Hello, I'm desiging a website for someone who wants hosting with a "big name". I know about verio, but then I looked at hostsearch.com and saw that they are rated very poorly. Only 1's and 2's. What he mainly wants is speed, reliability, and in a month or so, a way to accept orders for products online. I have heard of olm.net before from people and have also seen them advertised in a lot of pc magazines. Are they any good? Also, I've seen a lot of sites hosted by Genuity, including pepsi and bose. Does anyone have experience with them? I know to do a search through the forums, but I'm not really looking for general information. More of, are they a large reputable company that large companies use for hosting. Verio for example gives ecommerce capability with the silver package. Does ecommerce capability just include a shopping cart or a way to actually accept credit cards online. I'm sorry, I'm new to the ecommerce thing. I know of instabill and revecom but have never used them before. Also, where have you had the best experience with registering domains, stargateinc.com looks pretty professional and I've heard good things about them, but I'm not sure. Thank you for all your help!

Originally posted by MDesigner
I know of instabill and revecom but have never used them before

InstaBill are no more. RevECom though, seem to be working great.

Exodus [without their current financial issues] is a premier hosting provider. Some others include Verio (they are very good with larger, high profile, web sites), Interland (well...they were good) and Interliant (have no idea...they're just big).

You may also try the big providers like Level3, Genuity, UUNet (Worldcom), Sprint, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Digex, Mindspring, Global Crossing, PSInet, Qwest, E.Spire, BBN (GTE/Verizon) and Time Warner.

Why thank you very much for that list! :)

Originally posted by MDesigner
Why thank you very much for that list! :)

No problem :D

(Did I miss any?) :D

There are quite a few that can bost uptime and reliable networks. Customer service has declined at most to something akin to telephone operators.

The big ones wont help you more than resetting a button unless you pay a premium service contact and then you get by the book service (and nothing more). I know Exodus works this way. And so does XO (previously Concentric and Nextlink).

So the question here is how much support do you need. Can you manage your network connection or your system. Are you good on basic administrative task or can you tune your kernel?

While I've been writing this out, I've been trying to think of the name of a particular company that I've run across a few times and have been impressed with.... It was the kind of company that I would send someone I wanted to see get taken care of go... sheesh, I can't remember... Inflow! No real experience working with them as a customer, but I have dealt with a few of their network engineers and they are definitely on the ball. I liked their corporate attitude.

Anyways, if you do go with one of the big facilities, make certain that you do have real 24/7 access to a senior engineer, either at the facility or on a consulting basis. After all, it is the internet and it does involve people and computers - it will break at 3am no matter what you do. or even worse yet, 5pm on Friday.

I just have to agree here with valkaryn :D
The big name hosters usually offer the poorest customer service, and support thats UNacceptable for alot of people.
I would definitely check around and also discuss that with your client. Many think, or get the impression, if they choose the big name it means great service, quality support, etc.
and then the shocker comes when there are alot of UNhappy people (interland comes to mind here) and clients are more than ready to move on to another host!
Good Luck.....and keep us posted on whomever you choose.
On another note....try http://www.000domains.com for domain registration.
Its 13.50 for the year, and comes with a nice control panel, where you log in and maintain your domain. Very easy!!

It really depends on what your talking about

I have found that some of the big names are very solid and do a darn good job.

Keep in mind that the 4 largest tier 1's, UUnet, C&W, Sprint, Genuity, would not be where they are if they were total garbage.

All 4 companies I have found in most senses to do a darn good job.

With them you are usually spending bigger money, bigger money usually gets you some decent service, there are exceptions


C&W one of the largest global IP backbones, baught MCI's old backbone.

Genuity use to be part of GTE

UUnet, and Sprint well all combined, make up most of the net

Joe

It's another ball game with the big guys. I'm pretty sure companies like Genuity work out a seperate support contract. I would imagine that's expected as most customers have their own Techs, Admin's, etc. Either way, I figure the support to be dependent on what is signed for in the contract.

GTE had purchased BBN and in turn was purchased by Bell Atlantic which then became Verizon. Legal issues concerning a merger of Bell Altantic on the East with GTE on the West resulted in the split of these services into Genuity.

Large companies are good for large customers... but You can't really expect to have a 20 dollar a month website with a company that focuses on 20,000 dollar a month customers and expect them to hand hold you.... the large companies are good... but size does unfortinuately tend to matter priority wize to the large companies... (above msg is not meant to be rude etc)

and also, brand name does not mean quality either... just means they've spent a lotta time advertising to get you to think that way...

If you want big with decent support you might try olm.net, haven't heard anybody talk about them recently so I couldn't say if they've got good support or not.. but they seem to have a good reputation.

I think in the end

It depends on what you want.

Tier 1, colo i mean there are alot of options. If you want to play with the big ones, expect to play with some serious cash.

Joe

You could try Valueweb. I know a few people who host sites with them, and they've never had any problems. I've heard their support is also excellent.

Beware of their 4 cents per megabyte (when you exceed your bandwidth allowance.) That can work out quite expensive...

name brand? how about AT&T?

http://www.attsbh.com/affiliate/metrosbc/att_splash_3.html

If they are looking for a big name, and don't mind paying a huge price for average service, look no farther than Exodus' managed hosting. Using their hosting is part and parcel for many VC funded companies. Navisite and Genuity are similar operations.

If they can afford it and want the best hosting in the industry, they should sign up with Conxion-they are Microsoft's host, can't get any bigger of a name than that-and get their FailSafe Hosting-clustered managed servers, 100% refund for 99.998 or lower uptimes.

We've dealt with a lot of the national backbone providers mentioned in the earlier post. The main reason these companies are still in business is because they have well-connected backbones and if you multi-home amongst several of them, and have someone to fight with them over SLA and billing issues, you can manage to keep your network connected.

Most of these companies have terrible reputations among ISP's. Our experiences with them are pretty average.

-Level3 provided us with very poor QoS, we dumped them.
-Cable & Wireless has a problem with billing correctly and handling transit to non-Cisco routers. we dumped them, twice.
-UUnet used to be the ISP's ISP, but their service quality has degraded to consumer-grade, while their prices are still 2-3 times the going rate. they are also grimly continuing to bill us for a DSL circuit they never managed to get the installation completed on.

Note:
-PSINet declared bankruptcy last month
-Exodus is in severe financial trouble. Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs.
-Verio is expected to lose something like two billion dollars this year.
-Genuity's fallen on hard times since the failure of their ill-advised 'Black Rocket'.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone. This has been great and I'm getting in touch with my client and talk about some things with him. I will talk to him about all of your suggestions and they are very much appreciated. Thank you again!

We don't suggest UUnet, as their reliability in Hong Kong is dismal. Routers regularly need "upgrades"... go figure.

We had bad experiences with Verio, although not everyone will.
It as been a few years, but their accounting and support were the
biggest problems.

We start with a very good small hosts and then some big host swallows
them, trashing service and support in the process.
And we've paid around $250-300 a month for crappy service from the
big hosts so not everyone gets crappy service is paying $20 a month.

I'm curious why your customer wants a big name host. Big doesn't
mean better and it doesn't mean reliable.

Well for instance, att, I think that is the best choice personally, I'm not sure about him though. It's a big name that you know won't go out of business tomorrow without telling you and you know that if there's a problem, they will get on it. I was just browsing the att page for hosting and up pops a window asking me if I would like to talk to a support representative and ask questions. So I did and they are very nice people answering every question I asked.

Not sure if this company qualifies as a BIG name but Pair.com are a hosting group that's been growing steadily for a long time now.

They are so-so on the cost side and you will have to wait a while for support queries to be answered but in terms of reliability I've heard no complaints..

Perhaps the lack of Pair.com refugees says something about their holding power... Who know?