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I'm presently using web.com for website hosting. I've had some so-so experiences, and think they are a little overpriced. We have a fairly simple website - no e-commerce. We do need plenty of storage space, though.

What web hosts are people happy with?

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    Joel .. why close the question? Programming many not be subjective, but server administration and user support most certainly can be subjective. And as to the argumentative .. what's the problem, as long as it is respectful and courteous? – tomjedrz Apr 30 '09 at 19:17
  • I can't speak for Joel, but more often than not I've seen web hosting discussions go downhill very fast. It tends to get very subjective and very argumentative very fast... – AnonJr Apr 30 '09 at 20:30
  • In my opinion, if this is subjective then so is any question about the best software for any particular use. These conversations can get heated but I think it is an important one to ask. – bjtitus May 04 '09 at 20:07
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    I think a heavy handed approach to the answers "If you get argumentative you **WILL** be deleted" would be better than closing the question. A question looking for "I used ___ and it was ___" answers is something that SF NEEDS. – BCS May 11 '09 at 21:44
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    I wish there were an opportunity to reopen, like there would normally be, because I could use it. Subjective or not, there is good information below. – spoulson May 21 '09 at 12:30
  • I was thinking of opening a question for the other side of the argument, a hosting Black list. I don't want to fight about it either, but as a programmer and not an admin, I don't want to mess around with bad sites. I have huge respect for the SO/SF audience/members, and would welcome their educated opinions – Assembler Jun 26 '09 at 05:29
  • Reopened as Wiki - but let's keep it clean. – Kara Marfia Jul 27 '09 at 13:19

20 Answers20

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Dreamhost offers unlimited diskspace and bandwidth.

However, if your website is a static site, you could try hosting off Amazon S3. At $0.15/GB/month for storage, it's pretty cheap. The other pricing component is the bandwidth cost at $0.17/GB.

Edmund Tay
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    Dreamhost is cheap, but my experience with their support has left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. – Sam Cogan Apr 30 '09 at 16:02
  • What is bad with their support? I have asked them about things a couple of times, and always gotten an answer fairly fast and always in a nice helpful tone. I like DreamHost, cause they are not that expensive and you get a lot of nice stuff you often don't get from others. Like shell access =) – Svish Apr 30 '09 at 16:15
  • My experience has been that when things go bad, they go really bad. Support lacks a lot. – Larsenal Apr 30 '09 at 16:23
  • I used Dreamhost for about a year before upgrading. Their prices are definitely hard to beat but if you want any real reliability, speed, or support, Dreamhost is not the way to go. They're ok for basic setups though. – bjtitus Apr 30 '09 at 16:35
  • I've had problems with Dreamhost but nothing super-serious or unresolveable. They're great priced, reasonably reliable, and feature-rich. Stay away from their shared plans for serious work though. VPS might be better; I haven't tried that myself. – Craig Walker Apr 30 '09 at 16:44
  • It seems we all have different experiences with DreamHost support. In my own experience, they've been awesome. Fast and knowledgeable. They even go farther than expected (at one time they optimized one of my databases). – Ivan Apr 30 '09 at 18:04
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    They are very nice people very smart but they grew to fast, I've been with them for over 5 years now. They are slow, latent, and crashy, but off set that with large amount of storge, bandwidth and control. You can run your own php versions, cgi's etc - over and all its a wonderful playground for development. Fine for my blog, but not for my business. – reconbot Apr 30 '09 at 18:54
  • I've been with Dreamhost for several years. Regarding support I have rarely had to use them (that's good, right?), but when I have I have had a speed response. Their system performance did seem to kind of bottom out a few months ago, but now that they have moved my account to a new server, everything runs great. My best improvement has been in MYSQL performance. It seems that even in the recession, they are still growing and enhancing their system for their users and remaining competitive in the market. I am curious however on who anyone's new host is. – Joshua K Sep 25 '09 at 12:56
  • Dreamhost is very good value. Price is low, service is mostly good. Don't use them for anything mission critical, but they're great when you just need some cheap hosting. They are the Wal-Mart of hosting - day in, day out, good enough service, rock bottom prices. – Cody Hatch Feb 23 '11 at 05:41
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I use MediaTemple and Slicehost. They are both excellent. Support at MediaTemple is impeccable although they have had significant downtime and it is starting to get annoying.

MediaTemple

Great for very user friendly, dead simple web hosting. They are very clear about downtime and future upgrades.

Support: Always great; I have called their support line on a number of locations and they were extremely helpful, easy to understand, and very friendly.

Slicehost

Excellent root access, bare bones virtual private server. I have had absolutely no problems with them.

Support: I have never had to call Slicehost and have only been in their online chat once (to ask some server administration questions). I hear that their support is great. They have a number of people accessible on Twitter who have answered my questions instantly (Robert Scoble now represents Rackspace).

bjtitus
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I use WebFaction and have found them to be excellent. You can read my experience of their service here and here.

Philip Morton
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    I've recently switched from (mt) Media Temple to WebFaction due to the recent grid outage at (mt). I'm very very happy with it so far... – Ates Goral Apr 30 '09 at 16:25
  • These guys are scary good. Their control panel and infrastructure is amazing, especially considering the price. I started with them because they supported "out of the box" serving a Django app with a custom Apache instance using WSGI, while serving static media using nginx. There was, literally, no setup needed. If you are doing ANYTHING with Django, Rails, TurboGears, or anything else beyond pure static HTML/PHP websites...just go here. No other shared host will work as well; no VPS will be as easy. – Cody Hatch Feb 23 '11 at 05:46
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HostRocket is pretty good.

Steven Behnke
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I've used NearlyFreeSpeech.NET and 1and1.com

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is really inexpensive for a couple of low volume sites that I run.

1and1.com costs a little more, but has better tools (especially for e-mail support). The problem I found with them is their support is if you need to verify your order (as part of fraud prevention) you can only call between 9am and 5pm EST. This is a pain in the butt when you want to keep work on your personal projects separate from when you are at your 9-5 job.

BIBD
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    I have personally discovered that 1and1 has some problems with email...and what I mean is that on our application servers, we have the delivery address set to a 1and1 address for our support tickets and such...well the email will never get sent out for some reason (it's almost like 1and1 is denying receipt of the mail), but if we plug in any other address like a gmail it works alright. Just something to think about. – TheTXI Apr 30 '09 at 16:31
  • I just tried signing up with 1and1 but as an international customer they took quite a long time processing my credit card (more so than their "5 working days"). I'm in a rush, so I'll skip them this time... maybe later? – Assembler Jun 29 '09 at 07:24
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Try googling Web Host Review to find a few sites that rate web host services.

I currently use DreamHost and am currently migrating another site away from HostMySite.

spoulson
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    at a meta-level, given the results, should we a have a "web host review" review? – Assembler Jun 29 '09 at 07:25
  • A nice looking website whose sole purpose is to rate web hosts and gives a nice top 10 list is, sadly, a lot like Ed McMahon promising you $1,000,000 if you just order magazines from publishers clearinghouse. It exists to make money from webhosts who pay money to get high ratings. Sadly, I really do know this. Happily, it isn't because I have ever personally had anything to do with such a scheme. Sadly, I a friend of mine has. – John Robertson Jun 08 '12 at 00:31
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I am personally using WebhostUK LTD never faced any issues with support or server, top class service in UK.

crazy
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If you're in the UK, I'd recommend 5quidhost, for excellent customer service and extremely low prices.

Skilldrick
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Local hosting often rocks. Check to see if you have a webhost nearby. Local to southeast Michigan is the excellent http://www.a2hosting.com .

I also very highly recommend http://www.wisesource.com - I've been hosting with them for nearly a decade, and while it's not cheap, the service is top notch in terms of response time and personal attention. One guy, one contact. Great service - really above and beyond.

-Adam

Adam Davis
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If you are looking for UK web hosting provider you can checkout http://www.webhost.uk.net

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I have to recommend three particular web hosts:

  • HostGator - a general purpose host, offers shared, ressler, VPS and dedicated hosting. They are the best of the best, no doubts about it. Customer support is not excellent, it is perfect and totally 24/7. The service is excellent, never had a single problem with them.
  • VPS.net - probably your best bet for Linux cloud hosting (Windows is in the plan). I'm currently planning to host my next website with them, they offer TONS of preconfigured Linux distributions as well as base-bones instalaltions, so the service it's very flexible. Their system is totally redundant and incredibly scalable. Support is excellent, their live support is directly built in the website, only a click away.
  • GoGrid - a cloud host, with the ability to mix cloud and dedicated servers in a single service. I haven't used them, but they look extremely great, though a little bit expensive. I've chatted with them and they are very friendly.
Mircea Chirea
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I've used LeaseWeb ( http://www.leaseweb.com/ ) for the past 3+ years. They're based in the Netherlands. I don't know what their managed services are like, but their self-managed dedicated servers are great.

I've also used SoftLayer ( http://www.softlayer.com/ - based in the US ) and was fairly impressed - although I didn't use them for long (no fault of theirs). Their customer portal is quite nice.

Alan Hinchcliffe
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I've been using Godaddy for a couple of years now. I've been able to successfully publish linux and windows solutions. PHP and .NET alike. Also, they can auto publish certain packages for you like BlogEngine.net, Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. The publishing is relatively fast too, so you can build out multiple sites in a relatively short amount of time.

However, I can't attest to high volume sites, as most of my sites don't generate what I would deem a high volume of traffic.

Joseph
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  • - without a comment? I'd like to know why, mainly because I'm interested in knowing if I'm using a bad host, so I can promptly relocate to a better host! – Joseph Apr 30 '09 at 17:48
  • I was sketchy about GoDaddy myself, but needed a dual .NET/PHP host while converting apps/services and GoDaddy has actually come through like a champ so far, I'm about 9 months in. – Dillie-O Apr 30 '09 at 17:53
  • I agree, I'm not saying they're the "end all be all", but for what I use them for, and for running a "fairly simple website - no e-commerce" as the question stated, I think I'd give them a fair shake. Without knowing traffic volume requirements, geographical location, etc, it might be exactly what they need. – Joseph Apr 30 '09 at 18:02
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I have used several hosting companies and finally consolidated at Webhost4Life.

Pricing is reasonable, they do Window and Linux hosting, and the support team is well informed and very helpful. They have guaranteed 0 wait time for 24/7 chat support.

I am very happy with them.

Gary.Ray
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I use Mosso and they have awesome tech support. You can have unlimited sites & databases and they have very reasonable prices. Plus they support Linux, Windows, Sql2008 & MySQL

Donny V
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I'm using Mosso for several small sites and have had no problems with it. Very easy cloud hosting.

silent__thought
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I've been using Site5 for simple Linux hosting for the past year and been really happy with the service and value. Their under $10 unlimited plan has been great for our podcast - we're delivering almost 1TB per month and the downloads have been speedy; I prepaid for 2 years and I think the cost was $5/month.

Jon Galloway
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I am personally very satisfied with BlueHost. Excellent service/support, unlimited bandwidth and storage, and fast SFTP once you set it up.

Lotus Notes
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I use eHosting - www.ehosting.com

seriously CANNOT fault their support - 24/7 email response, and it's ALWAYS within the hour!

alex
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I would recommend eUKhost, their support is excellent.

stukelly
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  • I disagree strongly. They are the most unprofessional bunch I have come across in webhosting. Never get a VPS with them unless you don't mind your VPS being taken offline without warning and suffering hard resets frequently. – Mr. Flibble Dec 10 '10 at 14:01