Best Website Hosts 2010

[Geoff Grace]

I'm done with Apple's MobileMe as a site provider, and I'm looking for a solid performing website host--one that offers 24/7/365 phone and e-mail support, with high bandwidth and storage and 99.99% uptime, for a reasonable price. Obviously, I can research this on the web; but only real customers can tell me if their hosts deliver on their promises. In my opinion, Apple didn't.

 

I know we've done this subject before, but I don't think we have recently. Please excuse me if I'm wrong.

 

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Eddie]

When I set up my website I did a lot of research, and decided to go with Arvixe.

It's not the cheapest, but the prices are very reasonable. Reviews from customer were very positive for the most part. I don't recall the websites I checked, but they included "pro" reviews as well as reviews from actual users. Arvixe's ratings were well over 90% back then. Maybe around 98%.

 

IIRC, I was also able to find a promo or discount. I've needed support maybe twice, and they helped me get things solved very quickly. I do remember once it was late at night, and probably even during the weekend.

If you decide to go with them, I would appreciate it if you go via my link:

http://www.floresybasura.com/

Just click where it says "Web Hosting By Arvixe"

I think that will get me some discount once I renew.

[techristian]

I have been with Godaddy a few years and would say that I am VERY dissatisfied with them. Immediately after going with them I saw my web traffic plummet to only 1/3. Then there are those days when my website goes down for no reason for UP TO 48 HOURS. I have purchased an UNLIMITED plan with them, but that is meaningless, since traffic can only be as fast as the pipeline that delivers it. (if there are 200 accounts on a single server?) In December, I may try their Virtual Dedicated server for 2X the price for one last chance but I may also go with someone else.

 

Steer clear of Godaddy and don't be lured by their low prices.

 

Dan

[Jeff da Weasel]

I've been with the same web host for the last 9 years, and really like them. However, I'm not sure if they satisfy Geoff's specific requirements, so I'm hesitant to mention them. But my sites (I'm currently hosting six of them there) are basically always up, and I never have any problems with my host, and they're cheap.

[John Sayers]

I don't know if you've ever considered going OS for hosting.

 

My site is hosted by Web Hosts Australia

 

http://www.webhostsaustralia.com.au/index.html

 

but the server is in the US. Our dollar is parity at the moment so pricing will be the same. I've had excellent service via their support pages and they offer 24/7 - 24 hr support.

 

My site has never been down in the 2 years they've hosted it.

[blue2blue]

I just left a very good, but very expensive host. I used to do a lot more ASP stuff, and I was on a Windows account there. My down time was truly negligible and they sent me notices when it was down -- while most outfits just hope you don't find out. But it was really expensive for the storage and b/w and their control panel was an odd and clunky proprietary thing and they had no app installer (I'm sorry, I'm spoiled -- it's really nice to use something like Fantastico and have it do all your basic set up for you which with Drupal or even WordPress gets old after a while.)

 

 

Unlike Dan, I actually have had fairly good luck with static page sites on GoDaddy -- but they have the most annoying UI of all time, I think. And their database service sucks. I mean, my stable Drupal site would go from 2-3 second page loads (which is already not exactly super quick for Drupal) to sometimes 10-20 seconds due to whatever the hell was happening on their DB servers. Totally unacceptable, even for a WP blog. And then there are the cheezy GoDaddy TV adverts.

 

(Wordpress has their own hosting, of course, but apparently they sometimes sneak adverts in to offset costs on their freely hosted stuff. Back on a self-hosted WP installation, WP is not nearly as DB intensive as something like Drupal, so DB slowdowns aren't quite the disaster to a WP blog as they are on a Drupal CMS site.)

 

 

Anyhow, I'm currently just moved into new digs at GreenGeeks.com -- which is essentially really cheap but regular hosting accounts have to be paid at least a year in advance (!) -- although they do have reseller package accounts on a monthly basis. They apparently are 'super green,' supposedly buying 3 times as many environmental credits as they need to offset their footprint.

 

They have a really good range of utilities and apps available for install through Fantastico or a handful of other installation managers.

 

It's mostly been pretty good but I've caught it down twice. Once it came back up before I could finish telling the 24 hr chat guy about the prob -- but the first time it took a server reset and maybe 5 minutes or so for the guy to get things running again. Of course, in both cases, I don't know how long it was down. (I meant to check my server logs. My bad.)

 

I guess part of the problem is that there are a lot of other Drupal users on the site and the nature of that beast is such that it's possible for an incorrectly set up Drupal installation to hog the server. When they catch it, the offending virtual server is shut down (much to the offending user's chagrin, of course)... but it's something to consider. (I sort of suspect that the DB problems at GoDaddy are similar but that they are less proactive about shutting down offenders and their presumed larger number of users on a given DB server, in a sense, 'dampens' the effect of a runaway DB app on the app server.

 

Anyhow, mostly I like Greengeeks. If you have a bunch of domains and big data/bandwidth requirements it might be something to look at (unlimited). If you have a bunch of clients whose sites you maintain, it might be a good way to go. (The reseller accounts basically give you multiple control panels that you can assign to your customers who want access to or maintain their own sites.) [it should be noted that there is another GreenGeeks out there, but the one I'm talking about is GreenGeeks.com.]

 

Like most sites nowadays, they're rated 99.9% uptime. Last time I had an account with a joint that claimed 99.99% uptime, I was down more than any other host company ever. They gave me a free year of service to make up for the hassles and I still left with 5 or 6 months left prepaid. So, you know...

 

I consider this a probationary period...

[Ronan Murphy]

I host Ronan's Recording Show with Hostgator, I am doing tons of bandwidth for a low cost and been fairly happy with them.

[Jeff Leites]

I just have a "hobby" site, but I've been using JustHost for several months now, and have no complaints.

[techristian]

What is Drupal ???

 

I just learned that GoDaddy offers Drupal in their list of Hosting Applications. What makes this such a big pig of resources?

 

Dan

[daklander]

The host I use has been the best of those I've used over the years.

Up time has been excellent in my case, hosting nine sites though several are redirects.

Unlimited bandwidth, storage, mail accounts & etc. at a very reasonable cost but it is shared hosing. However, no phone support, only via email or their customer service center (site).

 

They do have other options, including virtual private servers, cloud hosting and others.

[UstadKhanAli]

phpwebhosting.com is good, but I do not know if it offers 24/7 tech support.

[blue2blue]

If you have to ask... you probably don't need to know.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

 

www.drupal.org

 

 

Basically, it's an open source CMS (content management system) with a huge number of community developed extension modules for everything from e-commerce to blogging to CRM (customer resource management) to social media site dev.

 

If you know what Joomla is, it's kind of like that -- but not nearly as limited and UI-bound, and pretty much not for kiddie developers (ie, those limited to plug and play/drag and drop stuff) like Joomla. Although it is possible to develop a full-featured site without necessarily writing any code from scratch -- but you still have to learn how it all goes togehter -- and that does require some dedicated headspace. And you'll still need to be able to make sense of PHP and javascript, even if you're not really up to developing from scratch in them.

 

 

If you want to see some Drupal sites, try these:

 

www.whitehouse.gov

www.fastcompany.com

www.rutgers.edu

www.economist.com

www.ubuntu.com

www.london.gov.uk

www.mtv.co.uk

www.thenation.com

www.five.tv

www.alrc.gov.au

www.bobdylan.com

 

The Drupal community -- and that is definitely how they talk about themselves -- is very open source oriented, as you might have guessed from all those government sites (and the Ubuntu site) on the list above.

[Geoff Grace]

Thanks so much, everyone, for your replies. They're very helpful!

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

As a followup, I thought I'd share why I'm leaving Apple's MobileMe service.

 

Back when MobileMe was .Mac, I signed up and used the service's HomePage web application to post my resume, examples of my work, and a picture of myself in my studio. Last year, I received notice that the service would be be discontinued and that I would no longer be able to "create new pages or edit existing pages using HomePage." I wasn't too bothered by this because they gave me nearly two months notice and promised that "any pages you've already published will remain live at their current web address for as long as you like."

 

But then this year, they rescinded that promise, at least in part. On October 8, I received the following notice, "Over a year ago, we retired the .Mac HomePage application for publishing new pages, but allowed previously published pages to remain viewable on the web. On November 8, 2010, we will discontinue online viewing of photos, movies, and files shared using .Mac HomePage."

 

The result is that I still have a resume online, but no supporting files. No examples of my work or pictures associated with the examples remain, the photo of myself in my studio is gone, but not the caption, "Geoff Grace at the keyboard." The site now looks unprofessional. This isn't how I want to be represented.

 

Furthermore, by this action, Apple broke all links to my music that I've ever sent in e-mails and all picture links that I've ever attached to posts here and at other forums. They can't be fixed short of finding a new provider, sending correction e-mails, and editing posts--most of which can no longer be edited.

 

I suppose it could have been worse: Apple didn't delete the files themselves--they're still nested within the same folders on my iDisk--but Apple's actions were bad enough as far as I'm concerned. They've lost me as a web hosting customer for good.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

And, for what it's worth, here's how I'm approaching building a new site:

 

After my negative experience with Apple (see post above), I don't want to ever rely on site building tools from a provider again. I've been studying XHTML and CSS, and I'm putting together the next build of my site from code. I've also recently purchased a copy of Dreamweaver CS5 and plan to learn and use it as well.

 

I purchased a Mac copy of Dreamweaver, but I've mostly been coding on Notepad2 under Windows 7. I have a dual boot Mac, so I'm flexible. On the Mac side, I recently discovered TextWrangler. What a cool piece of freeware!

 

Thanks again, everyone.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[blue2blue]

Dreamweaver or other decent quasi-WYSIWYG editors can be a big help.

 

But they can also get twisted up on their own code. Few of my pages look anything in DW8* like what they look like in real life. Even when I'm not using server scripting, DW just can't always understand my perfectly in-standard CSS -- worse, you can easily create a page in DW WYSIWYG mode that is totally bollixed up that it cannot un-bollix without going into the code. (I'm continually back and forth between code and 'design' view.)

 

Still, it's really valuable and, wacky as it seems, it's the best I've used.

 

That said, a text editor and a browser and an FTP client is all you absolutely need.

 

*DW8 the last under Macromedia -- I heard very dire things about the first Adobe version so I didn't re-up. But I suspect it's improved greatly. Hope so.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

I've been using oneandone.com...

 

I hardly ever have to call them

[daklander]

Geoff, for a quick and free re-establishment of your presence on the 'net check out freehostia.com.

While the free account is limited to 250MB space and 6 GB of bandwidth it is free and does not require banners or other adverts. If I remember right you can also use your own domain name with the free account.

I still have a couple of free subdomain accounts with them, left over from before I opted for the unlimited plan I now have with the hosting company I use. The up time on those free sites has been, as far as I've been able to tell, excellent.

 

Also, for a place for file and image storage check out MediaFire.

[Hush]

I've been using Host for Web for a few years now and have been very satisfied with the support and performance.

 

They have Drupal and Joomla available if needed. I did my website with Joomla. See the link below.