Hi. I was wondering if anyone could tell me from past experiences what would be best for me.

I'm looking to start a site that will host various niche media downloads, a blog, and a phpbb forum.

Sites with deals that look good to me so far are:
Resellerspanel - with their plan creator I can get 20GB webspace, 250GB bandwidth, one domain, 30 subdomains, 5 FTP accounts, 2 MySQL databases, 200 e-mail addresses, 2 mail lists, 2 cronjobs (??), and customer support for $13.10 (I don't think I need the IP address, SSH or site studio options). Is this a good deal? Too good a deal? Not what I'm looking for? Do I need more MySQL databases for what I'm after / etc.?

Godaddy - Deluxe Plan
• 10,000 MB Space • 500 GB Transfer
• FREE! $25 Google AdWords™ Credit
• 1000 Email Accounts • Unlimited Email Forwards
• 25 MySQL Databases • Forums, Blogging, Photo Galleries
• FREE! Software: Chat, Content Mgmt. and more!
• No advertising banners

Any other suggestions, or comments regarding these? I'm not going to be doing any kind of Java or advanced scripting, just a phpbb / vbulletin / etc. forum and a blogger bit. I would also prefer a fair bit of webspace.

Cheers in advance,

~Skye~

Hello,

Without knowing your exact requirement its hard to suggest anything but do you really need 20GB Storage and 250-500GB Transfer? If your forum is consuming that much of bandwidth (250-500GB) you may have to go for a VPS etc.

I wouldn't personally recommend Godaddy's hosting for such a site and if you do a search on WHT for Godaddy you'll see what I mean.

Regards,
Steve

So is Resellerspanel any good? I've been searching the forum, but more people seem to say what isn't recommended rather than what is...

Cheers,

~Skye~

hello,

you can also use shared plans as well. I think you should easily be able to find a host who can fit those needs.

Hi There!

Resellers Panel: I was with ResellersPanel for a month or two, and in within that time I would say my site was down about 96 hours. The technical Support is not very helpful, and seem to never have time for there clients.

GoDaddy: I am very please with there service. Customer Support is wonderful, 99.999999% Uptime, and 30 Days Money back. There control panel is great, and the site builders are wonderful and really do helpout on getting your website up and running quickly and affrordably.

I would like to bring www.aplus.net to you're attention, they offer a great control panel with qwonderful uptime and very firendly technical support...

Good luck,

Twebdesigns,

What site do you currently host with Godaddy or aplus?
Aplus' customer service is an absolute JOKE. I've heard of their representatives actually offering "cheaper hosting" with alternate companies when you're in livechat with them!

How sad is that?!

Skye,

I don't have any personal experience with resellerspanel: but to be honest I'd recommend seeking an alternate company 'other' than godaddy. They're a registrar - and they don't even do that well. Their hosting: while it has great uptime - it's lacking in features and there is absolutely ZERO support.

Good luck with the hunt.

Hello Again,
I was recently hosting a Reseller Account on GoDaddy and received wonderful (A+). Now, as far as Aplus.net goes, I am hosting a small portfolio (well, soon will be). I personally like there control panel, as it comes with several ad ons like there CRM Chat and Marketing things etc. etc.

Thanks again,

Cheers for the help so far guys.

~Skye~

Sorry to spam, I need to make 5 posts to be able to post links for the other offers I've seen.

~Skye~

Ditto.

~Skye~

Righto. I've had a look at a few more, and I was hoping people could give me feedback on them in relation to my aforementioned requirements (10GB+ webspace, a proportional amount of bandwidth to go with the webspace, and capabilities to run blog / forum stuff (MySQL, I'd imagine?). Also I am in the UK, I don't know if that would affect anything...

How do these fare up against Resellerspanel? (I guess Godaddy is out of the question due to the amount of negative feeback on it). Please tell me if any of these do / do not cater to my needs::

Aplus.net - http://hosting.aplus.net/compare_unix.html
$7.46/mo. = 12GB webspace, 500GB bandwidth...

SurfSpeedy - http://www.surfspeedy.com/shared_hosting/compare_shared_hosting_plans.htm
$7.95/mo = 10GB webspace, 500GB bandwidth...

Tomorrow Hosting - http://tomorrowhosting.com/?action=webhosting&plan_a=all&submenu=1
$7.95/mo = 25GB webspace, 400GB bandwidth...

Are there catches? Are any of these too good to be true? Can anyone recommend one wholeheartedly?

Cheers again!!

~Skye~

I made a quick check:

Aplus.net -- found 12 reviews, ONE recommends them.
SurfSpeedy -- found 9 reviews, 2 recommends
No records found at the moment for Tomorrow hosting.

I would say they are all to good to be true. Is there any reason you need that much disk space or bandwidth? Do you really think these providers won't suspend your account if you come anywhere close to using that much space or bandwidth?

If you want my honest opinion, you should decide how much diskspace and bandwidth you will really need, and then choose a provider who offers something in that range at a reasonable price.

I posted an example the other day... I think this thread deserves it to be reposted.


Here's an example of how much diskspace and bandwidth an average website may use.

The main page at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ requires you to download 33 images.. The total page size including the images is 131 KiloBytes. If WebHostingTalk homepage received 1.5 million hits in one month... That would be 187 GB of transfer. So unless you are getting millions of visitors a month... or unless you are hosting large downloads... you will not need near that much bandwidth.

As far as disk space.... you do realize you could have 10,000 pages (around the same size as the Web Hosting Talk home page).. Each page having it's own independant set of graphics.. And you would only use 1.3 GB of diskspace... So again, unless you are storing large files or intend to have a 10,000+ page web site.... you will not need that much diskspace.

Ack. This is so overly complicated. Hmm. Can anyone just recommend anything in particular? Is there not one package that is reasonable with good features etc.? I guess I could be alright with 3-5GB, if I really had to cut it down. The thing is, other than having a forum and blog, I do want to host some fairly large files, but I don't really expect a large amount of traffic for them. Anything? Anyone?

Thanks again, I'm sorry to go on!!

~Skye~

I could reccommend Acunett. Their service and support are top notch. But of course you get what you pay for, so their not exactly cheap.

Their is however plenty of companies at WHT that will offer you reasonable diskspace and bandwidth at a reasonable price. The thing to understand is that shared hosting is just that..... shared. So when a provider vastly oversells diskspace and bandwidth they are doing so under the assumption that you will not use that much. Lately, these offers have just got more ridiculous. What generally happens, is things will go good for the providers in the beginning... but when people actually start to consume what was offered... server slowdowns and downtime happen more frequently.

Personally, I would go with Acunett only because I know what to expect from them. If money was a factor though, I would probably choose a provider who charges $10.00+ per month for 3-5 GB's of space. It is still overselling at that price, but not near as bad.