Hi, have spent the last couple days reading through the forums to help locate a new host and have narrowed down the list to:

dixiesys
icdsoft
myacen

Uptime, fast servers, good customer service and price are important. Storage needs are minimal. Will be hosting informational sites w/few graphics. Currently have one site that is 15 pages, that I need hosting for. Will be building some more sites, probably around similar size. Don't have any special script needs. Not a designer; so sites are very basic.

Have tested email customer support time for both dixiesys and icdsoft - absolutely incredible - even late on a Sunday evening. From all the positive threads I've read about Myacen don't think it's really necessary to test them.

Right now I am kind of at a loss as to which way to go. Prices are somewhat similar for small plan:

dixiesys: currently running 2 For 1 Special:
Personal Site Hosting: $19.95/yr, 40 megs storage, 1500 megs transfer (Know it depends on a lot of factors, but for a small web site, can anyone tell me approx how many visitors that equates to?)
With the special I could get 2 accounts (for 2 separate sites) for $20/year

Myacen:
currently running 20% off special (Yearly)
BeginnerHosting: $49.95/yr - $9.95 = $40/year, Disk Space: 100MB, Bandwidth: 3GB

Icdsoft
Has one plan: $60/year ($65 includes domain too), 333 MB Web Space, 5 Gigs Data Transfer & Hits

What I'd LIKE to do is open up an account at all 3. Dixiesys for the 2 for 1 (not to be repeated), myacen for the 20% off special (not to be repeated) and icdsoft cause I like the look of the site info (very well organized for newbie like me) and I like the way their control panel looks. However, financially opening up account w/all 3 is not an option right now.

Speaking of control panels, I am really lost here. I've seen Plesk, Ensim, CPanel all mentioned here in this forum. Have no idea what the difference is, and if one is easier to work with than the other. Can anybody give me some insight?

As far as control panels, I just want to be able to easily update pages (online) and set up email accounts. Not much else.

Sorry for the long post. Am just verbalizing my thoughts hoping that maybe some of you kind folks could help point me in the right direction; including things I might have missed.

Any suggestions on the host that would best suit my needs and any other help on other questions above would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I see that ICDSoft is famous for its Customer Support but MyAcen and Dixie are also well reputed here on these boards...

Yup, I dont know what to tell ya... I have been with Dixie for a little bit and have had amazing luck with support via their Forum, Helpdesk, and IRC. Its easy to get help with stuff because you have so many options for contact, and someone is always somewhere!

My fastest Helpdesk Ticket resolution is 17minutes. Granted it wasnt a super hard ticket, but shows that people actually watch the Helpdesk que and answer em as they come.

Most of us are eager to help eachother out as well. I spent about 5 hours in the Dixie irc channel tonight working on some issues that cropped up and in between getting help myself, I was able to help several other folks with issues they were having, and the forum is the same way.

I just think its nice to have at least a small sense of community among customers... If its easy stuff and someone else has already gone through it and knows the answer, better for them to chime in with the answer to get you on your way as quickly as possible, and to keep the support folks free to handle more complicated issues.

Out of those, I'd say Myacen. Check out their forums (a plus to me) and get a feel as to how clients are treated.

Good luck with who ever you decide to go with.

I currently use Dixiesys for a few of my sites - I am nothing less then GREATLY PLEASED with their service.

Ticket turn around is very fast, Gary is always there to answer the phones, very quick feedback on the forums and even just emailing them.

I HIGHLY recommend going with them. Also another lil perk about Dixiesys is that they have those 2 for 1 spcials like once every 2-3 months, great way to really upgrade your account.


-WoodiE

If I may just make a comment about ICDSoft.
I've been using them now for about four months and they have been absolutely excellent.
There has been next to no downtime and I've had no serious problems.
I'm rather new to actually running my own site and I needed a host who could offer good support.
In the four months I've been using them I've had the need to send in about four support tickets, various questions and requests to set things up.
The longest I've had to wait for a reply from this system is thirty minutes.
This includes two messages I sent off at around 1:30am GMT, bu 2:00pm they had replied with the correct answer.

If I have one complaint about ICDSoft it is the fact their servers are in Japan.
For the majority of the time this isn't a problem, however you will usually find that your site may not open up as quickly as it would if hosted on say a server in the US.
That is my one and only issue and it's a small one - if you want the fastest connection to your site from the rest of the world possible then probably worth looking at a company with servers in the US.

You get a lot of features for your $60 a year.
Oh setting up the account was flawless too, signed up online and my account was activated and ready to use in fifteen minutes - again this was around midnight my time when I did it.

All of those are pretty spendy hosts. I was looking at dixiesys with the 2 for 1 deal, but it was Ensim and I was looking for cpanel.

If you're really looking into good support, try http://httpme.com .. I myself don't use them, but have asked a few questions, and the responses were very fast, friendly and they know what they are doing. Prices are a bit up there.. but like I said, if you can do it, go for.

When I was looking into a reseller, I was really thinking about mayacen because everyone seems to love them. They may have great support and services, but the price jump from the first reseller plan to the second doubled for just 10 more gigabytes of bandwidth. That's why I turned right around and went elsewhere.

I understand you get what you pay for.. but I think if you look right, you could find pretty good service for half the price. A lot of people like myself can't afford those expensive services. I think if you can afford it, go for it.. but I would rather go somewhere where people price their services for people with such tight budgets as myself and can treat me just as good.

MyAcen also provides a service through solidinternet.com that may be more inline with what you want. SolidInternet gives more space, but not nightly backups (which it sounds like you don't need).

--Dan

Thank you for your replies and insight. Sounds like all 3 are solid choices.

Bladerunner: your comment about Icdsoft's server location is the only possible reservation I have about going w/them.

The sites that I will be hosting will be targeting mostly US. My sites are not graphic intensive (mostly text). Should generally load quickly - lot of HTML code is controlled through external CSS.

Do you think that potential site customers would be discouraged from waiting for the page to load?

HotRod - Do you know if the quality of service of solidinternet.com is as great as Myacen? Any advantages of going with one over the other, besides price? Noticed solidinternet would be about $10 less a year.

I'm wondering if anybody can help me regarding control panels. I've heard the terms Plesk, Ensim, and CPanel mentioned. Don't know what the difference is. Is one easier for the clueless to use?

Also, can anyone guesstimate approx how many visitors, 1500 megs (dixiesys monthly allotment w/personal site plan) equates to?

Thanks again for your help.

I must admit that scared me to begin with.
I thought that if anybody visited my site they would wait half a second, see the first page hadn't loaded and then go elsewhere.
I'm accessing my site hosted at ICD from the UK and the speed isn't too bad.
I would expect the link from the US to Japan to be even better.
If you want to test general loading speeds feel free to visit my site (be warned, I am not a coder and the pages are.....well, there will be something to look at :) )
I'll direct you to the site in progress:
www.newsite.prawlings.net

Also feel free to trace through to my site to see how many hops you need to make from the US etc:
203.194.209.81

I'm still stuck on a 56k dialup connection @ 44k and I don't think the pages take an extraordinary amount of time to load and anybody with a half good connection to the net shouldn't have any problems.

Originally posted by searchme


I'm wondering if anybody can help me regarding control panels. I've heard the terms Plesk, Ensim, and CPanel mentioned. Don't know what the difference is. Is one easier for the clueless to use?

Also, can anyone guesstimate approx how many visitors, 1500 megs (dixiesys monthly allotment w/personal site plan) equates to?



Different control panels are different... :) Thats about as well as it can be explained if you dont have any experience with any of the three you probably wont notice or care about it. I have not used plesk, but I have used Cpanel and Ensim and they are both fine. It is a little hard to be used to one Control Panel interface and then have to get used to another, but I have found that both Ensim and Cpanel are very functional.

If you want to check them out do a google search for Ensim and Cpanel 5 both companies have demo's of their control panels you can try. I would imagine that plesk is the same.

And as far as bandwith goes... it depends on how big your pages are before you can even hope to figure it out. Not that this would ever be the case, but if your home page were 1MB, you could have 1500 visitors per month visit your site.

Also... your stats are off a bit... IF you signed up with Dixie during the 2 for 1 you would get 80MB space and 3000GB of transfer per month for $20 a year.

You really can't equate # of visitors vs. Bandwidth unless you know the average size of your pages. A site with 5K pages will get more bang for the buck then a site with 75K pages.

Thank you Bladerunner. I went to your site and it loaded in no time!

Thank you Andrax for your reply about control panels.

Average size page is 15,000 bytes. Site is 15 pages. Is there some type of formula I can now apply to ensure that I would have enough bandwidth with dixiesys Personal Site Hosting Plan? (1500 megs transfer/month)

Yes, you're right Andrax with the 2 for 1 you can double storage and bandwidth. I want to host couple sites, so would choose the 2 plans for price of one (instead of doubling one).

Each site would then get 40 megs storage and 1500 megs transfer. Know that storage would be adequate just need to find out if transfer would be enough?

Thanks again.

It is possible to purchase additional bandwith if your going to require a little more. I believe its $2 per gig of bandwith per month for extra.

searchme,

I don't have an account with myacen.com or solidinternet.com (still researching), but I'd image that levels of server/reliability would be comparable. Except for the obvious things like nightly backups which are specifically mentioned.

--Dan

Both Myacen.com and SolidInternet.com server reliability are similar though different servers in different locations if I'm not mistaken. Great uptime and speed.

I don't have an account with myacen.com or solidinternet.com (still researching), but I'd image that levels of server/reliability would be comparable. Except for the obvious things like nightly backups which are specifically mentioned.

There are other differences that make solidinternet more affordable than myacen. In addition to the lack of daily backups, solidinternet doesn't support CGI and help is available only through forums (this service is better with users who don't need a lot of support). Solidinternet is also a single domain host whereas myacen allows multiple domains.