Hosting Recommendations?

[Arfie]

I am looking at setting up a website for a friend for his plumbing business and want a basic cheap hosting solution, I personally use 123-reg for domain name purchases, but never bothered paying for hosting.

I've had a quick look at a few hosting companies that I have heard of and the best seems to be Easyspace £45 for 2 years + VAT, for 500mb space and 10GB bandwidth and it includes a 2 year registration for a .co.uk domain which I would be buying anyway

Anyone seen any better packages? I'd prefer it to be with a host that you have used or know someone that has and it works I can do a google search myself, but it wont tell me if they are any good. I also know that I can get free packages, but they usually do not provide POP3 mailboxes and in my experience they tend to be unreliable.

Arfie

 

[idlefingers]

By better, I take it you mean cheaper?

Personally, I stay as far away from these big host companies as I can. but I guess it depends how important the site is to you and what you might do with it (and need to setup on the server)

 

[smurfyy_2k3]

i like these

 

[Arfie]

By better, I take it you mean cheaper?

Either cheaper or provide more/better features/bandwidth/space.( not that any extra will be needed)

I guess it depends how important the site is to you and what you might do with it (and need to setup on the server)

It's not that important to me but he will think it is for his business, though IMHO it'll make NO difference.

If I have anything to do with it, it'll be a simple site, in fact I'll use a template and just add a few pics and some blurb, there will be no java, SQL, etc etc It will basically be a site to show off a few pics of work done and another place for customers to contact him through. The most complicated part will possibly be a contact us button

Thanks for this smurfy, I've also had 1and1 recommended

 

[andywg]

Try asking PeterM. I know he does a fair amount of hosting and website design as his job, so he should be able to advise.

 

[fffclub]

I've been using these for the last 4 years or so, never had a problem with them

http/www.totalchoicehosting.com/

I used to use 1&1 but they were a pain in the proverbial when you try to move or add anything. I personally found their support terrible

 

[PeterM]

Out and out the best host on the Internet is HostMonster.com for this kind of service. I can say this with confidence, Ive been a pro webmaster for eight years and you get 2 terrabytes of bandwidth per month with 200 gig storage for $5.95 a month - those figures are accurate. Theres also 100 MySQl and 100 Postgre databases - more databases than even I can shake a stick at and this is my job.

Youd be doing me a favour if you do choose to use HostMonster.com if you register through the following link:

http/www.hostmonster.com/track/sharphorizon/CODE4

I get $35 comission this way You can get it too if you get someone else to sign up. It works out to £76.00 ish for two years hosting, you need to pay for two years up front to get the cheap rate with no setup fees, though you can get one years registration with no setup fees. They do also do domain registration but its cheaper elsewhere. My personal preference for domain registrar is GoDaddy.com, but if you want cheap registration then NetFirms.com is hard to beat. The thing with NetFirms is that their service is slow, so nameserver changes take days. I use the GoDaddy / Hostmonster double team and literally within 15 minutes of registration the DNS has updated for the site. DoDaddy also has an awesome administration system with is actually pretty fast acting too. Theres a domain locking feature too which prevents forced domain transfers, which are remarkably still a problem even these days.

One thing about HostMonster that I havent seen anywhere, literally anywhere else, is the unlimited domains per account. You can add any number of domains to your single account and have them resovle and have a mailserver for each one too. I currently have these sites on my one account:

sharphorizon.com, takesthepiss.org, helptehfish.com, petermckane.com, staticnuke.com, sqlconverter.net, brinkplan.com, titansgym.net, titanshop.co.uk, amerilabs.org, shstore.co.uk, tropiclafishkeeper.com, agneskleinjan.com, annevanderhorst.com and several others too. All these resolve to the same account, all have mailservers, all work great.

OK, I just checked 123reg.com and are they really charging $25 a year for a dot com?! GoDaddy is $8.95 per year and you can then get the .net, .biz and .info all for $16 as a special offer - so thats 4 domains for what you'd pay for one on 123reg. Bargain.

Edit

Be distrustful fo hosting comparison sites as they are, nine times in ten, owned by the hosting companies that they are advertising. Also be sure that the host you choose has its own datacenter, and that they are not simply hosting resellers. Resellers can often give good deals, but they are not responsible for their own servers. HostMonster have their own data center and their support is fairly good. Its support though, not server administration, so there is only so much support you can expect from any service. Their live chat is on 24/7 so theres always someone you can complain at.

Edited Edit

1&1 are not great. They are expensive for what you get and their server management software is bulky and not feature rich. Hostmonster use cPanel - a very high quality server management utility. In fact, many host offer a paid upgrade to a cPanel server from tehri own custom management software or something like Ensim. Long story short - cPanel goooood. I have had the misfortune of developing for a 1&1 site and their database server is on a single machine with different login credentials, their FTP accounts are clunky and you cant customize the login names, so you get restricted numbers of user names like "2357585858_username" instead of just "username". cPanel servers come with Fantastico which is an automated script installer that comes with two dozen or so common scripts and CMS's like OS Commerce or Joomla. Fantastico takes two hours wrok out of every site Ive made in the last two or three years and is probably my best find.

Templates: templatemonster.com is my favorite source because its the most copied site. You can find cheaper template sites, so I recommend that you find a template you like on template monster and then google it to see if you can get it cheaper elsewhere. Chances are you will as the desingers of these templates tend to spread them around a lot.

Wow... long post. Sorry Hope its useful info though.

 

[Arfie]

Holy crap, talk about information overload

Thanks for that Peter now all I have to do is find out what the hell most of it means

Although it seems a bit dearer for the hosting, the additional bandwidth and storage may make it worthwhile I was just going to do it in his name then leave it to him, but I could always get the hosting in my own name and just host his site on my bandwidth with that option

Once again, thanks I will digest it and look into it in greater detail when I get chance.

Arfie

 

[PeterM]

Holy crap, talk about information overload

Thanks for that Peter now all I have to do is find out what the hell most of it means

Although it seems a bit dearer for the hosting, the additional bandwidth and storage may make it worthwhile I was just going to do it in his name then leave it to him, but I could always get the hosting in my own name and just host his site on my bandwidth with that option

Once again, thanks I will digest it and look into it in greater detail when I get chance.

Arfie

Sorry for the overload.. I get carried away Have you considered buying hosting for yourself and re-selling to your friend? They wont have access to a cPanel control panel, but they can have whatever they need for their site - FTP accounts, email addresses, web stats, IIS (for Frontpage)... you would have to do the management (using the control panel), but it could end up cheaper for both of you.

Just a thought If you need help with anything just mail me: peter@sharphorizon.com - I generally check this several times a day.

 

[Arfie]

I think you are getting a bit carried away Peter

It will be a very static web page with contact details on maybe a few before and after pics, but it will not be altered or updates very regularly, if at all.

I certainly don't have the time/experience to be messing about with websites to any decent level, so as I said, I may well just get my own hosting and upload the site for him. If he ever gets upto speed on a computer and wants to do something more in depth, then I would transfer the domain to him and let him sort it himself.

Arfie