I started out with Value.net about 3 years ago when I first put up my home page. Since then, Value.net has been bought and sold 4 times and I ended up with http://amerion.com, a company I’ve never heard of.

My current plan includes 50MB of space and 3 or 4 POP3 email accounts. I’m paying $200 for hosting and $60 for an extra POP Mailbox for one year. It might be a reasonable price 3 years ago, but certainly not now. It’s time to renewal my plan for next year, so I need to decide soon whether I’m going to stay with Amerion, or look for other options.

The content of my website will be plain text and high quality JPG images only. The goal of the site is to provide service information to my customers, so there will be no fancy animation or 3D graphics on my site.

My basic needs are (in order of priority):
1. Speed and reliability: Some of my JPG images are more than 300K each and I have several hundred of them. I need a host that is fast, or at least as fast as my current host Amerion.
2. Storage of 300MB or more. I’ve reached the limit of my current plan and I have hundreds of images that I’d like to load onto my site.
3. 5 POP3 email accounts
4. Reasonable, not necessarily cheap price - I’m willing to pay for good service.
5. Control panel, so I can configure email accounts and manage files easily.
6. Customer service
7. Log files – I’d like to keep track of things like where the traffic came from, how many hits certain pages get, which search words people used to find my site, etc.
8. FrontPage extension
9. Password protected directories
10. Bandwidth: this is a low traffic site, so bandwidth is not nearly as important as speed and storage space.

Extra features that I might use in the future:
1. Mailing list: I might add a couple of mailing lists that have no more than 30 subscribers.
2. Bulletin boards pretty much like this one here.
3. Basic FTP functions so I can share files with my family and friends.

I tried to call Amerion today, but couldn’t reach the tech support department or customer service. I guess 7 days a week doesn’t include Sunday. Amerion’s website doesn’t provide much information either. The only hesitation I have about leaving Amerion is their speed. I loaded the same images on several of my friends’ websites and Amerion came out the fastest. I can certainly try to call them again on Monday and see if they can sign me up for a new plan.

I did some research and found a few hosting companies that came highly recommended on this forum. http://Alwayswebhosting.com is on top of my list right now if I were to switch.

Please let me know if you’ve had any good or bad experiences with Amerion.com, and if you think Alwayswebhosting is a good choice for my needs. Feel free to recommend other companies that you feel will suit my needs better. I’m all ears.

Thanks,

Eric

Haven't had personal expierences with those company have you tried doing a search on them in these forums?

Also you may want to post your requirements on web hosting requests forums you are bond to get some good feedback from webhosting companies there. One thing to do is whoever leaves you feedback doing a search for their company name, and or user name to see if anyone has left them any remarks or views.

Good luck in finding a host.

I would agree with eyow... I would suggest browsing the forums for a while and get the feel for who are the good hosts and who to stay away from. You can post your requirements in the Webhosting request forum and you should get a couple of offers. Do a search on the hosting companies to see what people have to say about them.

Personally, I went with Edge-Host.com and have had great service. Send me an e-mail at jp@whotek.com or ICQ 1863204, or AIM nintendo8bit if there are any questions I can answer from a customer standpoint.

Good Luck.

Yep,browsing the forums,both old and new.
It pays off!

I am using prohost4u.net.
Their server is stable and fast.not bad.

I recently searched for a new host myself and went with Pagezone. My impression: Fair prices, good service and the features you request.

As there were other good contenders that might fit your needs, look at my detailed review if you like (see signature).