1. Thinkhost

2. Hosting Matters

3. Host Rocket

4. HostVelocity

5. CQHost

6. Aletia Hosting

In regard to your experiences, I'm generally looking for (in order of importance):

a) uptime/downtime
b) speed of servers during heavy traffic times
c) response time experience (referring to the time it takes when you report a problem until the time it's resolved)
d) control panel features
e) customer service experience
f) other account features

If you're wondering why customer service experience is not as important to me as some of the other things listed, it's generally because I've been hosting/creating websites for 5 years. I don't require much in the way of customer support. Though it is on my list, because if my site goes down - or my files are hacked (which has happened more than once) - I do want to know I'll be taken care of promptly and politely, with no b.s., and no 'take a number' bit.

Thanks in advance!


(By the way, I would like these experiences to come from actual current/former customers. I don't listen much to hearsay - and I certainly don't listen to hosts tooting their own horn)

My advice is to search the forum for those names and read through the posts. You should be able to find a few members who use each and can contact them either via PM or email to see if they are still using them, how it is going, or why they left.

Thanx Chicken,

I've tried looking through the boards regarding these hosts. It's been real hard trying to distinguish the posts from one another. I've found several disgruntled posts - though some of them are complaining from circumstances over a year ago, others don't even appear to have been customers ever (just hearsay).

I must say it's very frustrating - I've managed to make my eyes quite bloodshot from staring at my monitor over the last 4 days - while sending beams of seething hatered towards :uzi: *****. I pray for an end to my torture.

In the meantime - I'll keep looking on the boards for posts regarding these guys. Thanx again.

Anyone who is a current/former customer with any of the above mentioned hosts, feel free to PM me your experiences (good or bad).

At least you're doing it right.
Just keep looking and don't make any fast decisions.

Just my thoughts.

Good Luck!

One thing that may speed up your searching is this:

On the search page, under the bottom level (Search Options), and sub heading 'Search Forum...' there are 4 radio errrr.. dots. The right two are: 'Show results as posts' and 'Show results as threads' - be sure to change it to 'Show results as posts'.

Saves a bit of the digging time.

(If you already did that, then well... errr... keep at it :D )

:dunce:

No, I hadn't done that Chicken. Thanks for the tip. I will try that - I'm sure I will still get gobs of results, but at least that would narrow it down quite a bit.

The two on your list that I have experience with are HostRocket and Hosting Matters

One that is not on yur list is LinuxWebHost, and all I can ever do is warn about their terrible support and downtime (I had one that was 5+ days)

HostRocket (customer from about October 2000 to February 2001)
a) uptime/downtime
I think there uptime when I was a customer must have been 85% and if you really care for downtime, 15% :) (must remember that that was when they started wtih VDI and I can only assume that it is better now)
I also have problems with VDI and don't like hosts that are VDI based (I suppose I'll go to an NT box before I go to VDI)

b) speed of servers during heavy traffic times
I wouldn't know,, try visiting clients' web pages between 6 and 10 PM Eastern time

c) response time experience (referring to the time it takes when you report a problem until the time it's resolved)
My experience was something like 2 days (but that also included weekends if that makes a difference)

d) control panel features
It is a cPanel control panel, which means there are plenty of them

e) customer service experience
Some people had better experience than others, I must have been one of the people that had bad experience.

f) other account features
It is VDI, VDI has a lot of features like integrated downtime and poor communications with its clients, thus the end user is stuck in the middle of the whole mess.


HostMatters Customer since Feb 2001
a) uptime/downtime
My site (on the new server) has yet to have any downtime. PRevious experiences have been short except for one mistake that blocked my access to the server for a couple of days.

b) speed of servers during heavy traffic times
I would say pretty good, some days it's worse than others, again try it out for yourself.

c) response time experience (referring to the time it takes
when you report a problem until the time it's resolved)
I would say probably within one to two hours usually

d) control panel features
Again, cPanel based, you reallly can't go wrong with cPanel

e) customer service experience
Excellent, support is fast, effecient and accurate

f) other account features
If you press the eject button on your CD rom drive, you get the complementary Hosting Matters coffee cup holder. :)