Website Hosting Services - Who Do You Use? Fed Up With Mine.

[RockRiverTiff]

I'm officially fed up with Domain Acres. I purchased my domain through them a few years ago and renewed it today. I used to have paid hosting through them, but for whatever reason apparently it didn't renew the last time my domain registration auto-renewed, so they've been putting tacky ads all over the site. Today when I renewed my domain again I also purchased a hosting upgrade. It would seem obvious that that upgrade is for the only domain I have registered through them right - especially since I paid for a renewal of the domain in the same transaction. Apparently not. When I checked my account info after the purchase was confirmed, it showed that they had opened a new account for the hosting upgrade. I sent their support department a message asking how I could apply that upgrade to my existing account/domain and got a long email back saying I would have to cancel the new hosting account and request a refund and then make a second upgrade purchase through a very specific process used to ensure it was applied to my existing domain. They also told me that my site would go down if I cancelled the hosting account, which makes no sense since the whole problem is that it wasn't applied to the site in the first place! Gah!!! Since I just renewed my registration for a couple years, I figured I might as well just suck it up and do it, but when I went to cancel the hosting account I got a pop-up confirmation message informing me that if I cancelled I would NOT receive a refund. I filed a complaint through Paypal's resolution center, but honestly I just want to be done with this company. What registration service/hosting company is everyone else using for their websites??

 

[Jill]

I've used Earthlink for over a decade. It's about $20 a month and is never down.

 

[sfmini]

I have used fatcow.com for $99 per year. Been more than happy with them.

 

[Lizzie]

We have used SuccessfulHosting for many years now. I usually suggest all my website clients go with them also. No down times either.

Lizzie

 

[RockRiverTiff]

Thank you for the suggestions guys! A friend of mine also suggested Earthlink tonight, but I'm going to take a look at the websites/services of all three. Can't remember why I went with DomainAcres in the first place, but I noticed tonight browsing their site/trying to solve the problem myself that their own site loads very slowly - not a good sign!

 

[Minimor]

I was with one company that was charging me $16.95 per month, but in November I changed to a local lady who does her hosting with a US company--I thought she said it is through GoDaddy but I am not sure about that. In any case I paid her $53 which covers a full year of webhosting plus one year of domain name registration. I'm very pleased with her service--so far no down time at all and everything has been problem free. Not only that but uploading changes to my site is much, much easier than it was before.

 

[kristen_tg]

Inmotionhosting. We use them for our studio. I think for the type of solution you need it's maybe $5/month or something, and I'm pretty sure you can get IMAP instead of the usual awful POP email protocol for that.

I do NOT suggest going through any sort of reseller (sounds like what you've got, Minimor) Problem with reseller accounts is you're one step removed from the actual company doing the hosting. If I were to act as a reseller here are some possible scenarios:

1) If my root account gets terminated by the host for a TOS violation, your account goes poof too. You aren't the hosting company's customer, they don't even know (or care) who you are. ZERO recourse.

2) I can use the root privledges to read your email- incoming AND outgoing.

3) I can switch off your account anytime it pleases me.

This question comes up often enough on the forum sometimes I debate offering little parcels to folks (since all you need is space and some bandwidth and nothing else) but the potential for drama always scares me off. "Hey, all I did was upload this cool-looking script that promised to do amazing things and..."

I hope you're the one who actually has access to the domain name settings too, otherwise it might be happy fun times trying to get it under your SOLE control exclusive of whomever you're hosting with.

 

[Shari]

I have been using GoDaddy.com for 5 years now, and have been very happy with them.

 

[MountainWoman]

I use Liquid Web for my main blog and they are incredible. I went over bandwith amounts with photos and they just put my blog on a larger server for free. They are wonderful to work with and I rarely if ever have down times and but on the rare occasion I do they email and let me know why and when I'll be back up and running.

 

[Carolyn R]

I use ihoststudio but need to shut down my site since I no longer need it. I have been very happy with them. $9.99 a month.

 

[Marsha Cassada]

We use hostgator.com - best move we ever made and been with them for several years now..

Web guru guy we know also recommended hostgator.

But we've been with Hostroute for about 14 years now. Besides our personal web, I also have an account with them for the Oklahoma Button Society website. It think it is $15 a year. Never have any trouble with it. No ads. It doesn't go down. I have the basic package, but there are plenty of upgrades.

http://blog.hostroute.com/

 

[Davie]

I've used Yahoo Small Business for years (Used to be Geocities). It has lots of space, is $19.25/mo but I was talking to them and was able to save about 20% when I paid it a year in advance. Love all the help they give me when I have problems or it comes to doing an upgrade to the website as I'm quite dumb at this.

 

[Kim~Crayonboxminiatures]

I use Yahoo Small Business also and I'm very happy with it, I started back with it was geocities and I had a free website, I pay monthly fee.

 

[Craig]

Another you might want to consider is Dreamhost. I've used them for several years now, and I've never had a problem. They're incredibly reliable, my site has never seemed to be slow or to have any down time. They're fairly inexpensive as well.

 

[RockRiverTiff]

Just wanted to thank everybody again! I've got some homework to do!

 

[lil hoofbeats]

I use webs.com and am very happy with mine, it is completely free, and fairly simple to use, i do mine myself