Please help me in choosing web hosting

0xyGen · #1 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 02:21 AM

Hi everyone,
I am sorry for possible offtopic, but I need your help in find new web hosting provider as soon as possible, because my current host (bluehost.com) is kicking me off, they say 'your account is using a lot server resources', but my website gets only about 200 visitors per day and my disk usage is 1500 MB (maybe they do not like that?)

Anyway, what would be your recommendations for getting reliable web hosting? Where are you hosting your websites? Are you happy with your providers?

I am now checking Hosting24.com - First Class Web Hosting Services - offer looks very nice, but is it real that they can provide unlimited disk space?
I have contacted them about this question and they say something that "These days 500GB disk drive costs only $30 per month, so if some day we will run out of disk space we will simply add new 500GB disk drive with almost zero costs and you can continue uploading without any problems".

What do you think about it? Maybe things have changed in last 4 years? With my current provider I get only 2GB of disk space for $10 per month..
Any ideas and suggestions are much appreciated.

speed · #2 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 04:09 AM

Are you being kicked for disk, bandwidth or CPU usage, if it's CPU usage you'll likely get kicked from any budget provider.

I love the way hosts get confused over the difference between unlimited and unmetered transfer, on hosting24.com they say:

Quote:

Unlimited data transfer becomes normal these days too. Our internet service provider is giving us dedicated and unmetered 100 mpbs line on each server, so we can offer unlimited bandwidth for you to!

A 100mbps line is capable of around 30TB per month of data transfer so what they really mean is unmetered not unlimited, that is they don't monitor how much you transfer but there is a limit.

As there are hard limits on a server if you read the hosts terms they will almost always have a clause which says something about how many resources you can use over a given period of time, or you are subject to fair usage or something along those lines. They have to do that so they can kick people off who monopolise the server resources, e.g. CPU.

I did look but couldn't find their terms, but it brings us back to the original question of are you being kicked for bandwidth, disk or CPU and will the new host have a high enough limit for your site.

Have you also noticed that the forum, support and webmail links at the top of hosting24s pages all fail to work?

Personally I'd avoid any host claiming unlimited anything, Shared Hosting Offers - Web Hosting Talk - The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet has offers by various hosts.

GlowHost.com · #3 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 0xyGen

... but is it real that they can provide unlimited disk space?

The answer is an undeniable NO! When was the last time you went shopping for computers and found one that had hard drives with unlimited space?

There is always a finite space available on a hard drive and again, as the previous poster said, read the terms of service (if they even have one) typically on "unlimited" anything type hosting plans there is a some clause that states you will never ever be able to use what you thought you paid for.

With disk space there is most likely a limit on the number of inodes (AKA files and folders) that you can have on the site, a certain % of the files you have on the server must be linked from the website, there are likely restrictions of the file types you can store, for example, no .mp3 or files over 50 MB in size, etc.

Look for a hosting provider that does not sell unlimited hosting plans or offers unlimited hosting plans alongside realistic hosting plans that have true limits and you will find that you are a lot less likely to get kicked off of their service.

Here is an article you might enjoy.

glog » Blog Archive » Web Hosting - Why More Costs Less

ee222 · #4 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 05:58 PM

Please check out the best web hosting company on the web site at:

http://www.uswebcity.com/computers/top-web-hosting.html

...

GuaranteedTraffic · #5 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 05:59 PM

just as your host is restricting you for using too many resources

all the "unlimited" guys will restrict you if you use too much of thier "unlimited" resources too quickly.

what are you paying for hosting, i am sure a bud of mine would be happy to have your business and match the offer you had at blue.

GlowHost.com · #6 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ee222

Please check out the best web hosting company

You mean please check out the hosts that paid top dollar for those advertisements? What criteria do you have for adding them to your site? They pay a fee right? How does that make them the best?

ee222 · #7 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlowHost.com

What criteria do you have for adding them to your site? How does that make them the best?

Hello, the best are: one click - full web site backup, AWStats - web statistics, and transfer / bandwidth 15,000 GB.

activeco · #8 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 06:22 PM

There are (obviusly) several members here offering webhosting.
You could also check some specialized forum such as Web Hosting Talk - The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet.

Personally I use jaguarpc, being very satisfied with them, however I don't know about their support as I run/install all the programs and services by myself. A few minor issues were solved by their stuff very fast though.

craigmn3 · #9 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:15 PM

godaddy.com is the most affordable, most reliable and most helpful hoster that I have run across

I currently use
Hostway (boo)
Network Solutions (boo)
Bluehost (pretty good)
Hostgator (pretty good)
Ipowerweb (okay)
Prohosting (pretty good)
Yahoo (boo- way over priced)
Aplus (pretty good)

but godaddy gets the bulk of business, I just use the others to keep an independant look for the search engines on some of my sites.

John · #10 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by activeco

Personally I use jaguarpc, being very satisfied with them, however I don't know about their support as I run/install all the programs and services by myself. A few minor issues were solved by their stuff very fast though.

I use JaguarPC too after going through all the major ones and always finding they find some excuse trying to make you upgrade to a higher plan; either because you want a cron job, or this or that.

For me, they are just tops. Their support is the best and fastest I ever had, and I have hosted at about 4 other host before going to them.

One bit of advice, from my experience: it is worth paying a bit more for peace of mind. You can waste so much time trying to sort out troubles if you do not have a good support team or need to move again, even if it is upgrading with the same host.

Good luck

adenjo · #11 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 0xyGen

I am now checking Hosting24.com - First Class Web Hosting Services - offer looks very nice, but is it real that they can provide unlimited disk space?.

Rule#1 for me when choosing a host is do they have an obvious phone number listed on their website? I see that Hosting24 does not. If it were me, I would run away from them.

We have used webmasters.com since 1999 and their support and service has always been great.

that's my 2 cents...

thorfjalar · #12 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:30 PM

What about setting up your own server? With 200 visitors per day you should easily be able to handle it (if you are in the states and) if you got a broadband connection.

Oh and I use drupalvaluehosting.com, $60 for a year (with promo code) of unlimited number of domains/sites.

advancedmerchant · #13 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:37 PM

Avoid Hostway, I have gone down a dozen times in the last week! Grrrrr.

StevenRB · #14 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 0xyGen

... my current host (bluehost.com) is kicking me off, they say 'your account is using a lot server resources', but my website gets only about 200 visitors per day.

As someone who provides web hosting (which I will not promote here), I can tell you that any outfit *promising* unlimited bandwidth or disk space for a fixed price (whether that be $6.95 or $160.95) is a fraudster.

But there's no down-side for the $6.95/$9.95 hosting crowd, because the *vast* majority of websites on the planet get almost no traffic. Meanwhile, the types of folks who actually have traffic, but would go for such a lowball pitch in the first place, aren't going to:

a) Read the fine print,

b) Risk the expense of taking the host to court.

NJ · #15 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 07:47 PM

Good web hosting is really important, especically the technical support. So far, my worst experiences have been with Interland and GoDaddy.

I used to host with a great company called Communitech - in Missouri - but they were bought out by Interland. I would go to teach a web development class, and instead of the class materials I loaded on the web server, I would get the word Taurus up in the corner of the page. I have current experience with a site on Interlands servers, and they are down way too much of the time.

GoDaddy's tech support should get some real computer training. I was scheduled to teach a PHP/MySQL class, and I should have just figured their system out without calling tech support. They steered me wrong so many times, I had to cancel a session.

I use Modwest.com for many of the sites I work on. They are responsive and answer my questions with real answers (real computer geeks means I get a real answer), not something someone looks up in a database.

amxfan · #16 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 08:04 PM

Ipowerweb (okay) ?????? I have to ask how can you say this. I had 3 sites on Ipower and have moved all but one of them. Try and call them and your on hold for about 2 hours for them to tell you we will fix it but never do. Call billing or sales and your also on hold forever. They have been hacked in the past 3 months more times then one can count. They have been updating to a new Vdeck version for over a year which causes your site and email go down. A few years ago they were okay with good support and service but today is another matter.

Don't take my word for it. Google "Ipowerweb sucks" or "Ipowerweb hack" and make up your own mind.

Oh one more thing. Reports from FreeWebMonitoring.com on the one site that is still on Ipower

Time: 2008-06-07 17:02:46
Time on Error: 04 hours 11 minutes 02 seconds
Time: 2008-06-07 12:51:43
Time on Error: 02 hours 55 minutes 24 seconds
Time: 2008-05-26 03:27:47
Time on Error: 05 hours 05 minutes 50 seconds
Time: 2008-02-12 00:04:25
Time on Error: 02 hours 32 minutes 06 seconds

These are just the ones I saved.

Check out host Gator, but yes I have to agree depending on why your being asked to leave you may find it with them as well.

tenntrips · #17 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by craigmn3

Prohosting (pretty good)

Prohosting BIG BOO...
Hosted with them and some idiot switched off my site and deleted all the files, even though I was paid up, and WAY under their limits...
Thank heaven for backups!!

Unfortunately google crawled while I was out and my search listing went from #4 to PAGE 104..

Now I'm on Site5 and have been pretty happy. Only an occasional outage which usually for only a few minutes.

SEO · #18 (**permalink**) 06-26-2008, 08:15 PM

If I was you... I would be working things out with Bluehost.
In my opinion they are one of the best hosts around.
I got pulled up by them for using too many server resources a while ago (CPU usage). When I went and had a look at some of my websites they were very slow to load. You will find that a lot of third party widgets on your site can cause this problem. Some of those Amazon widgets (especially the tags widget) etc. can use up a lot of your hosts CPU resources.