Hi
I am new to this hosting business.
I am actually a designer and I few sites of my own. I am currently pay a lot for my site, for a small space.
I am looking for a bigger space and am planning to use lot of streaming and lot of stock images.
So I am planning to take a reseller account and share the space with few others friends whom I design sites for, but not in a big time hosting business plan.
I may host a max of 50 domains in a long run.
I use joomla and other scripts in each site.

These are things I am looking for:
Disk Space: 5GB to 10GB
bandwidth: 50 GB
Cpanel
Fantastico
Spam protection
Free search engine submit feature
FTP
Unlimited database
Unlimited sub domains
Preferably unlimited domains also

Good support, who has time to help me when I have doubts...
and 99.9% uptime

And regarding the price I have few doubts..
Few offers start at $5, this looks attractive but will there be any problems with them. Is there anything that higher the price, better the service?

I have read enough reviews and keeping the price in mind I have short listed these providers.

lunarpages
hostmonster
steadfast
Reseller Zoom
eboundhost
Know host

Read the reviews at this forum and other sites like
hostsearch
webhostingunleashed
webhostingjudge

So can you guys please give you suggestions?

Thanks
Mark Raja

I think that you should increase your budget in order of get a reliable service for those requirements.

Thanks Jedito,
I have seen packages from $10 to $25 and above from the same company where the features change by how do we know that they are reliable?

I can plan my budget accordingly if they are a bit high but I want to know who is the most trusted. Each review sites rank these providers differently. Every review seems to be good:)

I am looking for a provider whom I can trust for a long time.

Mark

Hello Mark

Thake in mind that most of the hosting directories with a top list are not real, I mean, possitions on that ranking are based on which one pay more on their affiliate program.

There are lots of offers in the range 10-25$, you should look at features the host provides. I would recommend you to study offers of the following companies:
biggest-hosting.com at 19$ (free Clientexec billing system, free web hosting templates,SSL)
resellerzoom 12-19$ (30 days moneyback guarantee)
ahosting.biz 20$( fast response time)

I have to agree. It is hard now to find a really good host. When searching keep this in mind:

1. Do lots of research.
2. Ask each host that you are interested as many questions as you may have and see how they respond and how fast they reply.
3. Look for customer reviews but be advice that not all reviews can be trusted.
4. How long they been around, don't trust on Whois data because many times host change their domains name to fit their needs.
5. Cheap, especially for reseller is almost 90% not good.
6. Take a chance, many host offer free trial or some type of free month offer and try them out.

Good luck :)

How do you know if hosting is reliable? Email to sales and see how's their response but keep in mind sales is not 24x7. 5GB to 10GB for $5 is way low price, it won't be "reliable" hosting you ever have. Increase your budget around $15-$30.

As I state many times, go with a provider that offers a money back guarantee. The good ole saying still goes you get what you pay for. However, if you have a money back guarantee and you don't like the service then you can ditch em :)

Hi

reading your requirments the free search engine submitter in CPanel dont always work with the likes of Google, your better of submitting them yourself.

Thank you guys,
I have started mailing the sales guys and I am checking out.

Again thanks for telling about the budget, yes I will re plan my budget.

Yes money back offer is good but, I wish that I don’t need to keep switching the hosts. Managing hosting is not my main focus, I have to manage my site:(

Since I have not changed my host earlier I am a bit worried about migrating my site to the new one.

Thanks
Mark

Hi,
how are the CNET reviews on reseller hosting?

I never knew CNet did reviews on hosting companies. I would suggest webhostingstuff.com for reviews of hosting providers.

There are providers on your list that don't have reseller packages at all (hostmonster), or they don't have typical reseller hosting accounts (lunarpages). In the vast majority of cases, shared hosting accounts don't come with the ability to give each user (friend) his own, separated control panel.

Make sure the account you buy, fits your needs!

Free search engine submit featureSubmitting to search engines is virtually useless. Get some links to your site from sites that are already indexed instead, so that the search engine spiders/robots can find it.