tarzanna
12-30-2005, 03:03 PM
I’ve used ICDSoft for about 5 years now. I design small-scale websites and, until I set up a reseller hosting account with Bliksem last year, I used ICDSoft for most of my client-site hosting needs.
Although I’ve now transferred most of these sites to my reseller account, I do still have a couple of sites hosted with ICDSoft if you’d like to verify the review:
http://www.parkpharmacy.biz
http://www.parkfallscountryclub.com
Overall I’d say they are a terrific host. Very prompt, 24/7 customer support and I’ve had very few problems with the server going down in the 5 years I’ve used them. There have been a few times (perhaps once or twice each year that I noticed) but nothing catastrophic or lengthy. I think 15 minutes in the late evening was the longest I can remember and I’ve never had a client complain of any other downtime.
I’m not actually sure which Control Panel software they use. I had used cpanel with other hosts and don’t recognize what ICDSoft has. Here is (http://www.tarzannadesigns.net/screenshots/icdsoftcp.gif) a screenshot for anyone who cares to look (I used photoshop to blur and whiteout sensitive account data). Anyways, I think is pretty clean and intuitive.
They also have an incredibly nice webmail program. It was one of the things I missed the most when I moved to the reseller account with cpanel (bundled with SquirrelMail, Horde and NeoMail, which I think are really ugly). Here's (http://www.tarzannadesigns.net/screenshots/icdsoftmail.gif) a screenshot of their webmail program.
I’m on the 500MB plan which is $60 (or $65 w/domain registration) for the first year and $45 for each additional year. Also, if you already have an account with them, they only charge $45 for other domains you host with them (on their own 500MB plan). This equates to $5 or less a month – which you can’t really beat given the reliability of their service & support.
One of the things I especially like about ICDSoft is that they don’t advertise inflated hosting plans. A lot of cheap hosts advertise ridiculously large disk space & unlimited bandwidth – but I’ve found this usually comes with a lot of hidden restrictions and overloaded servers. 500MB is more than adequate for smaller websites and I’ve never come even close to exceeding the 7GB bandwidth allotment. They only offer 2 MySQL databases in the 500MB plan, but this is plenty since you can use 1 database for multiple programs (assuming you have a unique table prefix for each).
The only problem I’ve ever had happened about 3 years ago when one of my sites seemed to be performing more slowly than the others. Nothing outrageous, but noticeable. I contacted support and within 15 minutes they wrote back to troubleshoot the issue. They actually didn’t find anything wrong, but they told me that the website was located on a server in Hong Kong and offered to move me to a different server in the states. They didn’t charge anything to do this and I noticed an immediate improvement afterwards.
Also, they don’t allow adult content of any kind – so if you need an adult-friendly host, these guys won’t work for you.
Because my client sites are mostly low-traffic & small scale…I couldn’t really say how a larger site would perform with ICDSoft. However, if you’re an individual or small business looking for a reliable, fast & inexpensive host for your smallish website….I would definitely recommend these guys.
Hosting Plans:
http://icdsoft.com/hosting.php
System Info:
PHP 4.4.2-dev
PERL 5.6.1
Ruby 1.8.3
Python 2.3.3
MySQL 4.0.26
ImageMagick
NetPBM
Zend Optimizer
Sendmail
Although I’ve now transferred most of these sites to my reseller account, I do still have a couple of sites hosted with ICDSoft if you’d like to verify the review:
http://www.parkpharmacy.biz
http://www.parkfallscountryclub.com
Overall I’d say they are a terrific host. Very prompt, 24/7 customer support and I’ve had very few problems with the server going down in the 5 years I’ve used them. There have been a few times (perhaps once or twice each year that I noticed) but nothing catastrophic or lengthy. I think 15 minutes in the late evening was the longest I can remember and I’ve never had a client complain of any other downtime.
I’m not actually sure which Control Panel software they use. I had used cpanel with other hosts and don’t recognize what ICDSoft has. Here is (http://www.tarzannadesigns.net/screenshots/icdsoftcp.gif) a screenshot for anyone who cares to look (I used photoshop to blur and whiteout sensitive account data). Anyways, I think is pretty clean and intuitive.
They also have an incredibly nice webmail program. It was one of the things I missed the most when I moved to the reseller account with cpanel (bundled with SquirrelMail, Horde and NeoMail, which I think are really ugly). Here's (http://www.tarzannadesigns.net/screenshots/icdsoftmail.gif) a screenshot of their webmail program.
I’m on the 500MB plan which is $60 (or $65 w/domain registration) for the first year and $45 for each additional year. Also, if you already have an account with them, they only charge $45 for other domains you host with them (on their own 500MB plan). This equates to $5 or less a month – which you can’t really beat given the reliability of their service & support.
One of the things I especially like about ICDSoft is that they don’t advertise inflated hosting plans. A lot of cheap hosts advertise ridiculously large disk space & unlimited bandwidth – but I’ve found this usually comes with a lot of hidden restrictions and overloaded servers. 500MB is more than adequate for smaller websites and I’ve never come even close to exceeding the 7GB bandwidth allotment. They only offer 2 MySQL databases in the 500MB plan, but this is plenty since you can use 1 database for multiple programs (assuming you have a unique table prefix for each).
The only problem I’ve ever had happened about 3 years ago when one of my sites seemed to be performing more slowly than the others. Nothing outrageous, but noticeable. I contacted support and within 15 minutes they wrote back to troubleshoot the issue. They actually didn’t find anything wrong, but they told me that the website was located on a server in Hong Kong and offered to move me to a different server in the states. They didn’t charge anything to do this and I noticed an immediate improvement afterwards.
Also, they don’t allow adult content of any kind – so if you need an adult-friendly host, these guys won’t work for you.
Because my client sites are mostly low-traffic & small scale…I couldn’t really say how a larger site would perform with ICDSoft. However, if you’re an individual or small business looking for a reliable, fast & inexpensive host for your smallish website….I would definitely recommend these guys.
Hosting Plans:
http://icdsoft.com/hosting.php
System Info:
PHP 4.4.2-dev
PERL 5.6.1
Ruby 1.8.3
Python 2.3.3
MySQL 4.0.26
ImageMagick
NetPBM
Zend Optimizer
Sendmail