Hosting Reccomendations

I’d like to throw in a recommendation for HostGator. I’m still pretty new to them (maybe a month now), but I’ve been very satisfied so far. The Live Chat support is actually pretty helpful, and I always feel like a valued customer. I had a small hitch signing up due to our 3G connection showing us a couple hundred miles away from our address, but they cleared that up when I contacted them and it’s all been good since then.

The only thing I’ve noticed is that sending email with their SMTP server is significantly slower than I had with Hostmonster, but I haven’t looked into it and I could just have something set up weird.

I used to be with Hostmonster (a Bluehost-related company, I believe). I loved them for the first year or so, but then things started getting bad. My support tickets weren’t getting answered for a couple of days, and I felt like I was a burden to them instead of an appreciated customer. One of the last straws was them setting up their servers to automatically put their own favicon on my sites unless I specifically uploaded my own (even if I deleted theirs, it came back). I submitted a ticket explaining why I didn’t think it was right, and they just told me that’s how it is.

So not to just rant about Hostmonster, but I’d stray away from them and give HostGator a shot. I’ve heard good things about them, and it’s all been true so far. SSH access, too!

AND, as a bonus, I don’t know how long this will last, but you can get $100 back with this rebate: http://myhostgatorcoupons.com/$100hostgator-rebate.html You gotta wait 90 days after your purchase, so I haven’t gotten mine to confirm it works, but it looks promising. I also remember finding like a 20% of code on Twitter (actually, looks like the code is "TWITTER"), so I didn’t end up paying a whole lot for two years of hosting (assuming I get that rebate).

That’s my suggestion.

Quote from: sharkbait at Apr 05, 2010, 02:55 AM

Has anyone used maiahost.com? They offer to pre-install MODx and to troubleshoot MODx issues. They’re dirt cheap for shared hosting ($3.95/month) although some of the reviews (at least the ones that appear to be posted by non-employees) are negative.
http://www.maiahost.com/cms/MODx_Hosting.html

... i’ve just setup a site on maiahost and everything seems good so far.

I interested to maiahost.com, how long you have use maiahost.com?

I interested to maiahost.com, how long you have use maiahost.com?

just recently

I’ve had no problems with HostMonster. I started with them about 18 months before discovering the advantages of CMS generally and MODx in particular. I Googled and lurked in forums all over the place over a long weekend. I found that there were three tiers that mattered to me: Really cheap hosts, hosts at $5.00 to $7.00 per month, and everything else on up to dedicated servers.

I found the same reports again and again regarding the cheapies: Some provide great service as they start up (and so have few users, and these users generally use up-to-date, efficient technology). However, after a couple of years, complaints mount regarding poor page-rendering time, service outage, relative lack of features (because the industry since has moved on) and non-response to questions. They either get acquired or go out of business.

I consider HostMonster one of those mid-range host companies in my taxonomy. No, I wouldn’t try to run LL Bean or Sears on them. However, their "unlimited" (Not truly so. Read the fine print.) resource provision is just fine for many thousands of local small-biz and non-profit sites.

At the time I looked, HostMonster had enough users to allow me to develop a somewhat statistical feel for user comments. Since bad news travels ’round the globe before good news gets its boots on, I was glad to actually find positive things said about them, and glad to note that many of the negatives appeared to be due to user cockpit errors.

I can’t comment on HostMonster’s customer support because I’ve never used it. I was able to figure out HostMonster’s CPanel interface by watching their tutorial videos and experimenting on my own.

Upon biting the bullet to learn my way into CMS, I briefly looked at hosting solutions again. I continued with HostMonster, though. Not only did I already understand them as a service vendor, but also they made the latest MODx non-beta version available via Simple Scripts. They still do, having upgraded to 1.0.3 almost as soon as the formal-release holy water was sprinkled on it.

And speaking of holy water, another (irrational?) reason I like HostMonster is that it operates in Orem, UT. Not to insult others’ faiths, but I have found Mormons unusually straightforward, detail-oriented and honest in my dealings with them. Works for me, Brigham Young.

So ....
1) Spend maybe 15 to 20 hours researching hosting companies yourself. The "best" choice depends upon your needs and the state of the industry when you make the evaluation. Both are moving targets.

2) Disqualify hosts who don’t provide the latest released MODx version. Not that you’ll necessarily use that. You’ll install WampServer or XAMPP plus MODx on your PC and try this CMS stuff out first at no cost, before you contract with a hosting company, right? By the time you’re comfortable with MODx, you’ll prefer to move your site and MODx installation up to a hosting service, I think. Anyway, that’s what I did.

3) If you’re not confident enough in the hosting company you’ve chosen to accept their long-term, lowest-cost-per-month deal, you haven’t finished your research. Maybe you should be a month-to-month tenant for a while. Or maybe you should bump up the monthly charge you’d be willing to pay by another buck and re-evaluate the next sub-tier of hosts.

4) Return to read this thread every six months. Particularly with MODx about to embark on a massive technical shift from Evo to Revo, praise and gripes about one hosting company or another may shift significantly.

5) Please contribute to this thread. I want to benefit from your experience!

If you got the money and requirements for dedicated hosting then RackSpace is hard to beat... but at hundreds of $ a month it’s out of most people’s budgets.

For the rest of your needs I would recommend Dreamhost which I’ve hosted some personal sites on for the past 5 years and love their one click installs (wordpress, Joonla, etc setup auto for you!) and other great features...Have a look!

www.Dreamhost.com - $20 off yearly registration with promo code: NEWVIEWMEDIA

Dreamhost promo code: NEWVIEWMEDIA "$20.00 off 1 year registration"

I wouldn’t recommend dedicated hosting... not anymore, anyway. I think the cheaper and more flexible way to go is to get a virtual machine on a cloud, e.g. VPS.net. It has all the flexibility of a dedicated host, but if you need more memory/bandwidth/storage, it’s just a click away and you don’t have to power down your site to do it. Even for high traffic sites, it’s easily half the price.

I can really recommend a medium sized hosting company who are really hot off the press with regard to their customer care based in the UK, Reading, www.nethosted.co.uk

HostGator accounts have PHP register globals enabled, so I’d still recommend Bluehost for shared hosting, but they don’t do reselling.

I have several sites hosted at IPower. I like it, but it does not have a very simple set up. My personal favorite is Host Gator. I have several sites hosted there and I like the CPanel. It may take some getting used to at first, but it is really simple to navigate and easy to ftp. Some of my friends use Blue Host, but I have not tried it.

I’ve had an account with Bluehost for over 18 months now. Recently, they started using gzip to compress all their html as it is being served. This uses server resources - so, they have had to introduce some kind of software that shares out CPU time on their shared servers. So, now, even though I am using less less than 1.5GB bandwidth a month, and use no intensive server side scripts, I am having my account throttled. It seems that they throttle in 5 second bursts (?). So, the user ca request a page, and then waits 5 seconds before they start to have their request serviced. Bluehost say this is to share out resources and be fair to everybody on the shared server. Not very smart in my opinion. Perhaps they ought to look at boosting their CPU resources and reducing the number of accounts on their shared hosts. Also, they don’t seem to have any upgrade options, so I can’t even pay to get a better service. Again, not very smart in my opinion.

So, for my latest website I have turned to Supergreen hosting, which has got good reviews in various places. So far, so good with them. I tested their support service before signing up, by asking a real dumb question, and got a quick, helpful response One tip, I went through their signup pages, entering all details/options and then cancelled out - only to be presented with an exit page that gave me the option of signing up at even a cheaper rate - not sure if this is still their policy though!