A little while back, I did a serious web search for real reviews of hosting services (there are many fake reviews put up by unscrupulour hosting services).
The two that came up repeatedly at the top of the lists were Lunarpages and Bluehost. Both have very reasonable prices, *nix and Windows servers, and PHP 4 and 5 as options last time I checked.
I’ve used both with no significant trouble. I’ve had good support from both. Lunarpages has a more mature forum so it might be better for newbies. I only have MODx on Lunarpages but will soon put in a Bluehost installation. Neither site has MODx in the Fantastico installer (although I think Lunarpages used to).
Bluehost will let you host 6 domains under one account at no extra charge (with a single control panel, I think). Lunarpages charges extra for more than one domain. Lunarpages has been jacking up their prices a little lately and I’m thinking of moving everything to Bluehost. Bluehost offers free domain privacy, which costs extra at Lunarpages.
Update 5/20/07: Bluehost has grown a little too fast and speed and service are starting to slip. On the other hand, Lunarpages is faster and better than ever. They’ve lowered their price to about $5/month for two years with a coupon on the site. They also allow you to host 10 domains on one account (one cPanel).
Lunarpages still charges extra for domain privacy, if you care about that. I buy all my names now from namecheap.com and have been really happy with them. They currently have a deal on both price and privacy. I got two domain names and free privacy on both for about $15. I imagine the price will go up some but I think their privacy is less than $2/year compared with around $8 at some hosts.
Bob
A new client has asked us to look for a green web host (in terms of energy usage, etc.). I’ve never come across one, but to be honest I’ve never looked before. Anyone know of a good, reliable host in the US that claims to be green?
I’m curious as to what that means. If you claim to be green, what does that mean? Is there a national list of requirements for that status? Do you get a official "greeness" sticker?
Well, like these folks for example:
http://www.aiso.net
They are a bit pricey for my taste, and of course I’ve never actually had an account with them so there’s no telling how good their service is...
This client would probably be happy to pay more for a 100% solar-powered web host, however, and I can respect that (if all of our decisions were based in economics, we’d certainly never reproduce...).
Thanks for the link! Do you have any experience with any of these particular hosts? It always seems like such a leap of faith to open an account with an unknown host...
i know rackspace plants a tree for every dedicated server they sell
Olaf
Well sheesh I mean one lousy tree? I planted 34 last week, and altogether they cost me like $10. It better be one heckuva nice tree...
MODX Staff