Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Going loony, turning blue?

[tedsimages]

My site has been hosted with "legacy PowWeb" for over five years. My experience has been reasonably good, although not without the usual problems. So I'm quite familiar with what to expect from a "cheap host." Now that Endurance is in the process of assimilating PowWeb, I'm effectively forced to switch hosts no matter what I do.

So far I'm not impressed with Endurance. I have done a "manual migration" of my site, but have not yet switched the DNS to complete the migration to the new platform. The original migration had a problem that prevented cgi from working. Tech support couldn't provide a solution, but someone on the forums did. With that solved, the log file tools aren't working properly and tech support doesn't seem interested in it. Those problems, along with horror stories from other Endurance acquisitions, suggest that it's time to find another host.

I've spent a lot of time (too much?) doing research on what might be comparable to what I now have, including these forums. It seems to come down to the perennial question of Lunarpages and BlueHost (and possibly HostGator). They all cost about the same, and all have similar numbers of praise, pans, and horror stories. They consistently show up as highly-rated on "host review" sites, which I now know has more to do with their affiliate programs than with their quality. Sampling various sites on all of them through whois.domaintools.com shows that they all have similar numbers of sites on their servers (which is apparently less than on legacy PowWeb).

My site is fairly simple, almost entirely static HTML and a bit of cgi for forms. So I doubt I'll run into the situation of sudden suspension for CPU usage. I have had problems with blog and forum users leeching my photos, but I have rewrite rules in place to deal with that. I don't expect to run into hidden bandwidth/utilization limits, but I do sometimes worry about links on popular sites or blogs creating unpredictable spikes.

The problem is that as soon as I think I've decided on one of the hosts, I read some horror story here. Then I read a horror story about the other. It's driving me loony and turning me blue. I suspect they're all about equivalent in their risks and imperfections. I think I've done as much research as I can. Can anyone offer advice about how to settle the impasse, beyond tossing a coin?

[DarkRogue]

Any large host will have regular "bad" posts from customers experiencing problems. You have to weigh the good versus the bad, however. And remember, clients experiencing problems are much more vocal about their host than the hundreds that are running fine. I've heard plenty of good and bad about all three hosts, although I usually see hostgator recommended more often. Not that much more often, but slightly more. Don't take my word for it, as I haven't used any of them, but it's what I see around here.
Again, one bad post may be just that- one bad post. What is your tolerance of them, and how many good posts does it take to "nullify" one bad post?

[tedsimages]

Originally Posted by DarkRogue

Any large host will have regular "bad" posts from customers experiencing problems. You have to weigh the good versus the bad, however. And remember, clients experiencing problems are much more vocal about their host than the hundreds that are running fine. I've heard plenty of good and bad about all three hosts, although I usually see hostgator recommended more often. Not that much more often, but slightly more. Don't take my word for it, as I haven't used any of them, but it's what I see around here.

That's exactly why any posts, good or bad, have to be taken with a shaker of salt. And all three of my possible choices seem to have an equal collection of good and bad posts, suggesting that it's coin toss or a crapshoot. If legacy PowWeb is any indication, whichever one I choose will work well most of the time. But there will be the inevitable occasional hair-tearing periods. That's why I haven't considered moving before, even when I was among the users experiencing PowWeb's growing pains. Lunarpages and BlueHost seem to have equal numbers of complaints about extended or frequent downtimes. As does PowWeb.

Again, one bad post may be just that- one bad post. What is your tolerance of them, and how many good posts does it take to "nullify" one bad post?

The bad post might be a fake from the reseller of another company looking to drive business his way. And the good post might be a shill. Pass the salt.

[DarkRogue]

For the most part, the staff here at WHT try a little harder than most other places I've seen to ensure valid and quality reviews, good or bad.
Again, it isn't perfect, but it is a good place to begin. Also you can read the replies to judge if it feels valid or not.
If nothing else, you can also try to send a message to these hosts to ask for some type of uptime report or something.

[tedsimages]

Originally Posted by DarkRogue

For the most part, the staff here at WHT try a little harder than most other places I've seen to ensure valid and quality reviews, good or bad.

I have been reading the posts here. There are a lot of 'em, and they're all over the place. That's why I posted my question here.

I'm learning a lot about hosting, which is something I haven't thought much about in five years. Some hosts clearly are abominable, and they accumulate more negative stuff. But most are probably like what I've experienced-- good most of the time, but very bad when they aren't.

There's also the completely unpredictable risk of a good host being bought out and turning to rubbish overnight.

[DarkRogue]

Originally Posted by tedsimages

There's also the completely unpredictable risk of a good host being bought out and turning to rubbish overnight.

Such is the nature of business unfortunately, and it doesn't only apply to webhosting. We can't predict any of these things as they can suddenly happen out of nowhere and no company is safe from it, but for the most part if the company is making good profit, they are at a lesser risk. All hosts have downtime, the way they handle it is what counts.

Unfortunately I can't help you very much past here since I have no used any of those hosts. In fact the only host I have used had that happen just this week. CredibleHost had been going downhill for nearly 2 years, and finally died and got acquired by HostPC.

In any case I'm just trying to help you figure out a way to decide on one of them, but if you're looking for client recommendations, just wait a bit and one of them might post here soon enough.

Good luck though.

[tedsimages]

And now I'm looking at mediatemple. Slightly more expensive, but googling turns up many positive comments/reviews/users and very little negative.

But it looks like they're beta-testing a new platform for shared hosting, to which they plan to "migrate" at some unspecified future time. That sounds like trouble.

[PixelManual]

Yep, sounds like a bit of over-research on your part. Which is a rarety among the WHT goers around here, albeit it's a nice change. I'm not going to re-hash about the whole companys will always get bad posts, etc.

Do you by any chance have a budget and specifications in mind? (space and bandwidth). It seems like you are going for some of the larger oversellers around, not always a good thing to do. How much bandwidth do you actually currently use?

By the way, isn't the term "With a grain of Salt"?

[DDT]

Yes, do remember people are far quicker to complain than to praise. And not all complaints are well founded.
Not knowing your exact requirements but most hosts should be able to help you. It's a matter of finding what's right for you in terms of service, support, uptime, features, etc. and of course your budget. Sounds like a "reasonably priced" host could handle your needs but as always watch out for the "unlimited", "too-good-to-be-true" or ridiculously cheap hosts; that's usually looking for trouble.

[tedsimages]

Originally Posted by PixelManual

Do you by any chance have a budget and specifications in mind? (space and bandwidth). It seems like you are going for some of the larger oversellers around, not always a good thing to do. How much bandwidth do you actually currently use?

Essentially, I want to replicate what I had with legacy PowWeb for five years. In other words, more than enough storage and bandwidth for ~$8 a month.

I've just ftp'd a copy of my entire site onto my computer. It amounts to just under 40 megabytes. I expect it to grow by about 5 megabytes per year. I'd expect (somewhat optimistically) to need not more than half a gigabyte of bandwidth a month, although I do worry about having room for spikes if something of mine is linked from a popular blog or publication, which occasionally happens.

As I've mentioned, the site is almost entirely static HTML, though with lots of images and a few CGI scripts for contact and downloads. So I don't worry about CPU usage.

It really does look like any decent host should be able to accommodate me easily, including the large oversellers (as legacy PowWeb has, albeit with less than perfect reliability). What I'm concerned about is reliability at least as good as what I've had (i.e., good most of the time with only infrequent downtime or "constipation"), along with complete and easily accessible raw log files. Legacy PowWeb has had periodic problems with log files, and the more severe difficulties with them on the new Endurance platform is what is driving me away from the new PowWeb.

Does that help?

By the way, isn't the term "With a grain of Salt"?

Yes. But as I'm learning, when it comes to reviews of Web hosts you need a lot of grains!

[tedsimages]

Well, folks, I've had a wild ride. I've stayed up too late at night reading this forum and other reviews, checking out Web sites, sending out contact e-mails, and learning more about the hosting industry than I ever imagined.

I just signed up with HostGator. The reviews and comments about them were overwhelmingly positive. Their Web site has lots of useful content and impressively presents them as a class act. And the replies to my contact e-mails from sales and support were prompt, informative, and literate. It seems to be a good choice.

I'll be back here to report on how it goes. Thanks so much to everyone here for all the valuable help in making my decision.