Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : What are the big hosting companies?

[Auto Trade king]

What are the big web hosting companies, i mean seriously, no small companies or "indie" web hosting. The ones who have been around since at least the nineties and actually have a strong customer base, and a secure future? What are the most reputable in other words. The most widespread hosting services ?

[vWiz]

lunarpages comes to mind.
bluehost
hostgator
site5?

[Konrad4]

At least the 90s? I don't think there were too many web hosts before then. There are a lot of big web hosts, I don't know all of their ages... 1&1, Startlogic, ipower, Hostgator, Bluehost, Webhostingpad, Godaddy... plenty more.

[DaKine]

Are you asking just because you want to know? Or are you going to base a web hosting decision on the provided information?

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by Auto Trade king

What are the big web hosting companies, i mean seriously, no small companies or "indie" web hosting. The ones who have been around since at least the nineties and actually have a strong customer base, and a secure future? What are the most reputable in other words. The most widespread hosting services ?

Afraid your hosting provider is going to disappear on you? Keep your own off-provider backups no matter who your provider, how large they are, or how long they have been in business.

[WireNine]

HostRocket - 1999
Site5 - 1999
Hostway - 1998
Lunarpages - 1998
DreamHost - 1997
GoDaddy - 1997

These are some of the companies from back in the 90's. I believe Site5 is now under new management. Others might be as well since a lot of acquisitions happened in the past few years, a lot of bigger companies bought out their competitors and some were bought by investors.

Some of the companies from 00's such as Hostgator - 2002 have outgrown companies from the 90s.

[XTremo]

Burstnet 1991
Servint 1995
JaguarPC's 1998

[CrazyPenguin]

Originally Posted by Auto Trade king

What are the big web hosting companies, i mean seriously, no small companies or "indie" web hosting. The ones who have been around since at least the nineties and actually have a strong customer base, and a secure future? What are the most reputable in other words. The most widespread hosting services ?

In my opinion a web hosting company being bigger doesn't necessarily equate to better or higher quality web hosting. Personally I prefer a quality mid sized hosting company for my money.

[TheChemist]

Originally Posted by vWiz

lunarpages comes to mind.
bluehost
hostgator
site5?

I'd have to say if you need a provider stick to the smaller ones. Just because a provider hasn't been around to long doesn't mean they won't be around to long.

My advice to you is to simply go with MDDHosting. MikeDVB is your man. I have an account with them (just since recent) and I had support response times in under 30 minutes.

If you go with the giant you are going to get stepped on, or fee fi fo fum, the giant will try to eat you. I have seen it happen way to many times. The quality host is the small, "mom and pop" host that's been around for 5 or so years (even 1 year makes them legit to me) and hasn't called it quits. It is a hard Industry to profit from and if you have been around over a year you either had a lot of savings, or you stuck it out, struggled, and made ends due.

MDDHosting, EZPZHosting, those are two providers I am with and they both are superb. Best of luck to you, please let us know who you host with. And please review when the time comes!

[agustan]

What are the big web hosting companies, i mean seriously, no small companies or "indie" web hosting. The ones who have been around since at least the nineties and actually have a strong customer base, and a secure future? What are the most reputable in other words. The most widespread hosting services ?

@OP: Other WHT users have given some list for 90's host providers, above, but could you please also tell some more info about your hosting requirements - this will help others to suggest you easily.
Such as: the hosting provider/data center location (UK, Canada or US hosting based)? the hosting control panel you're looking for (cPanel, Plesk, or anything), windows based or linux based hosting? what about the disk space and bandwidth quotas?

[Auto Trade king]

Thank you for your answers. I would add dreamhost.

I just wanted to ask because so many affs nowadays, will just say anything is the best, and i want to have my own list of ones i can choose from an honestly recommend to people, so obviously I just want an honest list. I think what's covered here is enough.

[DaKine]

Originally Posted by Auto Trade king

Thank you for your answers. I would add dreamhost.

I just wanted to ask because so many affs nowadays, will just say anything is the best, and i want to have my own list of ones i can choose from an honestly recommend to people, so obviously I just want an honest list. I think what's covered here is enough.

While you are right that anyone can say any host is the best. My suggestion to you is to take each one in your list and do a search here at WHT. You will find that most (but not all) of these older hosts do not have a very good reputation for being good hosts. So while you are asking for hosts that have been around for a long time it will not stop you from offering a name of a long time host that you may not want to recommend to a friend or client. Especially if it is your reputatation that is on the line if you recommend a bad host to a client. Just because they have been around for a long time does not automatically make them a good host. JMHO.

[XTremo]

Originally Posted by Auto Trade king

I just wanted to ask because so many affs nowadays, will just say anything is the best,

But there's no such thing as a best host.....only the host that's best for you.

The best shared hosts are not necessarily the best VPS hosts....and the best VPS hosts are not necessarily the best dedicated hosts.

Then it's even more complicated by location, resources required, choice of OS or Control Panels etc.

So what I'm saying is every hosting choice that's made has to be based on an infinite number of variables.....so as the variables change so would your choice of hosts.

Just keep up to speed on the most recommended providers on WHT and you won't go far wrong. Take most reviews from other places with a pinch of salt.

[sramadan]

Originally Posted by Auto Trade king

Thank you for your answers. I would add dreamhost.

I just wanted to ask because so many affs nowadays, will just say anything is the best, and i want to have my own list of ones i can choose from an honestly recommend to people, so obviously I just want an honest list. I think what's covered here is enough.

I think you are confusing size and age for quality.

A hosting company is only as valuable as its clients deem it to be; just as a company can only be as big or as old as its customer base and startup opportunity in the industry.

I certainly don't recommend going off any list composed of companies that have been around since the 90's as a top-10 webhosting list of some sort.

Focus on your individual needs and experiences with web hosts. If you want to recommend a host to someone its always a good idea to have a solid reason as to why you would recommend them. This reason should be based off experience and not knowledge of the company history or size. For example, when someone tells me "I would recommend HP to buy your laptop from because they have been around since .... whenever ... and they have this many customers" is not as appealing to me as when someone tells me "I just bought this Macbook Pro and they gave me a great deal on it, because I'm a student plus they also gave me a free iPod!"

See the difference is word-of-mouth is more successful when its based on genuine human emotion backed by personal experiences.

Look for this and not a master list of some sort. You'll learn much more about the industry through experience than knowledge.

Best of luck to you!

[madlymasterful2018]

I don't know when the below companies open their account in hosting business but they are very much familiar with many..

Hostgator
Namecheap
GoDaddy