Ok, here's the deal... I've gone through WHT pretty throughly and then realised the for the most part, people will post there bad experiences over their good ones so I thought I'd be pro-active and ask for advice rather than reading 'canned' responses.


I was with Primenet who had a decent up time (versus cost) but they customer support made me rather pull my own teeth out with rusty pliers rather than contact them.

So I moved to another host (not named atm) who, it must be said, their customer support is 2nd to none but their servers seem to be over sold. As a result, my busy sites are S-L-O-W but my 'normal' sites are fine.

Enough pre-amble... To the nit-and-gritty...

I need:

1-3gb storage
30-50gb transfer
unlim POP3
unlim MySQL
cPanel (ideally)
Linux
SSH (preferably)
Private Nameservers (would be nice)
ImageMagick
Fantastico (non-essential if price prohibitive)


All for around the US$25 mark... I'm currently looking at:

http://hostgator.com/resellers.shtml
http://host.the-protagonist.net/?host=reseller
http://www.incognitonetworks.com/services.php
http://deasoft.com/resellerhosting.php
http://www.cirtexhosting.com/resellers.shtml
http://www.rshosting.com/plans/
http://www.netrillium.com/resellers.php


I know that for $25, I can't expect the world... But, I'm not reselling the space... I just have a lot of domains and I prefer to control them myself rather than having 10's of shared hosting accounts. I have 1 busy site which is pushing 11gb a month and growing daily (only 6 months old, I had no idea it would grow so quickly)...

So, long story short, I would like honest and frank opinions of the above hosts (alternatively, new suggestions if I missed some out)...

Ideally, any advice would come from someone hosted with the company they are recommending for more than 6 months so I can get a good handle on long term expectations.

I'm sorry to be so demanding, but I've been through 5 hosts in 3 years and frankly, I'm tired of wasting money on 'fly-by-night' hosts and would really REALLY like someone who is reliable for once!

Thanks in advance!

Whoa! Just found http://www.hometownhosting.com/index.php?content=resellers.php and I have to say from what I've seen in a cursory search (it's 2am here after all) that it is now in the lead!

Still, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I've posted this in another thread as well...
check out rshosting.net

I've been with them for nearly 3 months - no problems with them at all, and support is excellent (tickets answered in just minutes!!).

Server reliability is excellent - i've not experienced ANY downtime at all!

Also, they have servers in the UK and in the US - and you can chose which one u want 2 be on. :-).

Hope this helps,
Brad.

I know the owner of Protagonist. She's very dedicated to her clients.

I have never been with http://themooseisloose.net but my chat with sales certainly did impress me. Besides, they have a 7 day trial, you might want to consider them.

i would not recommed hostgator, but netrillium is awesome

Thanks for the kind works freak ;)

@tokenyank: HomeTownHosting *is* very good. Their prices are very competive and their support is just great. I have been there just for a few days so I have no long time experience but do a search in these forums and you'll see just good words about them.

Also check out these threads...:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=301262&highlight=hometownhosting
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=312309

Ermina, thanks for the kind words. tokenyank, thanks for looking at our site, and congratulations on your growing site . And with a growing site, you would certainly consider adequate bandwidth and reliable hosting .

I recommend Netrillium because they are reliable and stable as attested by some of my friends who are hosted there.

www.asmallorange.com

This is a fairly new company, but their service is so exceptional that he was getting 100 signups per month from the start. Customer service is top notch and down time is non existant.

I wish I knew the secret, lol
Give them a look.

Thanks for the answers thus far... Hometown Hosting is still very interesting me... But, RShosting and Protagonist are catching up *very* fast! :D

I just had a look at Asmallorange and it took 68 seconds to load from http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/index.php to https://customers.asmallorange.com/order/orderwiz.php?v=1&type3_package=9... So, I think I may pass them over this time! :D

Try loading it again :)

Originally posted by youmakemewanna
i would not recommed hostgator, but netrillium is awesome

why would that be?

I agree with "SNGUK"... RShosting really is great. I don't have any complaints so far.

I'd suggest try ***********... one of the best so far i've been with... and i guess they too got a great reputation here... nonetheless, based on my own experience these guys know how to take care of "us" their client.

I really think people should not recommend a company you have not been with for at least one year, saying I have been with blah blah company for a few days or 3 months is too short a period to know a reliable hosting company, I will say a minimum of 9 months befor you can faily reliably know if a host is good or not.
Temi

Originally posted by WebsiteDistrict
I'd suggest try ***********... one of the best so far i've been with... and i guess they too got a great reputation here... nonetheless, based on my own experience these guys know how to take care of "us" their client.

Are you sure about that? lol Good reputation but bad sense of following directions on WHT. -shakes head-

If I had to put my $0.02 in this to guide the thread starter...

#1. I've had an offsite reseller account which I am actively messing with. It is my offsite website for my operations. The host is CitadelHost. CitadelHost was acquired by AMS Computer Services when Jon couldn't run it anymore. Give it another month and it will be exactly 1 year. From start up until now and my uptime reports, the service uptime has been 99%. However, the support from AMS is really crappy IMO. I do not need the support though.

#2. Deals4Hosting.com is another place to consider. Jesse is good guy and great with support. I do not have an account with him but, I deal with him just about everyday and I am nothing but impressed with his dedication.

hehe my bad there...

sorry about that...

I really think people should not recommend a company you have not been with for at least one year, saying I have been with blah blah company for a few days or 3 months is too short a period to know a reliable hosting company, I will say a minimum of 9 months befor you can faily reliably know if a host is good or not.
temi, I would have to disagree with that. If you could experience the level of customer support that RShosting has provided and how friendly and tech savvy they are, you would understand.

Reputech,
Its fine to disagree with me, but there is an old saying which has stood me in good stead over time "experience is the best teacher" I am speaking from experience, I have been in this trade for about 4 years.

I hope you continue to enjoy the level of satisfaction you have with your current host (by the way I am not critisising then as I don't know them at all) but from my experience, I have been with some company that were very nice etc etc for the first 6 months and things went downhill after that.

I have also been with companies who were not too great at the start and they gradually improved over time. Based on my experience with the two example companies above I will not recommend the first company with the benefit of hindsight but I will recommend the second company.

Good luck.
Temi

Point taken, but so far I'm very happy.