Time to make fun of the Disney Channel?
Time to make a gookie?
Time to spin the Wheel of Morality?

No, it's time to change Web hosting companies. I switched (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/showthread.php?t=14097) to iPowerWeb (http://www.ipowerweb.net/) a year or so again and have been reasonably satisfied, but I'm running into the limitations of their one-size-fits-most hosting plan. So I guess I'm in the market again.

Who do you use and why?

Same here. Their support has gotten awful recently, and I don't like no no-subdomains law.

I haven't liked how they won't privatize your domain listing. They will delete all private information, but they leave your email there and won't hide it. I'm now listed on tons of spam email lists because of that and I can't be removed permanently. Every other month when the url is resubmitted to search engines I get put right back on the spam lists.

I've registered other domain names with other companies (GoDaddy.com for instance) that, for a small fee, will make the domain listing totally anonymous.

I'm not married to iPowerweb, so if you guys find something better then please let me know.

I do like their free shopping cart though, but I've never really gone live with it. I've only set it up and let it sit. Haven't had the means to make it a reality.

...and I don't like no no-subdomains law. What do you mean? They allow 3 subdomains per account.

I haven't liked how they won't privatize your domain listing. They will delete all private information, but they leave your email there and won't hide it. I have my domain registered through Gandi (http://www.gandi.net/), a French registrar that consistently ranks at or near the top of the heap in independant surveys and rankings. Their basic policy is that your domain is your property--they just manage it for you.

I keep my Web hosting completely separate from my domain registry.

What do you mean? They allow 3 subdomains per account.


For 10 Bucks per subdomain.....

For 10 Bucks per subdomain.....
Well, you have to pay for the domain registration. What did you expect?

Well, you have to pay for the domain registration. What did you expect?
The $10 per subdomain that iPowerWeb charges doesn't include registering the domain. It seems to be a one-time setup fee just to add DNS entries.

I have one subdomain off my main site, which I also registered with Gandi, and was still charged the $10 setup fee by iPowerWeb.

I use hostsave and have liked and hated them at different times. They are cheap though and it works pretty good for most of my clients. They had some issues with spammer awhile back and were blacklisted - but seem to have that under control now.

I heard Dream Host was good - but have never used them.

The one thing I was told about hosts is to check them out via usenet or google groups via one of these subheadings: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&group=news.admin.net-abuse

You enter in the host and see how many spam complaints they have against them and if they boot the spammers or cater to them.

Fortunatly, For me al least, I have an in with a Hosting company, My Mom Owns it, She Runs/Owns Artful Illusions Web Creations and has expanded to hosting the sites she creates. So anyway my three websites are hosted by her. Unfortunatly they have fallen into disuse at the moment due to operational commitments with being a Marine and all.

If you want to look her up Artful illusions web creations (http://www.artfulillusions.com/contact.html)
I do Know she won't give you telnet access to the Server. But she will help you set up the modules or whatever online.

Good luck
Joel

I use Valueweb (http://www.valueweb.com) for my hosting service. At the time last year that I was looking to switch hosting services (after my old service proved to be too unreliable), they had just won the "Editor's Choice" award in a round-up of low-cost hosting services in PC Magazine. When I looked into it further, they seemed to have a good mix of price and features.

At the time, I was particularly attracted to the fact that they actually provided an SMTP server that could be accessed from anywhere. I didn't want to deal with the hassles of hosting my own SMTP server, but my cell phone provider (AT&T Wireless) didn't offer one at the time, meaning that I couldn't send messages from my wireless PDA. AT&T has since rectified that problem, but it still nice having an SMTP server that isn't tied to any ISP.

As far as the hosting service itself, it has generally been very reliable. Feature-wise, they seem to offer pretty much all of the basics that you would expect at their price-point and can also add on quite a few very advanced features for extra charge. They do offer more advanced commercial and commerce plans as well.

Overall, I've been happy with them and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

-Jeff

I don't see the "value" in them. 18 bucks a month for 250MB Disk Space 10GB Data Transfer and 20 mailboxes?! I would rather stick with the lousy service from iPowerweb than go to them.

That's funny. The first company I went with when I bought my domain was ValueWeb. I stayed with them for a couple of years but they were unwilling to other companies price- and service-wise, so I jumped ship to ... I can't remember right now. Somebody on the east coast. They were fine for a couple of years as well, and then screwed up my renewal billing big time, so I moved to iPowerWeb. Now I'm feeling limited by iPowerWeb, and Jeff suggests ValueWeb! :D I just thought it was amusing.

That's funny. The first company I went with when I bought my domain was ValueWeb.

Ha! I didn't realize that was your original hosting company. Oh well, sorry for suggesting someone you already knew. :)

I do acknowledge that their pricing is on the high-end of the range for value-priced hosting services (even more so now than when I switched to them a year ago). I tend to put a lot of emphasis on reliability, though, and my research has generally suggested that the lower priced services tend to be pretty lacking in that area. That is why I haven't felt particularly motivated to shop around for significantly lower pricing.

-Jeff

My web-hosting company is also my ISP: the Huntington Beach franchise of Quik Internet. I don't have a domain; my web site simply lives on a directory of my ISP's domain. To wit,

http://www.hb.quik.com/jamesl

Not offering any commercial products, and not selling any ad space, I have no need for a domain of my own, and people can find me from my email signature, or from a GOOGLE search.

Quik does, however, offer hosting WITH domain registration, too.

How serious are you.............................

What are you hosting??

Is this for fun?

For serious business?

Windows?

Linux?

What applicaitons are you running?
Web site
Database
Email
storage
vBulletin
ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, Perl??

?????

What are you paying now? What's the basics of the plan you are outgrowing?
How much are you willing to pay? are you looking for a dedicated server or shared server? Do you need console level access? A firewall??? Backups? Daily, weekly, open file, disaster recovery??

Arrrgh too many questions..... Too many options....

I signed up with phpWebHosting (http://www.phpwebhosting.com/host_details.html) almost two years ago, and can't say that I have any real complaints (but then again, I haven't done a whole heck of a lot with my site). I went with them because they were offering a package with MySQL that was fairly inexpensive. You don't get nearly as much space as iPowerWeb (only 225MB) or the other frills (the various plug-ins iPowerWeb offers), but they do have SSH access, which has come in very handy for me.

--Mox

However, if I can get that much space for the same price (or cheaper), I may start looking for a new host myself.

That's funny. The first company I went with when I bought my domain was ValueWeb. I stayed with them for a couple of years but they were unwilling to other companies price- and service-wise, so I jumped ship to ... I can't remember right now. Somebody on the east coast. They were fine for a couple of years as well, and then screwed up my renewal billing big time, so I moved to iPowerWeb. Now I'm feeling limited by iPowerWeb, and Jeff suggests ValueWeb! :D I just thought it was amusing.
im was in the same boat as you, now im in with www.datapipe.com (http://www.datapipe.com) - sharing a dedicated and managed server.

for normal hosting, one I have heard is REALLY good, is RackSpace http://www.rackspace.com

good luck though, I am spoiled by my plan, havent looked into normal hosting like this in a LONG time

Bumping this up to see if anyone has any new recommendations. I'm looking for something that's really turnkey...easy design templates and editing, shopping cart with merchant account, automated search engine submissions...basically, I won't have a lot of time to manage my site, but I still want it to look and operate professionally. ValueWeb's commerce account at $45-50 looks pretty good. Does anyone else have any recommendations?

iPowerWeb's site isn't very funcational. I had a hard time trying to figure out a comparable product on their site.

iPowerWeb's site isn't very funcational. I had a hard time trying to figure out a comparable product on their site.
What do you mean? They only offer one package and here's what you get (http://www.ipowerweb.com/products/webhosting/index.html).

One thing to watch out for with them though, the email address you use to register your account will be used in the domain name registration (if you register the domain through them). When you do the automatic search engine submissions that email address will be submitted to or captured by numerous spam mail lists and you'll start getting a ton of spam. I get about 100/day. I plan on transfering the domain to a different service and making it private to see if that helps. I've just been too lazy. I think the search engines are just pulling my email address off the domain registration and selling it off.

iPowerweb will keep your location and phone number private though, if you ask them to remove it. They don't really need it. But they do need an email address and refuse to hide it in the domain registration.

So, what you're saying is that this package is $7.95, when something similar over at ValueWeb costs about $45?!

I did see earlier in your comments about the spam, and that sort of irks me, but geez, that's a huge savings! Do you happen to know how much more it costs to open up a merchant account (I don't want to use PayPal as the primary payment method...I want to offer major credit cards as well)?

Bill, you also said earlier that you had set up the shopping cart...was that difficult? What payment methods were you planning on using?

Okay, I probably should just e-mail you directly with all these questions, but I thought I'd leave it here in case anyone else has similar needs.

I should've paid more attention when I was working with some web designers a few years ago....