months now - I think I need to find a new host, please vote above so I know who to choose ;)

OK in fairness to Heart, the problems yesterday were caused by a hacking attempt - they were unsuccessful but caused the overload on the server hence the reason Heart disabled the account.

aww, the "my own server" host isn't up there :-P

I actually have only used 1 host other than myself and that was when I worked for a web developing company. From there I learned how to do things myself and to me (in the long run) it is a bit cheaper for me to do it myself.

Hosing your own server isn't on the list because it's not a webhost, also everyone's server configurations are far too varied for an rating to be valid.

I would love to host all my sites myself, the problem for most is the upload speed...
I have 8Mb broadband that gives me 4Mb downwards and 1Mb upwards, it's simply not fast enough to host most websites... :(

Is this poll for best shared web host? Rackspace kind of stands out from all the rest, they are more managed solutions / dedicated servers.

But you didn't vote for rackspace?... strange... :P

Never used Heart Internet but the poll got me curious... I'm a die hard Hostgator fan, they've been really fantastic for me and I will be sticking with them for a long time. Shared hosting user here btw..

Yeah, Ryaanism. I'm a hostgator fan too... They've been the best with me out of all the polled hosts. I've been with all the above.. :)

I have always bought my URLs from 1&1, but welcome any alternative suggestions. My web hosting for the past 3 years is through what i believe is a small American company called bethehost.com. They have been great, always very quick to answer any problems/queries and rarely have any downtime. I find them very good value for money !!

Pete (Newbie)

I have host on One&One and Network Solutions.
From 1-10:
One&One: 3
Network solutions: 8

Interesting topic! I now have a VPS with Future Hosting. Probably most of you have not heard of them but ive been with them for 2 years and they go way beyond to help me. I am not good with adding scripts etc so I email their support and 10 mins later they add it for me. Anything I have asked for 24 hours a day, they answer within the hour.

They did have one downtime but they credited me with 4 months free to apologise as it was down for a few hours.

@iCONICA I do not believe that going with a large company is safe in this day and age. You say the small companies go bust, just think of some of the corporations that have gone bust around the world in the past year. Look at Woolworths for instance, I could never have seen such a big company go down but they did.

With the smaller ones like Future Hosting which I use, they work extra hard to keep their customers. I pay just $54 a month for a very good VPS package.

As for HEART... well the reason I stopped using eblah 2 years ago was because before I had this VPS I was with heart. I had around 30 websites hosted with them and would get an outage at least once a month. But the main problem was I was getting issues on my eblah forum which had over 2000 members, 200+ posts a day and 250,000 hits a month.

Ask Justin and Martin if they remember or just search back through my old posts. I was getting problems day in day out and at the time I put it down to eblah and I walked away. I know now it was heart. They have improved a little but I would never trust them. The trouble I had moving the forum and all the members I still regret leaving eblah now which is why I am back!!!

Thats my 2.5p worth!

I do not know any UK VPS's but I know a few American/Canadian based VPS's that are nice. I'll list the ups and downs of all of them. Remember that this is based on my own experiences everyone may have a very different experience.

VPSLand - I recently switched to this VPS and then left them the same month.
- Good
  - They offer 512 megs of RAM (at this time)
  - Both major operating systems (Linux and Windows)
  - Can be dynamically upgraded at anytime without any outage and if there is outage, it lasts for a few seconds.
- Bad
  - They lack live support. They do have a trouble ticket system but it is very handy to have someone there if there is a major problem that they have to fix.
  - 64-bit operating systems only. Some may like this but I don't. I had to do some special things to get my software to work on it and it didn't work properly.
  - DNS Problems. I could never get my domains to resolve properly (I know about flushing client-side DNS and all that jazz so please don't walk me through anything).

Canaca
- Good
  - A live support phone number. This was incredibly handy so I could leave a message about outage or a provider problem.
  - You can host IRC Bots and other things that some VPS's would restrict.
- Bad
  - All DNS changes had to be submitted. This included wildcard DNS's and any new domain.

Tektonic
- Good
  - Someone is on live support ALL the time.
  - The choice of 32 and 64 bit operating systems (Linux only).
  - Better DNS than I had with the other providers.
- Bad
  - Sometimes I get outages. They aren't common but they are annoying. Sometimes I get frustrated because the outages happen at their data center and it can result in it being out of their control.

I'm sure I forgot some goods and bads for everyone but those are just from my experience. I currently used Tektonic and after switching to VPSLand and hating it. I switched back to Tektonic and all has been well. This is my little input since I don't post a lot I figured I might as well jump into this discussion.

Edit: I hate GoDaddy. But I only used the free version.

Hi everyone,

I have used a few hosts over the years and thankfully never really had any issues with any of them. At the moment I am using Kimpton Computers Web Hosting. I have 3 domains with them and they have always been very helpful whenever I need advice.

They are a small company based in North London and from what I understand, they resell hosting from Heart Internet. I find their service very good, they are quick to resolve any issues and anything which is out of their control, they will pursue Heart Internet on my behalf, saving me all the time and aggravation. Not only that, they are cheaper than going through Heart Internet directly!

I pay just £29.99 per year for my domain hosting and that includes the .UK registration too which I consider to be very fair. The guys on their helpdesk are always very helpful, and even help me with coding issues on my site (unheard of from other hosts) and it's all included in the one price.

I highly recommend Kimpton Computers Web Hosting for any site, and especially for a new domain.

I have over 10,000 visitors per month to one of my sites and it is always fast and reliable.

9/10 :)

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