Hi

We currently have our sites hosted with 1&1 but after a nightmare of intermittent downtime, poor service and complex setup requirements for basic ASP .NET sites we have given up!

We want to leave the domain registrations with 1&1 as they do that side of things well and I don’t want the issues of moving domains to another provider.

But what we need is a fast reliable host that will allow us to leave our domains with 1&1 and will host our websites, their subdomains (and hopefully emails if possible) with the domains still registered at 1&1.

Also the things we need to resolve from 1&1 are:

1 - using asp or aspx custom error404 pages for all webpages, we can do this for aspx sites though our web.config but all other extensions go to a single .html page (not very dynamic)
2 - different error 404 pages per domain
3 - ability to do extension-less url rewriting in ASPX - we could not do this with 1&1 due to the inability to change IIS settings for the application to forward all requests to the asp .net application
4 - different IIS applications for each domain without requiring a folder in the url, 1&1 require us to move the domains into folders for this to work but moving our domain to a sub folder therefore loosing links to pages in google etc
5 - great technical service and attention to problems

Any advice on a good host that is not excessively priced would be much appreciated.

Also all of our customers are in the UK, is there any latency or issues with slow loading using say a US based host?

Thanks
B

There have been lot of posts about poor services by 1&1. Good that you've decided to move on. I think, all of your requirements can be fulfilled by below hosts:
discountasp.net (http://discountasp.net)
softsyshosting.com (http://softsyshosting.com)
crystaltech.com (http://crystaltech.com)

I am not sure about the latency or slow loading issues but it'd be better to setup a test account with one of the host and check it out yourself.

Thanks,

1 - using asp or aspx custom error404 pages for all webpages, we can do this for aspx sites though our web.config but all other extensions go to a single .html page (not very dynamic)
2 - different error 404 pages per domain
3 - ability to do extension-less url rewriting in ASPX - we could not do this with 1&1 due to the inability to change IIS settings for the application to forward all requests to the asp .net application
4 - different IIS applications for each domain without requiring a folder in the url, 1&1 require us to move the domains into folders for this to work but moving our domain to a sub folder therefore loosing links to pages in google etc
5 - great technical service and attention to problems


1) most hosting companies will allow you to create custom error pages.
2) this should be fine, but check with the host i know it can be done with Helm control panel.
3) it sounds like you need to be able to create MIME types, check that the hosting company supports this.
4) This again should be fine with most hosting companies, your root folder will have asp.net enabled, and you can also setup virtual folders to have .net working on other folders/subdomains
5) This is a must :) from what i hear this is not something 1&1 provide!

Hi

1 - using asp or aspx custom error404 pages for all webpages, we can do this for aspx sites though our web.config but all other extensions go to a single .html page (not very dynamic)
2 - different error 404 pages per domain
3 - ability to do extension-less url rewriting in ASPX - we could not do this with 1&1 due to the inability to change IIS settings for the application to forward all requests to the asp .net application
4 - different IIS applications for each domain without requiring a folder in the url, 1&1 require us to move the domains into folders for this to work but moving our domain to a sub folder therefore loosing links to pages in google etc
5 - great technical service and attention to problems
Thanks
B

These features included all helm cp win2k3 servers. You can simple go to webhostautomation.com and check for the hosting companies who has HELM CP.

I personally like DotNetPanel over HELM CP any day. Helm4 was a nightmare that still haunts me today!

Yes can backup the comments of DotNetPanel. Its one of the best Windows control panels around today. Helm4 might be fixed by SwSoft now they have bought out WHA.

We still use HELM 3 and have been advised to by many, because there are still so many issues with HELM 4. We have one dedicated client using it, and it looks "prettier" but we are holding off for a few months still.

I hope SwSoft doesn't throw away the ideals HELM were created on, we have had plenty of success with it thus far.