Which hosting service do you suggest and why?
- by Antonio Lupetti
- 80
- December 1, 2009
Choosing the right hosting company is a crucial aspect for the success of your web site. When I switched from Blogger to WordPress I spent a lot of time looking for a company that offered high-quality services at an affordable price. After some days of researches I decided to host Woork Up on MediaTemple.
Now, after three months, I can say I’m really satisfied about their service and in particular about the customer support that helps you solve quickly every issue.
And you, which hosting service do you suggest to use and why? Please leave a comment, thanks!
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http://1and1.com I’ve been using them for years now and never had a single major problem or any downtime. Solid control panel, very clean compared to the bloatedness of GoDaddy, for example, much control and many options and very affordable. Second choice would be Slicehost.
I’ve used AventureHost for about 8 or so years. Really like them, very solid hosting and quick response to issues. Customer service is good too.
I use Evohosting for hosting all my sites. Very fast host and very fast support! http://evohosting.co.uk
http://Twitter.com/evohosting
Clook ( http://www.clook.co.uk ) – Great UK and US based host, excellent customer service – they have never let me down. Top notch.
If you are looking for any other host do check out SliceHost (unmanaged VPS) and TigerTech.
I’m on cirtexhosting these guys rocks… the greatest price and amazing support 24/7. Never got problem with ‘em and to know i’m running my own script and i needs hight performance servers.
From my experience, my site was extremely slow on Media Temple’s servers. I upgraded to the $50/month Dv server and still experienced very delayed loading times. (very basic site here – nothing big at all)
I tried really hard to like MediaTemple. Their customer service rocks, and their admin interface is gorgeous, but my site was just too darn slow on their servers.
I’ve been using Bluehost.com lately. I’ve set up my last 6 or so client sites on there. I can say you don’t get a pretty interface, but their servers have been rock solid. I’m going to continue to use them until I run into any major issues.
HI Sean, I never had these problems with MediaTemple. Woork Up runs fast on their servers. No problem in general.
I would choose RailsPlayground for its excellent customer support. I’ve also tried to use Media Temple (also tried to like it) but their support takes forever to respond. They also treat customers unfairly so you may be getting a better customer service than most of us.
I hear you on mediatemple being slow. I agree, support is good, admin ui is some of the cleanest I’ve seen. But it’s slow. I’m still on the $20/month plan. I was thinking of switching to the $50 plan, but if you’re saying that’s still slow, I might not bother.
Yeah even I had the same problems with MediaTemple, they are overrated, my web site was running really slow with response time of about 3- 4 sec according to my pingdom stats. I got a feeling they give good support only to their premium clients or websites/people that seem to have some kinda presence on the web. they took more than 24 hours to respond to my support messages.
I moved to MediaLayer, they use litespeed which is 10x times faster than an apache server not many people know this, google it and see, wordpress.com runs on litespeed, they have great instant support too.
Just to add hosts like bluehost, dreamhost extra oversell, your site might run fast for a couple of months then things slow down. beware of any host that says unlimited :P
I been with Bluehost, Dreamhost, Slicehost, MediaTemple, all have been a let down except for Slicehost which turned out too be too complicated to maintain but gives good performance.
Yes, same problem here. MediaTemple is very slow, same thing with DreamHost.
I’m currently using MediaTemple.com and DreamHost.com. Although Dreamhost does not look anywhere near as nice as (mt) I prefer using them.
(mt) recently made a massive screw up. All of the passwords stored for ftp, db and email accounts were stored as plain text. If you ask me, you can’t trust a web host that doesn’t take their security seriously.
Dreamhost PS is awesome, they have a great customers support, and some great “optionals”
( and their newsletter rocks ! )
Any suggestion on what is the most convenient and easy way to register a .it domain to use with these hosting service we’re talking about ( I’m italian like you ;)
I have been using Dreamhost for 3 years, and i must say i have never had big problems with them, and yeah there customer support is awsome. But what i most love there is the admin panel. Used cpanel so long that i got to the point of hating it. the change was awesome.
I’ve been on dreamhost since 2006 with no major problems until recently – and now I’m packing up and moving, which is actually why I’m reading this post. When they’re not having major downtime issues due to failing servers (a rare occasion, for what it’s worth), they’ve been pretty good to me.
Dreamhost is great. I’ve been with them since 2004 and recently switched to the PS service. When comparing their service to others, theirs is the most affordable Private Server option. I investigated Layer Tech and Media Temple and felt their VPS was overkill for my needs. PS with Dreamhost is new, I don’t know how they will handle getting Fireballed.
A great SF local company is Laughing Squid. http://laughingsquid.net. I’ve installed quite a few sites there. Service is great! Highly recommend them if you are making a WordPress blog for someone who will control the account later.
Personalized service. Their price point is a bit higher than the competition but the support is personal and servers secure. They also offer free hosting to artists in exchange for a logo.
I highly recommend these hosts. All of them run LiteSpeed (9x faster than apache):
1. MediaLayer.com – I host my company with these guys and they know what they’re doing! Blazing fast performance, superior customer service. I think the longest I’ve had to wait for support is 10 minutes.
2. Beachcomber.net – The diamond in the rough. High performing servers and great support. Cheap packages with generous limits! The longest I’ve had to wait for support is 15 minutes.
3. Steadfast.net – Well priced plans. EXCELLENT support. I bugged them to death and they were always very quick to respond. One caveat, I wasn’t impressed with the network infrastructure. Web server and database on separate boxes which caused some latency.
Peace,
Brian
I’ve used MediaLayer in the past and found them pretty good – lightning fast support. The one thing that made me switch was feeling like it was a one-man show there. No matter which support email address I sent an email to, the same person would always respond. That same person also handled all of the responses on the support forums. I’m sure they had someone else handle other aspects of their business, but still: if they only have one support person, it makes you wonder… how many other people actually work there? Are they at risk of disappearing overnight if something goes wrong? Perhaps I’m just paranoid, but I prefer web hosting companies that have more staff or are backed by major companies.
Rackspace (http://www.rackspace.com) hands down or Rackspace cloud (www.rackspacecloud.com) for more affordable hosting. I use Rackspace at my day job and they have phenomenal support! I have also been using Media Temple for personal sites, but after the security breach e-mail last week, database errors, and a slow loading times (I agree with Sean) I think it might be time to pay a little more and go for a premium host.
I agree with Landon Miller – Rackspace ROCKS!
I go with JustHost.com, I don’t really have a good reason, I suppose but it has a familiar cPanel interface, lots of training videos, and it works well for me. I haven’t had trouble with it and for low-traffic (under 2000 a day) websites, it’s the cheapest variant. It’s only charging me $3.5 a month, and I know of no other service that provides hosting this cheaply and reliably. As for dedicated servers, I’d go for a different service.
I have been using Holdfire for about a year and a half now. I have always preferred smaller companies because I feel they have a lot more to lose than larger businesses. They’re more personal and tend to care a little more about their clients.
Holdfire’s support and service has always been fantastic and truthfully worth more than the monthly price I’ve been paying (about $6 a month.)
I use orchard (.com) they have great customer support, reasonable prices even for dedicated servers, hosted in UK (unlike 1&1) which has SEO benefits to UK companies with .com domains. Supports CSS 5 HTML5 has htaccess files unlike fasthosts making re writes and redirects easier… I could go on but have found them to be brilliant so far! Currently moving a load of my smaller sites over to a dedicated server I have with them.
http://www.webfaction.com/ no doubt. Their admin panel is the best I’ve seen and the best of it all is that they support Django to the fullest, and you can add django apps through easy guides from that admin panel.
Really amazed how fast they have been when new versions of Django is released.
You can put up regular PHP and Ruby on Rails aswell of course.
SSH-access is a nice perk too, where you can compile and install applications on you account. This is not even the VPS solution.
I used Dreamhost, Servage, Bluehost and Hostgator for my personal projects. Dreamhost and Bluehost has a large number of servers but unfortunately, many of them are saturated and you can have enough problems.
Servage was located in Europe and is more faster than american hostings but they find it hard to troubleshoot configuration.
Finally in Hostgator I find a middle velocity, easy configuration and good service.
I often use the services of Spanish companies for professional projects and would not recommend any in particular, its competitiveness on prices and services is still far from European or American companies.
any SQL Server / ASP host recommendations?
From where are your visitors?
If they are form Europe I recommend to you a dedicated server in OVH, how many visitors do you have?
many things you need to explain if you want help my friend ;)
hi Antonio,
i think you might want to share you are hosting on mt’s gs or dv ? it seem like mt is having some security breach recently which causing a lot of topic.
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/category/system-incidents/1026-gs-security-advisory/
EngineHosting – In the years I’ve had clients host with EH, I’ve never seen one single glitch, no downtime, and rarely a delay with customer service. Even though they have a specialty in hosting ExpressionEngine sites, they are a LAMP shop so can handle most any need.
I’ve been using Locaweb (www.locaweb.com.br) for a while and I have to say: they service is great! No downtime until now, and the customer support is the best here in Brazil. Now Locaweb open a english reselling. Oh, Locaweb are the biggest hosting company in Americana Latina. I almost choose Media Temple because they have this great interface, but the lack of a portuguese customer support and the price in dollar made me choose Locaweb instead.
I recommend VPS.net. You pay for “nodes” that represent fixed system resources, and then assign them to virtual machines, giving you plenty of options for scalability. This may sound a little weird, but if you have a look at their website you’ll probably understand better.
Good support, plenty of flexibility as to how you configure your server.
I’ve used downtownhost, as well as hosted several client websites off downtownhost. I’ve never had any huge problems with them before, and anything small they solved it right away for me. Support was very fast and very knowledgeable.
Dreamhost PS haw been working great for me. Normal Dreamhost hosting was pretty slow for me when using MySQL, but their PS hosting is fast and reliable.
I, too, use MediaTemple for some of my larger projects, especially those for which I need an SSL certificate or some big mamma-jamma account. I also keep my Hostgator reseller account to set up smaller sites on because it’s much simpler to use.
I used siteground. I must say that they provide an excellent size-price relationship. They give you 1.000 gb (yes… 1 terabyte) of space, whatever databases you want, cpanel, ftp, etc etc
But of course, there are black things… if you use it for enterprise escalable application, it could convert in a hell. I had a database that reached around of 650mb, and my application started to work as hell… so, my oppinion is: it is an excellent hosting ONLY for storage
i use Site5 as my hosting service, they’re support is really good too :) i love them..
I had been a (mt) customer for over 3 years, and about a year ago I got tired of their “gorgeous” admin interface. I think their design is great for basic stuff and is very fancy, but I found myself preferring a cPanel interface. I like admin interfaces that are simple, and just work.
I am now with midphase.com, from uk2group.com and have been very happy. Depending on what you are looking for and your price point, check out their other brands at http://www.uk2group.com/brands/
I’ve used Media Temple (mt) (gs) for 2 years and I am totally agree with Antonio.
I have been using http://crucialwebhost.com for my Magento ecommerce websites.
The best thing about them is their service and their quick response times.
We prefer JustoHost.com They are cheap and reliable and we haven’t problems so far.
Linode.com – Switched from slicehost.com. Not that slicehost would be bad or something, linode has datacenter in newark which is closer to europe.
That vps.net look quite good… They have datacenter in europe! nice..
I’ve been using all-inkl for some years now and they have never disappointed. I especially like the 24/7 support. For the price, they are very competent and absolutely reliable.
For asp.net/sql server i’ve been using netcetera for a number of years now, excellent customer support,
http://www.netcetera.co.uk
Hi,
I´ve used simple hosting plan, VPS and now a managed server with http://www.hostforweb.com
They are very good and professional and the support rocks..
For my big sites i/m using http://www.hostko.com while they have nice control panel and unmetered bandwidth and friendly support staff.
I just switched to HostGator, and I wish I’d have seen this article and the comments a couple of days ago, because JustHost.com has excellent pricing for exactly my needs. With HostGator I’m paying exactly what I was paying for Dreamhost for virtually the same services but with a 100% uptime guarantee. I may try out HostGator for the month (I got my first month free, basically) and opt to move to JustHost for the new year.
I’ve had Dreamhost (http://dreamhost.com) for LAMP since 2006 and have never had any huge issues. Customer support is awesome too.
I have friends that use Arvixe (http://arvixe.com) and GearHost (http://gearhost.com/) for ASP.NET + SQL and they both like them.
I recommend VPSLink. Great prices for the resources allocated, a feature-packed admin panel, and lots of ready-to-use OS images. If you want a 100% self-service VPS at the best prices, definitely check out http://www.vpslink.com. Satisfied customer for 3 years.
I’ve been using Media Temple (mt) (dv) for over 1 year and have been nothing but completely satisfied! I love (mt) and highly recommend them to everyone.
I’m with 1and1 too. Good prices and no problems is my reason, hosting all my sites with them!
I am with Euroland, now I have my own VPS
I am with Euroland, now I have my own VPS. They are very cheap, still quality is OK.
alojared.com Good prices and good service. A lot of options.
If you live in the UK and need very cheap hosting with a lot of features you can do a lot worse than 4UHosting. Their basic package is for one domain only, but has everything you need, PHP5, MySQL5 etc. Their customer service is top notch, they’ll even do things like give you SSH access etc. if you ask nicely.
All that for £29.99 / year can’t be bad :) which is why I have 2 advanced accounts with them.
Dedicated Server, i want maximum speed for my user, i spend 150 euro for month, but the difference with a shared hosting is enormous
Liquid Web has the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. Tickets answered quickly, phone staff always available. http://liquidweb.com
Opus Interactive provides all the latest and greatest technology, with the hands-on proactive customer service you’d expect from a small MSP. That’s a tough combination to find.
I use EUKHost ( http://www.eukhost.com/ ) for all of my sites, personal and business. They have a 99.9% uptime, and yes I have used a monitoring service to confirm that. Their support, especially on chat, is very fast and usually resolve issues quickly. They are cheap, but give a good service.
Try IXWebhosting.com. I have found there plans unmatched so far. :)
I have been using mediatemple for more than one year and I haven’t big problems until last month. Nawadays I think that it’s the best deal.
I have my managed vps/dedicated on rapidvps.com, I’ve been with them for two years now. Ticket answer quickly, owner always goes online via ym. great support!
I use http://www.wizhosting.com for all my sites and it’s been great so far. Very fast, great customer service, all technologies supported.
I use site5 hosting and it very good.
I use exclusivehosting they have a great customers support and low-cost web hosting solution ,. http://www.exclusivehosting.net/
http://www.SitoNerd.com , cheap seo friendly hosting . The support is perfect .
100Mbs Uplink with cages in Munich and Milan . ASk pix-yu.com or pvmgarage.com administrators if Sitonerd.com fits their needs :)
Whatever , every time you change your hoster you’ll be satisfied untill you got the first problem .
Ciao
I would strongly suggest iWeb Technologies (http://iweb.com), it is one of the best hosting providers that I ahve worked with so far. They have amazing prices, 24/7 technical support and fast services.
I have used one dedicated server from them and previously shared hosting.
(They also offer services in French, English and Spanish)
Network speed is perfect and 99% uptime. They are also very community-friendly. (blog, facebook, contests, twitter promotions… etc)
I love them!
I’ve been using Hostmonster for over 2 years now without complaints. They have a great support team.
HostMonster is only good for very basic html sites that have no PHP or anything else that requires server side CPU processing power. This is also the case for any Shared Host and people need to keep that in mind when deciding on a host.
I have a hired a dedicated server from OVH france , Netdireckt ..both are pretty good !
I’ve been using 34sp ( http://www.34sp.com) for my domains and hosting for about 10 years. I have 50 domains, spread across 3 hosting accounts. Amazind customer service, amazing uptime – just amazing!
Hi,
As I saw someone told about OVH
their dedicated servers are great !!!
I’m from switzerland and I tried almost all hosting services in the country.
bighosting.com : it’s a good price, but they have strangely configured servers. their support is not very responsive.
easygiga.com is very slow, from what i’ve heard, the servers are hosted in USA … it’s good for you, but not for me ;-)
Infomaniak.ch : this is a very good one. but the configuration of the subdomains made me quit. the folders of the subdomain are in the domain’s folder.
Now I have my dedicated server at OVH
I have PHP-SU, to work with my files, because none of the others had it and it was quickly a mess to work with my files.
Almost the last version of php5.
Delegated my e-mails to google apps.
and I’m very happy with all that !
And I can even do hosting for other people. because I don’t need all the disk space.
I think I am the only one that uses godaddy on this list. They have always been great to me. I think I am missing something about godaddy, that I have yet to find out about. Is there a reason why I should switch?
Best web host I have ever been with: http://wiredtree.com
I too use Dreamhost and I don’t mind it. About a week after I signed up there was some issues, all of the sites on my server were down for about 10 hours or so but after that there have been no problems at all.
From what I hear, the PS works great if you can afford it but I have never used it before.
For VPS I highly recommended http://onexenvps.com the cheapest xen ever!
I use http://www.kwelhosting.com and never had any problems. They have lot of good and cheap services and also excellent support. I pay only $4.99 for web hosting a month and they offer 99.99% up time guarantee. With every new non-domain account they give domain name for just $3.99, and also have a big number possibilities for international international domain names registration
Their website address: http://www.kwelhosting.com
This is good web hosting service and I suggest it to all
Cheers!!!
I use Linode hosting ( linode.com )
I have several servers there. Pure Linux server. No control panel though but you can install whatever you want on it :) Had great fun setting up the server … reminded me of the old days (command shell) when i started in the Binary world … lol
The customer care is good but the IRC related to Linode is best and provide immediate solutions to any of your problems ;)
I am currently using for http://www.cbeachclub.mu and all other corporate websites will be shifted on the UK Datacenter Linode soon as our main target in European countries. Also will be used for the regional domains. (UK datacenter with US datacenter as backups)
Regards,
Shailen from Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean … :^^
For any sites with a healthy amount of traffic, I strongly recommend http://www.ukfast.co.uk/. I have found their dedicated servers second to none, with virtually no down time.
I have recently switched to dedicated cloud hosting, taking advantage of a dedicated server and a private cloud infrastructure and I am still impressed.
The support is awesome.
I have used a couple of other UK based hosts, starting off with a shared reseller plan then moving on to a dedicated server but UKFast are the only one I have stuck with.