I'm a moderately experienced newbie and I'll try to spare you the whining. Here's my requirements for shared hosting, virtual private server, or other labelled hosting. I have used Verio VPS and it was acceptable but I think $150 US a month may be too much these days.

So who do you recommend?

Budget: $100 US per month (approximately)

Hard Drive Space : 400 - 600 Mb minimum

Bandwidth : Moderate

Environment : UNIX / Apache with full access to root

Capabilities : Perl, CGI, PHP, at least 10 MySQL databases, SSI, Virtual Domains, minimum of 50 email and FTP accounts, total control over CGI script use, shared SSL as a minimum, POP and Webmail capability, some support to add shopping cart, and very good reliability and uptime.

Support : It's got to be both voice and email. Has to be good, responsive, and fast (i.e., real-time voice or within an hour if using email)

Basically I'm looking for Verio reliability and support but at less cost. Anything out there?

Thanks

Mike

ah hah! Check out http://www.doublehost.net

You'll find everythign you listed there, way under the price of 100 bucks (Around 30 bucks)

Actually, don't quote me. But take a look carefully at what they offer under plans. Not sure about SSL and some of the things you offered.

I've found that their support replies within 24 hours via email.

Good luck with finding a host.

You can get a nice server from Rackshack http://www.rackshack.net

Originally posted by huynhk
ah hah! Check out http://www.doublehost.net
No root access it looks like.

Just to clear this up, it looks like mlenick wants root access, so in other words a VDS or dedicated, no shared hosting. This got me quite confused at the beginning. :D

smidwap,

When I say root access I might not know the totallity of what that means....remember that I'm a bit of a newbie. What I'm thinking is that I need root access to allow me to do vaddhost, whois, any any other "stuff" I used to do using SSH into a prompt. If a good cPanel can suffice I'm OK with that... I'll take the best all round capability.

...thanks for looing out for me!

Mike

For the 'root' access I guess there are two ideas of what Root access is.
1 is that you can SSH to your box, install scripts perform basic server administration. But there are certain files or configurations that are owned by 'root' that you can't truly customize. You are also limited on upgrading any modules (perl, PHP, apache) so you are limited to what you are given and when upgrades take place. But this is fine if you are not needing or don't care to worry about it.

2. The second type of 'Root' access is that you have full ability to customize and own/modify any file on your account. You have what is more often considered having Root Access.

The first scenario is generally the cheapest since its just a basic VPS account and the second is the higher end.


If you're interested, Spry.com has both type of accounts which meet the needs you described above.