Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

my day job moved to hosting.com about 8 months ago and we love them. I know support guys by name, i have a dedicated account rep who`s actually flown out to see us and they offer a wide range of products. Now granted we got a few servers with them but we`ve had shared hosting and there VPS solutions before the "big" deal and have had the same level of service.

If you want to talk to my sales guy drop me a message and i`ll shoot you all his contact information.

Just like you I`ve tried many and gave up. So many give out free or cheap deals and it only makes your business worst.

Here is what I do now. I bought a dedicated server and take care of it myself. Basically you don`t need to do anything. You only need to know how to use a webhosting control panel and you are set to go. I don`t pay much. I get to host as many sites as I want. I got a good deal from dedicatednow.com and they are very reliable to my support questions or phone calls. I suggest you look into a solution like that or go with some well known host whom will charge a lot more than many others but will be reliable. Having your website up and running 24/7 is very important so make your choice wisely. Look around. I think you are already doing that.

-Guna

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Guna
http://www.startupbooster.com - Startup Tips to Help You Succeed

As Guna has made clear, sometimes it is best to do it yourself. I
know I have done that on many projects in my life. If you can`t
find what you want... make it. As some other smart SUN
contributor has said, everything has been done. Just find
someone to show you how to do it. ... or something like that. I`m
not good at remembering exact quotes. :)

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Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words

Thanks for all the replies! I really appreciate them. This is why I love startupnation, the community really works when you`re looking for help and friendly advice.

Seeing that so many of you took the time to responde, I just thought I`d give some feedback.

Please let me say once again that I really appreciate the responses and the following are in no way an evaluation of the author but just my take on the hosts.

iouuone2, I was asking about the length of time you`ve been with them because, like I said, many of them start off great but after about a year or two, they begin to go downhill.

Degrees, there are two things I don`t like about Hostway. First, their "Live Help" seems to be only for Sales and not Customer Support. There is a message there, isn`t there? The second thing I don`t like about them is their price structure. 600MB and 50GB for 13.95 per month doesn`t seem very competitive.

Chris, GlowHost.com seems to be a great deal for a small business website but I actually get a couple million hits per month on some of my websites.

Mikeb, I`m looking for linux.

Keycon, GoDaddy has been a nightmare for me. I tried them. With one of the websites I had with them, my account was reset to blank after two days and we lost all that we had done on the website already. GoDaddy.com cost me great embarrassment with the client. They have great prices but that`s about all that`s great about them. The tech support people never admitted any wrongdoing or apology and never answered the questions I was asking. It was quite simple. I bought the domain name on a Monday and by Tuesday, the site was up and running. On Wednesday everything was gone and my account was reset to like brand new. It was as if I did nothing at all. "So where`s the site we built yesterday?" would get a response like, "Your account is up and running fine." They just kept saying everything is working fine and were never able to explain what happened to the design we had put up. They literally erased all that we had done and we had to start everything over from scratch. By that time my client was frustrated and left. It seems they must have thought we couldn`t have done much in two days after registration. We were on a tight deadline and had done almost everything in those two days.

As for Earthlink, it seems to me that it is an ISP that offers hosting. Is that correct? Well for the same reason that Petar tells me to avoid resellers I think I`ll avoid companies whose core business is not hosting.

Vincent, MountainMedia`s prices are crazy, not at all competitve and they don`t even have live online support or maybe I`m not finding it?

Petar, aplus and apollo don`t look too bad. At least worth some research.

Vincent and Guna, as for doing it myself, I may have to take your advice on that too but I`m actually not looking to give myself more work. :-) It would be nice if I could outsource this.

Thanks once again to all of you! I can`t say it enough, thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Get Your Name in ".com" at the International Internet Authority

A web host I would recommend is Exabytes.  I have been using them for the past several months and they have excellent customer service.  They are an international company in Malaysia so phone calls may be a little expensive if you need to talk to someone.  But I`ve asked the most complex questions via email and they always have an answer for me in a matter of hours even if you don`t officially open a support ticket. 

The have some of the best hosting packages I`ve seen when it comes to disk space, price, bandwidth, programming tools and databases.  I signup all of my clients to them because I know any problems I have will be solved promply and clearly.

Their website is http://www.exabytes.com

I like http://www.1and1.com

They have phone support with a call center... That`s important *when* things go wrong.

 

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Bryan C. Fleming

http://www.BryanCFleming.com

I also host websites for my clients that I design websites for in most cases. My prices are a bit higher than your average web hosting company and the reason for that is that we make it a point to try to only host our business customers that we have already done business with.

Many things can cause web host companies not to be able to afford to handle phone calls is that there are allot of times when it is not the hosting companies fault why your email or website not be working. It could be an internet service provider issue, or a network issue on your side. Many people don`t take into consideration user error. We have very rarely had downtime since we have been in business since 2003 and I credit that to having great equipment and our understanding of the business. I do offer live phone support to my clients and of cource email and instant messaging options so most of my clients instant message me with even minor questions that do not relate to hosting. I like that because I like my clients and like chatting with them.

Dear Aleem:

In the time it takes to go through frustration of "many bad Hosts" you could learn to make your own. I know, I know..it might not be sophisticated as what you want, but doing it yourself gives you control based on the ease and flexibility of the format you use to make a website.

This statement is not meant to belittle you but to make a point. "Their are children under 10 years of age making professional websites" Here`s the point. Theirs a learning curve to making a good website which is diametrically tied into your knowledge of your computer. In other words, in time you can make a killer website without knowledge of html, through simple trial., error, and patience.

All these suggestions I mention in the latter statements I applied in making my website. www.nativepuppets.com . Take a look at the depth of the links and the use of streaming video, and pictures. This is by no means me offering you my services however I would advise you how YOU can do it yourself.

Briefly, here`s what I did.

First, I am a Bellsouth DSL Ultra customer - this gives me access to certain amount of website space. I did some investigating and discovered they provide "TEMPLATES". Any moderately literate computer person can use these templates. The instructions provided are a step-by-step approach; kind like filling in the blanks - using many inherent Windows and Internet Explorer concepts - just like MS Word, but easier & quicker.

Adding and editing are equally as easy.

And so far the cost is zero. If you plan on high traffic - I`m sure you can find template severs using T1 - T3 bandwidth.

Adding pictures is a snap, making links is easy,  & your choices of a look for your website are numerous.

Their are three notes of worthy consideration - personal technical support is almost always available (they answer a large array of questions); most templates come with a HMTL option (I did this with the counter at the bottom of my webpage - the counter. With HTML, you can Google them and literally see what you want and cut/paste the HTML codes - poof, you are a pro; third, having a template doesn`t mean you have a memorable website address -with  Godaddy.com you can find a memorable website for less than $20 per year.

Remember, while flashy websites can be memorable - if you build one with a template, the up-to-date content your web design will reinforce what you say.

Here`s my final word of advice. Go to the library sometimes and read articles from computer magazines. In time you will learn fascinating tricks for web design and look like a pro.

Take your future into your own hands.

David Coronel

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**************** All my Relations ****************

Conversely, I`ve had a bad experience with 1and1.  The way I see it, they spent way too much money on slick advertising and not enough on infrastructure.  Things such as creating databases and making basic server changes take hours to complete where it`s instantaneous elsewhere.  While their control panel is the easiest to understand, it`s also the most devoid of features.

I`ve found cPanel to be the best non-enterprise server control panel so far.  It locks in nicely with CGI, PHP, PHPMyAdmin, and webmail.  Anyone who`s thinking of turning their spare server into a hosting company will love cPanel`s integrated billing features. 

The best host is ultimately the one that best fits your preference or experience (and tolerance) for doing things like databasing, troubleshooting downtimes, and file transfer.  A cheaper host may be good for a do-it-yourselfer while a more expensive one may charge an inflated price for a worthless "business" package.  One recommendation is to check out hosting service review sites on the Web.


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"Forget inspirational quotes to keep you going. If by doing what you do, you get an hour every day to relax, be with the ones you love in comfort without doing wrong, then it is all worth it." -Anon.

I just want to advise everyone to stay far from hostgator dot com

They are the absolute worst. Their weak security systems allowed someone to hack into one of my domains twice and go phishing.

You know what the customer support rep does when I call her? Accuse me of phishing in a tone that she`s convinced it was me.

They`re the absolute worse ever.

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Get Your Name in ".com" at the International Internet Authority