I'm pretty much losing hope in any hosting company that offers stupidly cheap monthly hosting (ie, $9.95 a month).

I posted a message in the 'web hosting requests' forum about my needs and got quite a few messages and some emails but none of them really stood out.

Everybody seems to be jumping on the hosting bandwagon like they did on the porn bandwagon. Heavy saturation, MOSTLY crap, and _WE_ have to suffer by wading through all of the "yeah, we're the best, step inside" and when you do step inside it's just as crap as the last place you visited.

I certainly don't speak for anyone but myself, but I will _NEVER_ again consider a company that has a really badly designed website. I won't ever consider a company that tries to make a hosting plan sound like it's almost as cheap as a big mac meal. I won't even scroll the page on a hosting site that has absolutely 0 difference from the other 1000+ websites that differs only in page design.

95% of the hosting sites I've seen fit this description. You know you who are. Do me a favor and pick a different hobby. Collect plastic models or something.

I'm disgusted. I don't have the expertise to pull off a dedicated server, but I'm fed up with my page going down +EVERY+day. I won't say who my current host is because they're at least communicating with me and they seem to be trying, but patience is wearing thin. I feel the need to provide something better for my visitors than a daily serving of 404's.

So my question is, are there any hosts out there that GENUINELY have amazing uptime? I don't mean sites that claim to have decent uptime. I don't mean sites that "seem to" have good customer opinions. I mean sites that ARE good.

I was hoping that a certain hosting company would be my solution a few weeks back, but then I found out that they didn't even offer shell access (nor cron), which seems a bit backwards to me. But they've got a great web-design and I've personally seen some of the great sites they hosted.

Surely there are reputable hosting companies out there?

A friend of mine says that the hosting company he works for is rubbish and extremely overpriced, so I by no means equate quality with price, but I have yet to lose hope that there is something genuinely decent out there, but I have yet to see it.

I don't want hosting companies replying, because that just seems like cheeky self-advertising, and quite frankly I don't trust any hosting company unless I've had some experience with them (or again, seen their hosted sites). So I'm asking regular webmasters, who do you recommend highly and from PERSONAL experience? Why are they unique? What makes them stick out?

Thanks everyone.

The people that I believe can be ideal for you is Burlee.com with their www fee just to have non-www for your domain somewhere around 25 bucks. Nice website too, and expensive. Hey there ya go!

Now for the cheapies, I have to agree there are some companies that try to offer the big-mac meal and they can't seem to substain it very long, and these are often scam-artists, FastHosts/Donhosts resellers, or some other wierd freak. But some cheap companies to offer what they say, but these are truly hard to find.

lol,

dont judge all companies based on thier price

I mean would'nt you rather somone offer good hosting cheap?

I am was at the same point you are at fed up with fake/lame people advertising all this stuff and having 99 percent uptime guaranteed, and never carrying out any of thier promises, so i bought my own server and now i host my sites on there

all the companies that do bad / false advertise get spread word about and nobody buys from them so i dont want that to happen to me. :)

from, Zac Holley

zdweb, yeah, yer right. i see your point, but i'm just fed up with having to wade through all the crap. how can you genuinely know if a site is rubbish without spending your money, moving the site over, setting everything up, etc etc, it all takes time and money.

mileage varies so much, it's hard sometimes to even trust recommendations on here. because with the bigger companies, you'll get stuck on a different server, so you don't even experience what they experienced, etc etc.

i'm gonna stick around with my current company for a little longer in spite of all the rubbish that's going on in the last week or two (consistent daily downtime) because i have faith and largely because i can't stand doing this move every few weeks. and if things don't work out, hopefully, while sticking to the boards here, i'll find another gem.

thanks

Check the Fortune 100 http://www.fortune.com/ for companies that offer webhosting. I had AT&T webhosting for a couple years, no problems.

I would highly recommend www.splashhost.com in your case. I know how you feel, I have been down the road many times and as a reseller/web designer it's really frustrating when you get your customers calling every hour complaining their sites are not working and threatening to terminate their contract with you and asking for a refund.

So you will understand that I evaluate a Host very carefully before signing up with them. Sure that's alot of sweet talking and dangling a carrot in front of you by Hosts without any care or consequence about their customers' problems and worst of all handled by inexperienced(half-baked) people managing their servers.

With Alan(splashhost.com), you can rest assured nothing serious can happen as he knows his stuff, always monitoring the server is running and ensuring top performance. I have been with them for over 2 months and its been great.

Please remember and a little bit of advice, doing business on the net is very different as we all know the most important thing missing is "BODY LANGUAGE" which can reveal much about a company or person.

Take care and good luck

Originally posted by em411
zdweb, yeah, yer right. i see your point, but i'm just fed up with having to wade through all the crap. how can you genuinely know if a site is rubbish without spending your money, moving the site over, setting everything up, etc etc, it all takes time and money.
If a host does not offer a min. 30 day money back guarantee, then i would suggest running. About 3 years ago i had a personal website (family) and i went with a company that was advertised all over the net, recommended by others.....price was higher than others. What service did i get? Basically...support questions answered in 1 week min. .....server downtime was about 3 times per month.....

Here are a few rules i would follow when picking a host.

email them to test their support
call their customer support phone number (if they have one)
ping servers
do they offer a money back guarantee?
do they offer a uptime guarantee
ask them for a url of a current hosting client
check out WHT for advice ;)
etc...and so on

PLUS! plan ahead....don't expect to find a host within one day....give it about 2 weeks....because it's an important decision ...so take your time....and yes ...you'll have to go through all the "crappy ones". It's just a fact for webmasters today.

Originally posted by pcsteve

If a host does not offer a min. 30 day money back guarantee, then i would suggest running. About 3 years ago i had a personal website (family) and i went with a company that was advertised all over the net, recommended by others.....price was higher than others. What service did i get? Basically...support questions answered in 1 week min. .....server downtime was about 3 times per month.....

Here are a few rules i would follow when picking a host.

email them to test their support
call their customer support phone number (if they have one)
ping servers
do they offer a money back guarantee?
do they offer a uptime guarantee
ask them for a url of a current hosting client
check out WHT for advice ;)
etc...and so on

PLUS! plan ahead....don't expect to find a host within one day....give it about 2 weeks....because it's an important decision ...so take your time....and yes ...you'll have to go through all the "crappy ones". It's just a fact for webmasters today.


...and to add my 2 cents:

Don't expect to get a huge list of features without paying for it.

I am getting REALLY REALLY tired of seeing requests here from people who want everything under the sun...and then some, in a hosting package....for $2.95 a month.

What's worse, is when they come back 2 months later complaining that all hosts suck. Perhaps it isn't that all hosting companies suck...but your ability to make logical purchasing decisions DOES. :)

This post is not directed towards anyone in this thread....just letting off some steam!

--Tina

I always do a LOT of research before settling on a host...it really does pay off. Over the past few years I've experienced close to 10 hosts, though never once had I switched because of poor uptime/connectivity. All were because I needed more resources or more competitive pricing.

One of the hosts I'm currently with is Remarkablehosting (http://www.remarkablehosting.com), and it looks like another winner. Great uptime and support. You may want to give them a try when your patience with the current runs out.

George
wsabstract.com (soon to be javascriptkit.com)

Originally posted by Shiekron
The people that I believe can be ideal for you is Burlee.com with their www fee just to have non-www for your domain somewhere around 25 bucks. Nice website too, and expensive. Hey there ya go!

Now for the cheapies, I have to agree there are some companies that try to offer the big-mac meal and they can't seem to substain it very long, and these are often scam-artists, FastHosts/Donhosts resellers, or some other wierd freak. But some cheap companies to offer what they say, but these are truly hard to find. Burlee? NO, NO, AND NO!

They fall under the "unlimband.com" category. They claim to provide unlimited bandwidth, but then charge you ridiculous amounts if you go over a SMALL limit.

It's happened to me (I had to pay them a little more than $800), and it's happened to several other people... Just read unlimband.com's reports on Burlee.

Burlee is a terrible, dishonest host.

I've been with Dreamhost.Com for years [several domains] and have never had ANY trouble with uptime. Though they do lack on features...

Just my dollars worth.

Good luck, Jack D.

Right now I have two hosts. One for mucking about - once I get my .co.nz problem sorted out :D

My other host was a mission. I looked at about 40-50 and got horribly confused. Then I read some thread somewhere in the archives here - cannot remember where - and someone that had a bunch of posts to their name and looked authoritative
(cannot remember who) , recommended my new host.

I went with them (pretty scientific hey!). It's only a week or so down the line but so far things look nice and fast and reliable. One thing I did learn though: Read the Terms of Service. And the other thing I figure is that you should be prepared to move a few times.

em411,

A lot of factors go into making a successful host. First off this web-hosting is a low profit business so you cant expect the kind of support infrastructure the way we provide for business application software.

Hosts make profits from volumes.

We serve a lot of US customers on product support and offshore production support with very serious sevice levels [and my boss does a turn over of 100Million USD/year sitting in Madras!] but we can afford it because we charge 30-35$/hour offshore and 70-80$/hour onsite

Secondly hosts do not have all parameters under their control [like NOC, hardware, switches,routers, or even the OS - even if you are a skilled admin if you have to contact your server provider for reboot then service levels simply cannot be guaranteed much less met]

Thirdly, free software, which dominates the web-hosting market has its fair share of problems what with GPL and as-is delivery etc.,

If you need reliable [I mean near 100% uptime with service levels of responses within 1 hour etc] hosting then your servers should be Sun or HP with Solaris or AIX with an admin available for a certain number of servers 24x7.

Now how much will this cost? An 100 Mb plan with 5 GB transfer will cost close to 100$/month if not more..

A lot of hosts have very very good reputation and they have been in the business for long [affordablehost or alaskanwolf or hostmatters or future quest have rave reviews and are very committed from what I have seen and read of them; (I'm sure I am missing a lot of good names but forgive me) ]

I have been with Alan of splashhost as a reseller for 2 months and I feel I have got much more than the piddly 20-30$ I am paying him. He is very very good and committed ...

My server uptime has been 99.36% last month which is excellent.. None of my small customer base even noticed it.

So please think of all these before you make a decision.

Just thought I will comment on this

Cheers
Balaji

You have to remember that in hosting as much as anything - you get what you pay for. If you buy a car for $5000 when logically it is worth much more and you see it for $7000 then wouldn't you think there was something dodgy?

One company i am very happy with is smartwebservice.com. They are more expensive but well, well worth it!

And this is coming from a competitor.;)

<<Removed: Off topic>>

To add my 2¢ ....

I wouldn't judge a host based on price either but on the look of the site I do have to agree on. If it looks crappy it probably is but that's just my perception. In regards to price though a lot of different hosts have very different pricing schemes. It's all about their business plan, if they even have one. It all depends on the company, the look, the people. Doing things like asking a lot of questions, talking with multiple people, asking things like "why should I move to you" even though it's on their site can help. Again though we're talking hosts and not all play well ;).

Disclaimer ... not intented to any specific party on thread.

jic,

Took a look at your site seems clean nice and to the point but does look a little cluttered on the signup page. We took the approach of doing a wizard format but that was just preference and clients seem to like stepping through a wizard to signup or at least were told.

What platforms are you running ... it didn't mention other then my guess.

Originally posted by jic
<edit>

I think it looks nice if you are targeting the impulse buyer.

I think that a hosting company should look "tecky" feel smoooooth ( like a Lotus- looks "racing" rides nicely )

-Sqposter / Michael

Hosts (or anyone with a web site), please post review requests in the Reviews Forum, danke.