Hi,

I was wondering if someone could provide the following information for me for the following webhosts. I'm looking for a new webhost. Sorry its a big long list. Thanks!

www.site5.com
www.imhosted.com
www.aletia.com

Questions:
- how many users are hosted on your server (cat /etc/pwd)
- collocated? If so, where? is there a webaddress for collocation address?
- reseller? If so, with who? what's web address of *original*?
- how long have been around (not including "planning stages" please)
- roughly how many employees
- quality of customer support (reasons)
- what kind of website do you run (database intensive/forum/etc.)
- is there a price freeze?
- how long have you been with them? why?
- can cgi scripts be placed in places other than CGI bin (for subdomains who might not have FTP access to cgi-bin)
- Estimate of uptime?
- shell access: telnet or ssh1 or ssh2 ?
- possible to get more than one shell account with different username/password?
- cron jobs? via web interface or shell?
- SMTP: how many hours does the SMTP server try sending to an account before returning failure? (sometimes yahoo and hotmail accounts are slow to send to)
- FTP accounts: what permissions do new FTP accounts come with? Is it possible to change permissions?
- How good/bad is the multidomain features... are there any catches? Any *Extra things* that need to be done (like add an extra "slash" to the end of the URL?)
- Ability to create users for MySQL databases? If so, how many?
- Separate computer for databases or on same server?
- Can you get out of a yearly paid agreement?
- any fraudulent billing practices?

I'm open to other webhosting suggestions. I'm looking for:

- Price: around 15-25$/month paid yearly
- Transfer: 15-20GB/month
- Space: 300-500 MB
- atleast 20 subdomains
- atleast 20 FTP
- atleast 1 telnet/ssh account
- PERL, PHP 4.1.0 +, Python, 5+ mySQL DB
- Possibility to host multiple domains (either automatically or with mod_rewrite.. the thing with .htaccess)
- more than 1 CGI-bin (or can put cgi scripts anywhere) for each subdomain/multi-domain
- less than 200 people hosted on one server
- price freeze guarantee
- static IP

If you want to recomment another host, please answer the above questions as well.

I want reliable hosts that will be there for the long run (maybe more than 5 or so yrs) with little to no downtime (a little is fine.. its not mission critical). I'd also like pretty good speeds for page viewing. Peering agreements with major ISPs (like UUnet , ATT etc.) are better. Support doesn't *need* to be great.. I think I can handle most of the stuff... just need them to make sure the server is online and working.. and fix it if not asap.

If you need more information on what I want, please feel free to ask or PM me. I basically want to get a guage on what's out there. Eversince Communitech got bought by Interland, I have yet to find anything that compares (I don't trust Interland to honor half of the things communitech offered).

Anyway, Thanks for your help guys!!

did I ask too many questions? Or is there no one that wants to reply? :). .me things both..

Yes, I think there are a few too many questions there......

If you want to know about hosts, I would either pick site5 or Aletia.........Another very good host is venturesonline.com

You have asked a great deal of questions, and with that many, you would be much better off asking the hosts directly since they would know best :)

Hi

thansk for the advice. I've emailed each of their support people. Hope to get an answer soon. Would you mind helping me with the questions that those sales people can't really answer *truthfully*? Like fraudulant practices, support quality etc.? Thanks :)

BowNanC,
You really like to dig up a lot of info before you get hosted...........which is fair enough I guess............what kind of site will you be hosting......

I would answer your questions, but unfortunately I have not been hosted with those on your list.....

Anyway, good luck

It sounds like bownanc has been burned before on some lousy hosting. :(

I can tell you one thing from experience, though. Sometimes I get emails like that to the support address. When they start asking tricky stuff, I forward the emails to sales only to find out that they never get answered.

Our sales person is only willing to work so hard for a sale that he's probably not going to get, and spends more time answering questions from people he thinks he can help.

So if one of those questions is about a service that they don't even provide, or they don't know the answer to, you may not get answered at all.

I recommend always starting out with reading their web site and targeting your questions a little more to the company and the information already on their site if you want a reply.

But that's just this support person's view on things.

Good luck finding what you need. And if you get all those questions answered, please post your answers for everyone. :)

Hi everyone,

thanks for your input. I have emailed the hosts asking them then the questions and have gotten some pretty nice responses. I'll be sure to foward stuff to "support " next time instead of sales.. since for most of the webhosts, I got responses from the sales people saying they'd foward it to support. I dunno...

I'm not running any crazy high-traffic site or anything.. nothing wrong with the best you can for the money you got :)

Any other suggestions/comments are welcome!

www.aletia.com
Use to be good.
Living off of yesterday..........