Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Any realistic hosting companies on planet earth?

[Morfin]

Hi,

I've been looking around for an "OK" hosting plan that I can get for around $5 - $10 (USD) per month (that's per month, not the calculated per month cost over a year). The problem is though, it seems like there is no such thing as a pure, honest (or at least close to) hosting company nowadays. I don't need 200 million terabytes of rollover super-duper bandwidth++ and 500Gb storage, and if I did need hosting of a calibre to take those loads of traffic I'd buck up for a dedicated server (or a server farm rather) on a place like The Planet. Who are they trying to fool? If I ask them how they would afford such things, would they tell me all the bandwidth fell off from an e-truck, hence the cheap price? Most people would surely think twice about buying a brand new Ferrari (from what the ad tells you it is) if it goes for $500USD, the same logic should go for all kinds of purchases on planet earth.

Anyway, so far I have been disappointed with every host I have seen that had a plan in the $5 - $10 price range as they provide unrealistic things. I'd prefer a host that provided (somewhat) realistic quality hosting for someone who just need a shy space on the WWW for a short period. If anyone can give me any hints to some kind of reliable host that offers hosting with realistic-ish specifications I'd be very happy.

To make things even more complicated, I'd prefer if the host accepted PayPal.

The one who tells me to go with Dreamhost will get a shoe in their face. :X

Oh, and sorry if I posted this in the wrong section. :X
*Points at his post count* I'm a newbie.

Thanks,
Morfin

[turnkeyinternet]

For your budget range, you could even upgrade to a Virtual Server with even more unrealistic options bundled in that fell off the 'e-truck'.

Seriously though, the simple answer to realistic hosting is they expecet no one to use what they offer, or they would end up oversubcribing by far more than they already expected to do anyway. Case and point, some places give 3000 email boxes (or 10,000 mail boxes) just to sound great, knowing anyone buying that 'account' is going to use about 5 at most ever. But 'what if' it turns out to be a fortune 500 company who gives out 3,000 email accounts that slam the pop server every 15 seconds checking for every staff member So they are just playing the averages, gambling to give those sort of unrealistic options.

Anyway your best bet is probably looking in one of the threads on here in the 'offers' section.

[Website Rob]

Hi Morfin, and Welcome to the Forum.

Always nice to see someone with a realistic attitude towards what they want in their Hosting needs. Don't see where PayPal would be a problem and, depending upon what type of site you will hosting, many good Hosters are available.

Normally, Features / Price / Support can be checked out before signing up with anyone. Another but not the least, important point to consider, is Service or Uptime; which cannot usually be determined until one actually starts using it.

To help overcome that, there are various places that provide Free or Paid uptime monitoring and the following three provide both:

http://easymonitor.com/
http://siteuptime.com/
http://host-tracker.com/

Using a combination of all on one Hoster or each on different Hosters, can give you a good idea on their Service before using them. And, as people are quick to complain and slow to praise -- just the way we are I guess -- look for a Forum at your potential Hoster. Reading through various posts will give a good idea of how other people judge the Hoster along with how they reply to posts.

Overall, research and patience are two important tools when checking most things, Hosting or otherwise.

[WireNine]

Morfin, welcome to WHT!

You forgot to mention what you are looking for exactly? Bandwidth, disk space?

I can understand what you mean, competition is rising in the hosting industry and most web hosts are choosing the 'overselling' path. Which will end up costing them later on, because there is always a limit to everything. How much can you load in a ship before it sinks?

[Morfin]

Thanks for the awesome replies guys, and thanks for the welcomes.

As for the kind of space and bandwidth I'm looking for (sorry I forgot to mention that :x), a plan with something around 100Mb space and some Gigabytes (2-3 perhaps) of bandwidth would be awesome. Some MySQL databases would be good too. Besides that it's not much that matters (besides general quality of course).

When I'm thinking about it, I don't know if even those kinds of wishes are realistic, but since all hosts I've seen so far offer way more for the price, I can only assume it'd be a step in the correct direction.

The reason I need this space is because I'm working on a project together with a friend of mine, and we need a simple shared space to piece our things together before we take the step up on a big server of some kind. I'm sadly not rich enough to have a crazy expensive server set up only to use a few megabytes here and there.

Anyhow, once again, thanks for the awesome replies. I like this place already (I've been a lurker at times but never signed up until now). And thanks for the links, Rob.

[Website Rob]

You're welcome for the links and, since we're getting into specifics, do you have any preference for OS used and Control Panel?

[David]

Morfin,

It's a nice breathe of fresh air on these forums to see folks with realistic, attainble packages (that don't put companies out of business): My recommendation would be to compile a list of 10-15 that you find 'reasonable'.

Start knocking them off the list based on their support response speeds, quality of their responses, etc.
In the end the result should be that you find a decent company that you should have no problem growing with.

And about that 500 dollar ferrari: Where can I get it? (hey it's worth the gamble right? )

[cywkevin]

Depends on if you use that ferrari to get to work and every day spent in the autoshop cost you a fair amount in lost wages.

[DDT]

Your requirements and budget don't seem unreasonable. Just as people have said, do some shopping, check what's available, e-mail them a few questions about their network etc. See what type response you get, use the all too uncommon, common sense. You shouldn't have too much trouble.

[Lpal-Patrick]

hostnexus.com
fuse9.net


Those are two hosts that don't oversell and accept paypal.

[Lev]

Originally Posted by Morfin

Anyway, so far I have been disappointed with every host I have seen that had a plan in the $5 - $10 price range as they provide unrealistic things.

A decent amount of companies that provide services in the medium-high end do not offer plans under $10, and often $15.

[RackPoint-Morgan]

Originally Posted by Lev

A decent amount of companies that provide services in the medium-high end do not offer plans under $10, and often $15.

A very good point. A lot of quality hosts don't even have plans for 5$/month. After paypal fees or cc fees, thats like low four dollar range. What reasonable host in their right mind sells hosting for that and stay afloat without piling heaps of clients on their servers?

[Martie]

Originally Posted by Morfin

Hi,
I don't need 200 million terabytes of rollover super-duper bandwidth++ and 500Gb storage, and if I did need hosting of a calibre to take those loads of traffic I'd buck up for a dedicated server (or a server farm rather) on a place like The Planet.

Thanks,
Morfin

WOW! What a breath of fresh air you are
You just dont see many people that come here and make posts like that but I have to tell you it is nice to see "common sense"
Good luck!

[Morfin]

Originally Posted by Website Rob

You're welcome for the links and, since we're getting into specifics, do you have any preference for OS used and Control Panel?

Unix based would be preferred.
Any CP would work for me, I have used most of the popular ones in the past and all of them have worked great so far.

<snip>

Originally Posted by David

Morfin,

It's a nice breathe of fresh air on these forums to see folks with realistic, attainble packages (that don't put companies out of business): My recommendation would be to compile a list of 10-15 that you find 'reasonable'.

Start knocking them off the list based on their support response speeds, quality of their responses, etc.
In the end the result should be that you find a decent company that you should have no problem growing with.

Originally Posted by DDT

Your requirements and budget don't seem unreasonable. Just as people have said, do some shopping, check what's available, e-mail them a few questions about their network etc. See what type response you get, use the all too uncommon, common sense. You shouldn't have too much trouble.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll follow them as good as I can.

Originally Posted by Hagane

hostnexus.com
fuse9.net


Those are two hosts that don't oversell and accept paypal.

Those two look good, I'll add them to my list I'm creating.

Originally Posted by Lev

A decent amount of companies that provide services in the medium-high end do not offer plans under $10, and often $15.

Originally Posted by Netriox

A very good point. A lot of quality hosts don't even have plans for 5$/month. After paypal fees or cc fees, thats like low four dollar range. What reasonable host in their right mind sells hosting for that and stay afloat without piling heaps of clients on their servers?

I know that $5 - $10 USD isn't a whole lot (I'd rather pay $10/mo than $5/mo by the way) after fees. That's why I'm asking around about this. Hardware, software, and bandwidth all cost money so the companies obviously have to make up for possibly low costs by not offering all that much usage of the space, CPU, bandwidth etc. of the box and also putting a lot of users on it. I expect nothing else. But from experience I know that companies that offer "to good to be true"-ish plans usually end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Misunderstand me correct now, but I think there is overselling and overselling. As long as the company I chose doesn't do it at such an extent that using the web space to develop the site becomes a nasty experience I'm fine with it. I did consider hosting a dev-box here but I figured it was too much hassle to put up with for such a short period of time (since I would have to make it accessible from other locations besides the local network).

Anyway, thanks again guys. Next time I'll come here right away to search (or post if I don't find what I'm looking for) around on the forums when I have questions about hosting.
For now, I'll search these forums and other sites for customer opinions on the ones I have on my list now and just pick one. I wont know if it was a good or bad choice until it's over, any hen can lay a rotten egg after all.

/Morfin

[David]

Morfin,

Good luck with the hunt.
Be sure to let us know what you find.