In this age where anyone with $99 a month can become a web host provider, how do you tell whats a good reliable provider vs. someone re^H^Hoverselling some pos $99/mth box from rackshack or wherever?

Thanks for any ideas or recommendations.
J

That is a very interesting question.

1) If they have been in business since the "$99.95" era, they're probably are.

2) They use Cogent bandwidth and server is unreliable

3) They offer very cheap hosting plans. Around $3 per month or $30 per year.

Easiest way to find out who you're dealing with is to be forward and ask them.

you can use traceroute to see where their servers are located. And not only that you can actually see what bandwith providers they are using. The last resort is to ask in this forum since most people here has a great knowledge about many hosting companies. Good luck in your search

Best regards,
-dave

Joseph,

I don't think you can compare good and reliable to price-saavy. We are proud to use a handful of RackShack servers for our website while maintaining a separate Datacentre for clients. It's unfair to gauge hosts based on where they host provided it's not someone's basement.

If you want a fair judgement of a host's services ask the client base or even pretend to be one yourself and check response time with support. Post in the host's forums; heck, if they delete negative criticism and you haven't seen anything positive you might be able to get a clue as to the level of service provided.

Anyways, don't read a book by its cover. There's many good hosts run by good people that have to start somewhere. If the people in charge of your space are mature and know what they're doing you'll usually end up with 10 times the service than what you'd get from some major hosting mill like Interland.

Sincerely,

-Matt

Originally posted by DynastyHost

3) They offer very cheap hosting plans. Around $3 per month or $30 per year.

I think this is the easiest way to tell :D lol

If you want good hosting, you will pay good money for it. It all goes back to........ "You get what you pay for" ;)

As far as finding out who resells and who doesn't, I personally would ask the provider up front. I know when I am asked these questions, I have no problem answering them honestly. The again, I don't resell from rackshack box, so who knows.

Talk to the host's customers. People who are currently hosting under that provider. The people who can tell you how the service really is.

Thanks everyone. You're right there is nothing "wrong" with hosting off of a resold RS box, but, well I already have a dedicated box at RS, and, I personally wouldn't run anything for clients off of it.. it is just too unreliable, and the R&R policy...makes it even worse.

That said, I surely don't want to be hosting anything important off of someone RESELLING this.. :) (One more layer to deal with!)


Thanks again... welcome any more comments or info :)

I personally wouldn't run anything for clients off of it.. Good plan, the way you get those boxes is scary sometimes. Takes a week to update and secure everything. Yikes.

-Matt

I don't think you can compare good and reliable to price-saavy. We are proud to use a handful of RackShack servers for our website while maintaining a separate Datacentre for clients. It's unfair to gauge hosts based on where they host provided it's not someone's basement.


Good plan, the way you get those boxes is scary sometimes. Takes a week to update and secure everything. Yikes.

Weird. :) Or maybe you were poking at me, I dont know.

Anyway, yes they are a mess sometimes. But less than a days work can bring them up to speed, and "resonably" secure. Nuke ensemin, newest sshd, apache, php, shutoff everything else, upgrade this and that, etc. no big deal.

Originally posted by FHDave
you can use traceroute to see where their servers are located. And not only that you can actually see what bandwith providers they are using. The last resort is to ask in this forum since most people here has a great knowledge about many hosting companies. Good luck in your search

Best regards,
-dave

That is not a good way to see where their servers are located because many providers have multiple servers in different data centers, and some providers have their site hosted on a different network not used for hosting.

The best way is to ask them.

Originally posted by josephmonuit
Thanks everyone. You're right there is nothing "wrong" with hosting off of a resold RS box, but, well I already have a dedicated box at RS, and, I personally wouldn't run anything for clients off of it.. it is just too unreliable, and the R&R policy...makes it even worse.

That said, I surely don't want to be hosting anything important off of someone RESELLING this.. :) (One more layer to deal with!)


Thanks again... welcome any more comments or info :)

Please explain how it's unreliable. A reliable host with a good emergency backup plan wouldn't have to worry about the R&R policy. Avoiding RackShack will give you a false sense of security. You should always prepare for the worst no matter how reliable your provider may seem to be.

well, my box has mysteriously hung and/or rebooted a few times. RS only answer to any question I have asked is basically "did you submit a reboot ticket?". I have other machines with >1 year uptime..it is possible..

Anyway, my intent was not to bash or even discuss rackshack, (I'm actually reasonably comfortable for what I get for my $99/month)

I'm just in need of some quality virtual hosting and wondering how to tell a good host from the fly by night companies that seem to becomeing more and more popular in todays age when everyone is a web hosting provider.

Well, then something is definitely wrong with your server because it shouldn't mysteriously hang or reboot on its own, even if it's from RackShack.

Anyway, one thing I've noticed is that many fly by night companies have spelling and grammar errors as well as typos all over their web site. If they can't even spell, what else can't they do? ;)

I know everyone has to start somewhere, but if you have a very important site, then it's best to find someone that's been around for more than a few months.

Generally, you get what you pay for. There ARE exceptions to this rule, but if you don't want to risk it, then be willing to pay a little more.

That's all I can think of for now. :)

From a technical standpoint, a good host is one who knows his OS and his daemons well. He should have good quality hardware.
He should know security, commandline configuration of the daemons, performance tuning of the server [or should have admins who do these things for him]

From a commercial standpoint a host should have profitable plans, should have good upstream providers who are profitable, and offer good value for money.

From a psychological standpoint a good host should be polite, service-oriented and care for his customers' sites. He should have the right attitude, a compassion towards ignorance and be mature. The worst mistake a host can make is to be condescending to his customers.

The best and successful hosts will have these qualities and will stay forever.

Cheers
Balaji

Great post, Balaji!

Things I look for:

1. How's their website look? Do all of the links work? Do they have a good FAQ?
Especially, pay attention to their "Contact Us" link. If it only has one form to contact them or just email addresses, I'd stay away.

2. Been in business for at least a year or two?

3. Good plans that keep them profitable

4. Use good data center and bandwidth providers

5. Search Google and this forum for reviews; but don't pay attention to webhosting directories

6. Do they answer pre-sales questions quickly and thoroughly

7. How a host responds to people in this forum.

Originally posted by chrisb
Great post, Balaji!

Things I look for:

1. How's their website look? Do all of the links work? Do they have a good FAQ?
Especially, pay attention to their "Contact Us" link. If it only has one form to contact them or just email addresses, I'd stay away.


May I ask why?

Actually I disagree with alot of people here.
Rackshack servers dont "****" they are unmanaged and provide little support, the key is who is maintaining it, if its some newbie expect a crash every day. However an experienced linux admin can use those powerful machines.

The saying you get what you pay for isnt always true. Providers that haven't gotten extremly large and are still in it for the joy of maintaining a server and running a web hostign buiessness will over great prices. Over time I see companies losing this and turning in just for the profit.

Originally posted by DynastyHost
3) They offer very cheap hosting plans. Around $3 per month or $30 per year.

thats a bogus comment.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by chrisb
Great post, Balaji!

Things I look for:

1. How's their website look? Do all of the links work? Do they have a good FAQ?
Especially, pay attention to their "Contact Us" link. If it only has one form to contact them or just email addresses, I'd stay away.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by Jedito
May I ask why?

What part are your asking about?

Especially, pay attention to their "Contact Us" link. If it only has one form to contact them or just email addresses, I'd stay away.

This part

Especially, pay attention to their "Contact Us" link. If it only has one form to contact them or just email addresses, I'd stay away.


A phone number that has someone answering in a professional manner and multiple contact methods often speaks volumes to a host's ability to be serious about web hosting and have a commitment to its success.

Not saying if you do not have these you will not have a successful hosting company, but a phone, mutliple contact options, and quick responses make it easy to see that a host is "for real".

- John C.

Chrisb,

Thanks for the compliment. :)

But I disagree with you on site-design or knowledge database .

I have the simplest of web-sites [which I have simplified even further now! ], support only through email or YIM/MSN, dont have support forums [I spent a good 2 hours installing and setting up phpBB and none of my customers visited that except me -preferring a "hey bud i gotta problem" on Yahoo Messenger! :D so I took it off]

I know I turn off a lot of enquiries with a plain site, and no control panel and a not so persuasive copy etc., but I dont get business from WHT or search engines.. I just get sign-ups from my clients' referral and I am quite happy with that ...

In my opinion, there really is no fool-proof way to evaluate a host except by signing up!

Cheers
Balaji

Originally posted by Jedito


This part

I thought it was probably the contact info you were questioning, but wanted to make sure. Maybe it's just me, but I feel a host is more reliable if they list their address and phone number, not just email addies.

But not all companies take phone calls... if people kept on phoning them for questions, support etc, then they won't have time to provide support to their current customers via an online solution. I do agree on providing a physical 'snail mail' address, as some people do need to send checks and letters etc to the company. But again, not everyone likes to display the physical address. One company that comes to mind is eBay.com I think, a while back I remember reading that they keep their address secret, they didn't display it on the site, and didn't have it on their domain registration contacts... see how successful they are?

eBay is a completely different industry to the web hosting industry, where there's loads of young 12 year olds that think they can make a quick buck by starting a web hosting website and getting a few clients then closing the site down after a while when they see that they can't provide everything for such low prices... so in this case I guess a phyiscal address is definitely needed, but a phone number is not always needed.

Alan

Also, not all companies are based in USA, and offer phone support it would be expensive at least or useless.

I'm not trying to defend myserlf or advertise, but the 2 guys who work as tech support on DTH one lives at 1000 Milles and the other at 1400 milles from where I live :stickout

Originally posted by Jedito
I'm not trying to defend myserlf or advertise, but the 2 guys who work as tech support on DTH one lives at 1000 Milles and the other at 1400 milles from where I live :stickout

That's easy if you're all in the US or Canada... forward the calls to different locations thru a program like uReach.com. :D

Well, just because the host uses a $99/month server doesn't mean they're bad. You have to consider support in that too.

Well some serious hosts, use those $99 dedicated servers, I see nothing wrong with it. If it is from RackShack, and it's not a lemon, it is connected to a good, reliable, very fast network.

I don't know whether really the use of servers placed in a rackshack type environment would be bad at all, considering their infrastructure opposed to hosts using one provider only for connectivity.

This would come down to numerous factors, which would include accessibility since having a phone number does not mean its a support number. I've had a 1800 number for a while and it's a sales/administration hotline, which on occasion does receive calls related to support but not many at all.
It's the convenience of knowing that the host or business generally is contactable that reassures the customer a little that the fly-by-nite has a lesser chance of appearing again.

There's no way to know until you signup.

You could signup with the "best" host in the world but if they don't offer what you need who cares? Also, no one is perfect, even the best of hosts screw up and fail a customer once in a while, heck I know we've done it, it happens. So you might signup with a really good host but just have that one support request that gets messed up and feel like you're not with a good host.

Uptime of the servers/network, speed of support, and several other factors play roles. Need perl modules? Cron? some do some don't supply those things.

It's not paint by numbers, else BEING a world class host would e paint by numbers too.

Originally posted by josephmonuit
In this age where anyone with $99 a month can become a web host provider, how do you tell whats a good reliable provider vs. someone re^H^Hoverselling some pos $99/mth box from rackshack or wherever?

Thanks for any ideas or recommendations.
J

By the price, look & feel of the site and a IP whois from ARIN.net. Not all hosts that use RS are bad, it's just the people that get into it for a quick buck or the 12 year old down the road thinking "i can do that".

If the host only has a “email us” or you have to submit a form or use some stupid AIM/MSN client to contact them, this is a sure sign of a cost cutting discount host (using RS or some sort of cheap co-location service). These hosts are good for nothing more then hobby sites and most lack any form of commercial support i.e. “I NEED AN ANSWER RIGHT NOW” type customer. The host may also have something to hide, maybe a previous operation that went belly up and wants to try again. The host should also list such information in case the customer needs it, and because it reassures the customer that your not going anywhere.

I provide a basic KB with most of the basics. If the customer needs to know something, I encourage him/her to call me and ask. This is the reason why some charge more (like me) and that’s what commercial customers want (somebody else to blame lol). I also don’t make the customer call long distance either, our toll free number is listed (along with the address, normal phone and all the contact emails). You can get a 100 customers, offer crappy support or have 40 customers and offer toll-free support and still make the same amount. 100 customers, fast cash, 40 customers, takes a little longer. In time you'll make the same, and be around in a few years too.

If you want to avoid such hosts, don’t look for a host on this forum (sorry). There are simply too many of them in here all cutting prices down to almost free just to get a customer. What does that say about the support??

If you want people to take you serious, you need to act professional. If your customers are all 15 year old punks (and use AIM/MSN) fine. If your looking for more stable (commercial) accounts, they want more then AIM/MSN.

If the host does not accept phone calls, avoid them at all costs. I would have to say, if you can’t afford to offer good support (phone support) to customers outside/inside (if your outside) Canada/US, don’t target them as customers. Stick local.

Is this what web hosting is coming too?? Hosts with no actual contact information on their site. Hosts that don’t provide phone support and really cheap (as in the host is cheap, not the plans) hosts. Personally, if I don’t see contact info, I move on. Simple as that.

If the hosts site looks crappy, chances are they have no idea there doing. HTML is very easy, even if you don’t know it, I’ve seen great looking pages created by people that don’t even know HTML using design suites and such.

The only thing a RS server would be good for is a 24/7 game server (not the best, but free and 24/7 always loaded), a secondary name server or a secondary mail server. Why? Because they offer no real form of a backup solution, other then a second hard drive which defeats the purpose of backing up data. Sure your host could download the backups (and spend days uploading them on his cable/dsl connection). If your server were to be cracked, your screwed.

I could go on for hours :)