Have any of you ever discovered an excellent Windows host?

I need a Windows 2000/2003 server and a sizeable amount of disk space and bandwidth to work with....probably around 10gb disk space, minimum.

I HAVE to have a host that is PROVEN to be reliable. I'm not interested in going cheap. I've already learned the hard way about cheap hosting...never again.

A search should easily enable you to create a list of serious, reliable hosts, to further concentrate your search on.

There are some H-sphere hosts that are quite reputable as far as I can remember.

Good luck!

I would suggest checking "Shared and Reseller Hosting Offers":

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=4

You can then search around WHT to find some feedback which will help you to make final decision.

Can I suggest one host?
www.hostnexus.com
Just try them for one month and I am sure you will like to be with them forever.
Prices are good too and support is excellent
San

I'm looking into unifiednet.net

Unfortunately, I sent an email last night (about 12 hours ago) and still have not gotten a response.

I don't think they have any kind of live chat available either.

I haven't seen anything negative about them posted here. But the positive things I have seen so far have been by newbies, mainly.

Hello,

Take a look at reseller-center.com. I have used them, in the past, w/ excellent results.

Good luck w/ your search!

I would have to advise against Hostnexus for Windows hosting. The worst hosting experience I have ever had has been on one of their Windows servers over the past 2 months. Uptime was about 85% according to my stats. According to their stats it says 98-99% because that is based on pings rather than actually working PHP, ASP, etc. services. They are not along in basing uptime on pings incidentally, which is why you should always take it with a pinch of salt.

One good way of sounding out a host is to check their forums for the frequency of problems. That's presuming the host is honest enough to leave the bad ones up ... some don't, as I have discovered.

Yea, some hosts have to remove crude and uncouth posts and prevent some people from posting for the good of the community. I hate deleting posts but sometimes it's necessary. None of the threads you posted in were removed, just about 3 of your posts.

Anyway, brokernet has good cause to be pissed at his hosting experience at HN. Our Electron server has caused more problems than any other in the history of our service. Due to the issues on that server, we offered full refunds on hosting fees and offered to assist people in moving to a new stable server.

We have 6 Windows servers now and Electron was number 3. All the other servers run great but Electron was never the same after some "hotfixes" were applied last month. I'm sure it's been a great learning experience for our techs but as far as I'm concerned it should never have happened and I'm sure it will damage our otherwise good reputation to some degree. We are trying to make it up to the clients on that server and most seem willing to stick it out and give us the chance to redeem ourselves on the new server they're being moved to. :)

By the way, our uptime stats are from Alertra which does not ping the server. Alertra actually tries to load a page on the server and if it can't, it reports the server as down.

I would suggest that maybe you should search in some more web hosting directories for more Correct information.

www.askwebhosting.com
www.hostpulse.com

are good places to look.... the host quote on this forum is also a good place to start with..

before choosing a host please remember to take price... uptime and support into considertation.

:smash:
Originally posted by ashish-m6.net
I would suggest that maybe you should search in some more web hosting directories for more Correct information.

www.askwebhosting.com
www.hostpulse.com

are good places to look.... the host quote on this forum is also a good place to start with..

before choosing a host please remember to take price... uptime and support into considertation.

Originally posted by kmcb
I'm looking into unifiednet.net

Unfortunately, I sent an email last night (about 12 hours ago) and still have not gotten a response.

I don't think they have any kind of live chat available either.

I haven't seen anything negative about them posted here. But the positive things I have seen so far have been by newbies, mainly.

kmcb,

You will find that most WHT posters only come here for one or two reasons.

1.) To find a host.

2.) To bash a host.

It is a rare find when your users actually come back to post about Hosts unless they stay active in this community which reaches out to all different aspects of the hosting world.

There is no easy answer to what may seem like a simple question. "Will this host work for me"

You really need to check all aspects of the company you are about to deal with, even then stop and come back a week later, are they still responding the same way?

I think we already covered the 12 hour response on another post and have yet to hear from you.

Good luck!

Originally posted by kmcb
I'm looking into unifiednet.net

Unfortunately, I sent an email last night (about 12 hours ago) and still have not gotten a response.

I don't think they have any kind of live chat available either.

I haven't seen anything negative about them posted here. But the positive things I have seen so far have been by newbies, mainly.


I must apologize to unifiednet.net...I sent the email to the wrong domain name and it got bounced back to me. NOT their fault.

Also, I just found on their website an IM contact list.

My bad. I'm still looking into them. Their prices are a little low. Hopefully it's not because they aren't able to keep their servers up. At this point, my main concern is stability.

I don't want to lose another customer because of an unreliable host.

Originally posted by NexDog
All the other servers run great but Electron was never the same after some "hotfixes" were applied last month.

Wow, could you let us know what hot-fixes were those. If there is an issue with them, we'd like to avoid them as well since we do as well contact MS support frequently for hot-fixes (but never had an issue with the ones we installed).

you know, people do come here to do more than bash or find a host. some come here to find out how people are doing with hosts.

i've been at weberiz/weberz for about six months now, and with some recent bad service issues, i wanted to see if other people were having problems too.

now when i signed up for service, i came here to extoll the virtues of tracy phillips and his responsiveness. i feel like you shouldn't always complain when things are wrong and never comment when things are right.

i've also recommended weberz to several people here.

however, things are starting to change and change fast. given my past experience with the splashhost meltdown, and being left with no servers for my domains for about three days due to this AWOL action by alan reid, i no longer wait until things go south.

i'm working on another post about what resellers look for in hosts, from my point of view as someone who has to provide customer service to my clients.

too many hosts take on too many clients then get overloaded and find they can no longer be responsive or responsible vendors. i think it's fair people come here to announce when that starts happening, and see if improvements can be made.

it's not easy to move hosts, ever. it's in fact hellish. but when your own customers threaten to bolt, you have to.

and you have to call your host on it. and most of the time, the public arena is the only way to get a quick response.

Hence the word "most" :)

Either way your comments are correct.

As for your current situation with your host you may want to open a new thread to see if people are having the same issues.


"and you have to call your host on it. and most of the time, the public arena is the only way to get a quick response."

I am not sure how this could be the quickest way as in our case we are not on WHT 24/7 but our desk is! I would assume that other hosts follow the same concept, as a host you live and die by your support!

Originally posted by UnifiedNet
Hence the word "most" :)


I am not sure how this could be the quickest way as in our case we are not on WHT 24/7 but our desk is! I would assume that other hosts follow the same concept, as a host you live and die by your support!

Well there are hosts who first check their open tickets, and there are hosts who first check to manage their reputation or are more interested in being here. :)

I have never tried windows hosting. Is the control panel and other technical experience same when one hosts on Windows? (We have been doing linux hosting).

I would have to go with brokernet
netdog your policies of removing posts in your forum from unsatisfied customers is prob way under mentioned.
Two thumbs down for hostnexus

I also had alot of problems with really bad server settings.
They really dont know how to deal with problems and they create problems for people doing development.

Only use hostnexus if you thinking of a strict html site
dont even think about it if your using php or asp
unless your looking foward to 8 hours of firewall troubleshooting followed but admins who expect you to know about their outbound firewall

Originally posted by atapi
I would have to go with brokernet
netdog your policies of removing posts in your forum from unsatisfied customers is prob way under mentioned.
I removed a post of yours because it was such drivel. I had to remove it because it embarrassed not only you, but the level of professionalism on our forum that our users have built up.

You aren't a client of HN so I can especially ban you which I did. If I met you in the street, I'd wash your mouth out with Dettol.
Originally posted by atapi
Two thumbs down for hostnexus

I also had alot of problems with really bad server settings.
They really dont know how to deal with problems and they create problems for people doing development.
Haha, you so funny. Know anymore good jokes. Heard the one about the lame developer that spent 8 hours trying to work out why fopen doesn't work? :D

Originally posted by atapi 8 hours of firewall troubleshooting followed but admins who expect you to know about their outbound firewall
Hehe, 8 hours of troubleshooting over something so easy to spot. No wonder you got fired by our client of many years who told me she'd rather change developers than change hosts.

Really, some people make me crazy.

the projected was completed on a different server.
it was only when the project went to get migrated to your server that we had to mess with everything

people with lesser skill would never have guessed that you had fopen disabled. especially when I installed a script that has 2000 lines and I was having to guess which line had the problem.

good luck to your and your port blocking and phpadmin feature disabling

I will make sure in the future that I dont do developemtn for people who choose to host with you.

Originally posted by bully28
Well there are hosts who first check their open tickets, and there are hosts who first check to manage their reputation or are more interested in being here. :)

Yeah, I prefer the hosts that check their support tickets.

Originally posted by NexDog
Hehe, 8 hours of troubleshooting over something so easy to spot. No wonder you got fired by our client of many years who told me she'd rather change developers than change hosts.

[/B]


actually I asked the client if she would consider switching hosts for the site but her answer was that she has a reseller account with a bunch of other sites and getting another account on another server would be a pain but she was will to do it

I told her that I could not continue to work on the db with your settings as such. Since the amount of time I agreed to work on the site was more than doubling, since waiting to hear back from you on all sort of dumb issues. The site was completed on another server and she has the files and the sql.

I was not writing the code on your machine
the code was written on another machines and does alot of subscription intergration with mambo and its access control list as well as a group hack

the script has worked on 4 other machines by default
so where I agreed to bill her a low cost to do the work
the time I spend chopping up my script to find that fopen was disabled was unnecessary

my major complaint happened when I found out that you had an outbound firewall and complained about it and your answer is as your answer is here , "oh your an idiot"

well if you think that someone is an idiot because a 4 hour install turned into a 8 hour script troubleshooting event I think you would find many other developers would have to agree not to host with you.

I also find it funny that your quick to post here to defend your integrity when you were quick to delete posts from users in your forum, let the posts stand for what they are. People can read. If they think im wrong for being annoyed for having to deal with tripple development times then they have never been sitting at the computer waiting for hours to hear back from support with a fix or an answer. The final night of the project we waited nearly 2 hours just to get you to enable remote access to the db. and then the usename and passwas wrong.

if you think your clients are there for you because your the best host your wrong. your client stuck with you prob out of fear you would delete all her sites like I was reading about in this forum.

This is something you shouldnt tollerate from your hosting company.

1. too restrictive programming envrioment to the point where the project timeline gets streched way out
2. limited db access
3. deleted posts from there forum(makes you wonder what else was deleted)
4. downtime
5. sarcastic comments about the level of experience of a programmer

What I expected..

1. An apology for restrictived access, mabye an explaination that you had a problem with a few troublesome clients and your sorry you had to implement this system due to high traffic not rude comments and questions about my skill

2. Quick and helpful solutions and over view of what access what disabled(not being fowarded to a 15 page document online about internet security)

3. Offer of help to ensure that the site deployment would be deployed quickly


oh yeah that bs answer about mod rewite not working because she did not foward the domainname to the server yet was such bs
the rewrite urls should work since the site was configured in place not
for the future location. Also this is a mambo setting that gets enabled so you you want to try and bs someone that it was my fault go ahead and complain at the mambo people.

By the way are the rewrite urls even working as of yet? Doubtful

Like I said in the forum before I banned you.

"Imagine the time it took to write that and I didn't even read it!!"

Just had to scan it to realise that once again you were embarrassing yourself. I feel for you mate. :D

Hmmm, who do you think people on WHT believe. You - someone with questionable skills and knowledge or me, a member of WHT for over 3 years with a reputation for brute honesty and owner of one of the most recommended hosts here with racks of servers and thousands of clients?

Hmmm, yes, it's a tough one. ;)

I'd go through your points one by one but most are just misunderstandings on your part.

Oh I did see something about what you should not tolerate and you're right, we don't tolerate individuals such as yourself and your actions on WHT have juftified me banning you from our forum and support system.

Because what did you do? You spent precious time searching for threads on WHT and smeering your lies. What decent person would do that? I can imagine one "client" who has paid for a service and not received what they expected coming to WHT and posting some negative feedback. But what about a non-client that worked with a client of ours coming here and spending hours for the sole reason of trying to damage a host?

Speaks volumes about your personality, your ethics and your vaules. As far as I'm concerned you're a cockroach and I don't care what anyone thinks.

I've had good luck with Matrixreseller.com (Vortech). They don't have any 10GB+ accounts, but you could get more than one account. Tech support always responds quickly, and I've had few uptime issues.

With that kind of space requirement, though, wouldn't you be better off getting a managed server? (Vortech offers them, but I have experience only with a standard reseller account.)

Before switiching to linux based servers I used a company called http://www.crystaltech.com It took along time to find a really reliable windows hosting company. I was with them for over two years. They have 24/7 tech support. The person that answers the 800 tech support line is a microsoft certified technician. They have people on staff that understand coding issues etc. I highly recommend them.