More hosting recommendations?

Personally, after the Experiences I had with 1&1, I would not advise any one to touch them with a barge-pole... a broken barge pole at that!

I signed up to one of their cheapo dedicated servers a while back, it all went through ok, and I based my choice to go with them on the fact that it had a 30-day money back guarantee.... how wrong was I... after two days, I decided that it wasnt for me, and filed for account closure, and my monies returned... so I got many emails stating it could only be done after x date - which was after the 30days... so I got them to confirm on many occasions that I would receive my money back... then the day came up, and I got back in touch with them... not only were their email responses poorly constructed (and I am not racist in any way or form), but they completely bypassed the request for money returned. Then my emails started going unanswered. I then threatened to start court proceedings, and also threatened them with bad publicity - 2 and a half months went by, and nothing, so I got in touch with my bank - and then filed for a chargeback. Luckily, I kept every email 1&1 had sent to me, and then left my bank to it... a month later, and my Bank had sent letters off to germany (i think that is their registered address?), I still had no money returned, so I decided to try and call them again - I spoke to a scottish woman this time, she was very helpful, apologised and said that the money would be back in my bank in a few days (she must have had my bank’s notes on file).... so my money was eventually returned, and then two days later, was returned again...

So yeah, their website looks nice and they look like a nice firm to deal with, but from my experiences, I will never use them again... I now use http://www.memset.com and http://www.ukservers.com

If you are in holland try KingHosting.nl hehe its mine
the site needs a serieus pimping done but you know how it is
nice for other sites but your own home alway a mess.

Greets

Well...after much deliberation, I decided to give DreamHost another shot. Hopefully all will go well. And here’s the skinny on why I didn’t go with any of the other guys:

TextDrive (www.textdrive.com)
I contacted them to see if they offered any sort of 30-day guarantee...meaning that if I don’t like them I can at least get my money back. No deal! $50 is just too much for me to spend just to see if a hosting provider is worth a flip.

Media Temple (www.mediatemple.net)
I contacted them and asked them if and when they were going to be upgrading their servers to allow for versions of MySQL that are 4.x or higher. I basically told them that I would likely sign up if plans were in the works. Apparently there are no current plans and that kind of disturbed me a bit. If they would just upgrade their servers a bit, add a better version of MySQL, and configure their servers to allow separate logs for different domains then they would honestly be the perfect host for me.

Site5 (www.site5.com)
I already mentioned these guys before. Sorry...but when your site is poorly managed and has broken links that’s a sign that your business is probably poorly managed as well.

Pair Networks (www.pair.com)
Good host! I really wanted to like these guys! But after digging into their policies, it just looks like a MODx site could possibly break the limits imposed for database connections. That’s a pretty big deal breaker there!

So...if DreamHost doesn’t work out, I might be out of options. No biggie though....I have a few months to play!

Hope you enjoy your stay with dreamhost, or you might want to try aplus.net or ev1host.com for dedicated server. Never use them, but I read quite a few good reviews about them.

I just got email from Dreamhost saying they upped the bandwidth to 1TB and the disc space to 20gig. I’m not even using a smidgen of that yet, and I’m not sure I can...

I don’t really bother with their referral scheme, but if anyone is deciding to sign up and wants all of my "commission" as a discount on a 1yr plan, drop me mail and I’ll generate a special MODx coupon code for you. Otherwise, if you search around, you can find lots of other coupon codes. That’s how I got mine in the first place; it was so cheap for the bandwidth they had at the time, it was a no-brainer. It’s been a great space to muck around in; though I’m not sure I’d try to run a real business in their shared enviro.

Quote from: wendy at Jan 05, 2006, 08:44 AM

...you might want to try aplus.net or ev1host.com for dedicated server. Never use them, but I read quite a few good reviews about them.

I have 3 dedicated servers through Cari.net (http://cari.net) and I seriously think that once you go dedicated, you’ll never go back. Their support is pretty great as well. It’s a bit more expensive, but on my main server I pay $60/mo and bill various clients about $200/mo for hosting on it, so it’s definitely paying for itself. (160GB drives, 4Mbps bandwidth (about 1200GB/mo), a whole dedicated P4 just for your sites = stupid fast).

The nicest thing about having your own server is that your host isn’t making random updates and/or security changes and breaking your site’s functionality. That happened to me constantly before.

Anyway, if Dreamhost doesn’t work out, try a dedicated server. Oh, and get Plesk if you don’t know Linux

I agree on the server suggestion Brett! I would also suggest getting a VPS software if at all possible, too.

wow, does carinet do managed servers too?

I pay oodles for my dedicated machine but the service is great and they take good care of me.

problem is that you pay well to these guys $200 a month (that is even at a discount through them) but with perl gurus (pretty close to the core development of perl itself) and a reputation you can7t beat I figured paying a bit more was worth it.

hmmm, but saving $$$ would be good too.

hmmm, yeah I offer serving too just in case. No, I don’t do the $5 a month stuff. Not worth it, I’d rather charge a "bit" more and give that much better service than fill the machine up with oodles of sites.

ooops one more.

To get the low down on many things related to hosting and what not go here:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

I’d hate to be bad mouthed there.