More hosting recommendations?

Quote from: ScottyDelicious at Jan 03, 2006, 02:00 PM

@jaredc: Can you point me to a positive 1and1 review (or several), and share your personal experience with their service in regard to setup time, transfering domains, account manager (I heard it’s slow as sh*t), tech support, likes & dislikes.

Let’s see. I had a billing problem that turned out to be a misunderstanding on my part. Other problems are too far back to remember clearly, but there weren’t many of them. The control panel CAN be slow. Seems it’s a time of day issue or something. It’s usually quite tollerable - but I’ll admit it’s not lightening fast. Transferring domains is a bit of a pain as it requires a fax, but it isn’t difficult. Setup goes quickly, as does adding domains etc. Pretty much everything is automated. Well organized and thorough FAQ helps through oddball setup questions.

On another note- NetFirms seems to be pretty high on the ranking list at the web hosting handbook site. Ratings and reviews were pretty good. I’d never heard of them. Anyone got experience there?

Thanks Bravado.
I appreciate the extra time you spent locating these. I will review as much information as I can before I make a decision. Going by the info at 1and1’s website, they look great!!! LOL . Independent analasys and user reviews always tend to generate more useful information however.

-sD-

Another host I just noticed is TextDrive (www.textdrive.com). So far reviews are pretty good and...well...take a look at what they offer! Talk about bleeding edge stuff!! If they’re reliable and offer good support, I might just check them out!

Quote from: jaredc at Jan 03, 2006, 02:46 PM

On another note- NetFirms seems to be pretty high on the ranking list...Anyone got experience there?

Just had an online help chat. And if I may have an aside... for the click here for online help button, they seem to always put some pretty woman. Then when the window pops up, you get some name (like "Diane" in my case) assuring you that you are chatting with someone at least somewhat like you saw. But I have to wonder to myself- is it really some 17 year old pimply boy and this is all a marketing tactic? Not that it really matters - but it just makes me wonder

Anyway, I asked some questions because some of the specs didn’t make much sense. Like you can hose 3 web sites but can have 25 domains?? What’s up with that? Why can’t I host a site per domain... here’s the low down:

Jared: hello- i’m looking at the netfirms advantage hosting package. In the specs, it says multiple websites (3) but also says multiple domains (25). How are these being defined as often a domain defines a site??
Diane: You will have the ability to have up to 25 domains on this account, and you may host separate sites with all 25
Diane: however, only 3 of those domains will also have email support
Jared: ah. interesting. Further, are GD and Imagemagick libraries included?
Diane: the additional domains are simply domain pointers without emails that you may redirect to existing sites, or, host separate sites with
Diane: Yes, GD and image magik are installed
Jared: Finally- will the statistics in the control panel break down information based on domain? Or does it lump all traffic together for all domains/sites on an account?
Diane: It would be for the account as a whole

FYI, I run two MODx sites on 1and1 hosting for a client and we are actively searching for an alternative. First, MODx does not run out of the box on these servers; it requires you to specifically set the session_save_path before calling session_start, because there is no shared temp directory for such things. This is due to a sloppy clustering configuration IMO, but I could be wrong. Also, they appear to be using a very old MySQL (3.0.23) and I’ve had no luck getting them to consider an upgrade.

Quote from: Bravado at Jan 03, 2006, 02:59 PM

Another host I just noticed is TextDrive (www.textdrive.com). So far reviews are pretty good and...well...take a look at what they offer! Talk about bleeding edge stuff!! If they’re reliable and offer good support, I might just check them out!

Yeah I mentionned TextDrive earlier, I am hosted there ever since I bought a VCII account (hosting for life, 10 domains, 1Gb @ 400 $, it was a limited offer). TextDrive has been created by the folks @Textpattern, for the record. I knew several of them, when I signed up, it was a no brainer.

We had some trouble at first but now things are running smooth. Those guys a geeks to the nth degree, bleeding edge allright : official host for Ruby On Rails, might I add...

But more important, support is good, fast and well, friendly !

Sweet! Good to know, davidm! Thx for the comment! I’m definitely looking upon them pretty heavily at the moment!

Has anyone heard about this host?
http://www.imhosted.com/

It came up in the top 3 on four of the web hosting review sites that I checked out.

-sD-

Quote from: ScottyDelicious at Jan 03, 2006, 07:07 PM

http://www.imhosted.com/

This looks pretty nice; I wonder what version of PHP they have, 4 or 5? They just say latest on the site. And I wonder if they have the PHPSuExec capabilities so everything runs as the user (and I won’t have to manage file permissions using CHMOD every day of my life)...???

Quote from: OpenGeek at Jan 03, 2006, 07:36 PM

(and I won’t have to manage file permissions using CHMOD every day of my life)...

LOL

I contacted them through their "Sales/Billing" form with these questions:

You say you run "the latest version of PHP" Which version do you use? 4.3.11? 5.0.4?

Does your PHP installation have PHPSuExec capabilities so everything runs as the user (and I won’t have to manage file permissions using CHMOD every day of my life)?

Which build of the MySQL database do you use?

I will post their reply when I get it.

-sD-