morefood2001

Today I suppose its time to give a thorough analysis of my experience with different hosts.  I have had several hosting providers in my 5 years in dealing with hosting and isps.  This is part 1 of my hosting service series!Back in 2004 when I was first looking at hosts, there weren't many hosts around, so I had 4 choices that I found, all of which I have used.  They included Yahoo, IPowerWeb, 3ix, and Bluehost.  Later on, I have also tried or seen host gator, host monster, webhostingbuzz, reyox, anhosting, a2b2, dot5hosting, and godaddy.  Perhaps the worst host out of the above hosts is Godaddy.  John a month ago ordered a godaddy hosting account with linux due to no TOS restrictions on file storage space.  We were looking for an off site ftp service.  Godaddy has a custom control panel that is in a secure section of their site, so over a sattelite link, the ssl connection will make their control panel very slow, on top of the already slow speeds of the control panel.  Once into the control area, they give you access to only your public html directory, and allow very limited control of your account.  FTP accounts are server wide, so they need to approve your account additions which takes a lot of time.  I also suspect that godaddy oversells their servers excessively due to the slow speeds.  I would never recommend them.  John requested money back, and luckily got it back after  7 days and a lot of verifications.Yahoo is very similar to Godaddy for hosting.  They hosted a client's site of mine for 3 years before I transferred them to my server.  Yahoo has their own custom panel, server wide ftp accounts, and very limited control over your account.  I managed to get the files off the server for this client via ftp, however ftp timed out frequently and it was very hard.  There was no online file manager to make and download an archive unlike godaddy.  I would not recommend Yahoo in the least.Next up is IPowerWeb.  IPW has been around the longest that I am aware of.  IPW uses VDeck for hosting.  Its very windows like and overall, I like IPW's hosting.  It was very easy to add / remove ftp, email and domain accounts.  I have not used windows through IPW, however I hear that windows is also great through IPW.  I only have one small complaint, and that is that their human verification system takes days to get your account set up, support times are roughly 3 to 5 hours via email and 30 minutes via phone.  I might recommend IPW under the right circumstances. (Ipowerweb.com)Dot5Hosting is a reseller of Ipowerweb hosting.  Their service is also great, however support times and speeds are not as great as IPW's, however are very acceptable compared to other hosting companies.I have seen Host Gator through a friend of mine.  (hostgator.com).  HG seemed to be a good quality host for the cost, and they had relatively fast support times.  They used cpanel, so most hosting requirements were easy to meet.HostMonster like HG, I have only seen through a friend's account.  Like HG, it has relatively fast support and good speed through the cpanel management system.WebHostingbuzz (webhostingbuzz.com): I was with them for 3 months on their budget plan.  I could not complain about their speed, support times, or cpanel interface.  They had support responses within 5 minutes, and they had speeds up to 20Mbps.  However, I found out why they can do that for so little, they scan their servers very frequently for accounts that don't link files to their website's main page through any other pages, etc.  They deleted my account for one image that wasn't linked to a page, which was there for no more than 2 days without a link.  I would not recommend them because of this unless you are careful.  I also got no refund for my year prepay. I also have tried Anhosting (anhosting.com), and I was satisfied with them enough to where I recommended them to John.  During my time with them, I had 10 minute responses to support tickets, a cpanel interface, and great speed that likely matched 20Mbps.  However a few weeks ago, John was cited for not linking his files to a page, and he had roughly 30GB of files, so I'm uncertain about how I'd recommend them.  I'd say they are ok, but don't store files on their site.A good friend recommended BlueHost to me years ago (bluehost.com).  Bluehost continually upgrades their service to bigger and better plans, and their ceo posts on his own blog and the forum.  Support times range from 10 to 15 minutes, while live support is generally quicker through their main website page.  My friend hosts a huge website, and allows me to store 10GB of my own files there also.  His entire account in cpanel shows 45GB of disk usage and its been that much now for the past 2 years.  Bluehost does not monitor their servers for disk usage unless someone else complains.  Bluehost uses cpanel and only the latest hardware.  I would recommend bluehost for a high end, affordable host with lots of features.  They even installed a custom php extension for us within 12 hours!a2b2 hosting is my main backup storage host.  I just got an account through them because of affordable backup space.  So far I have not had any complaints, however at this this point, I can't decide in favor or not of them.Back in 2005, when I wanted an affordable windows host, I turned to reyox.  Reyox was a great host, centered in Jacksonville, Florida.  I actually was invited into their facility to see my server while I was in Jacksonville.  Their support was very quick and friendly.  Their network was also fast.  Their main downfall was that they used Helm.  Helm is a windows control panel, and I had a lot of trouble using it to manage files, and I also had trouble with my reseller billing system that they set up for me.  I'd recommend them first if you want cheap windows hosting.  Much of their website has changed since I used them. (reyox.com)Finally, last but not least, my favorite host.  I started with 3ix.org for their price (who can beat 1 dollar a month today)??  (3ix.org) has always had 1 dollar hosting, although their plan was upgraded from 500MB in 2004 to 10GB today.  Their site however is mainly unchanged.  Their support times range from 1 hour to 6 hours, and this isn't bad for their price.  Phone support is nearly instant, but I hope you can understand their broken english.  Overall, their cpanel interface is great, and I still have 2, 1 dollar accounts with them for stuff that I'd rather keep off from my dedicated technology.  I'd strongly recommend them to any beginner with registration services from godaddy.  Domain Registration Time: Yahoo and godaddy are also domain registers.  I strongly recommend their domain services.  Another domain provider that uses a godaddy interface is fxdomains (fxdomains.com).  I also like dnsexit (dnsexit.com) because they offer free dynamic dns with an updater software so you can host from home.  Ipowerweb also provides very cheap domain registration, however I moved my domains from them because their domains take 3 days to set up (on top of the 48 hour propogation period) since they human verify every order.  However IPW does have a nice, quick domain panel through their tucows reseller account.Thats all I have to say about hosting for now.  I have tried other hosts too but I can't remember their names, and their service sucked (response time spiked to infinity frequently!).Up next, I'm going to blog about vps hosting, look for that tomorrow :)  Overall, I recommend looking at a vps before hosting on shared hosting.