Joined on 01-06-2003
TechSoup Member
I'll toss in my recommendation of
http://www.1and1.com
They're inexpensive and huge. Meaning they have quite a large infrastructure in place so you're less likely to have outages than if you go with a small hosting shop down the street.
The one caveat I have to mention is that their interface isn't the most friendly but it's not the worst I've seen.
Jason Morrill
IT Manager
Child & Family Agency
Joined on 12-18-2002
TechSoup Member
I have ten websites with this provider - http://www.icdsoft.com/
They are never down to my knowledge and if I post a question it rarely takes longer than 5 minutes to get a reply. They have helped my through many a complicated installation.
John
Back Channel Press
www.backchannelpress.com
Joined on 08-09-2006
TechSoup Member
Cost 240$ with a CMS and Design and 1 GB Space.
http://www.cmstechnologics.com/demo/caringshandshome/index.php
Apart from the above you can view the Administration system to manage your website at.
http://www.cmstechnologics.com/demo/caringshandshome/admin/
UserId/Email : admin@localhost.com
Password admin1
Joined on 02-11-2005
TechSoup Member
Folks,
Please let the "lower you pay model-it must be better" rest. We offer free Hosting services for non-profits and I always remind clients to check the service response records for the resources they need to implement (content publishing, donations, administration controls).
Your time is worth something and it's reflected in the business model of most Hosting providers to reduce their per person allowance.
Joined on 08-16-2006
TechSoup Member
http://bluehost.com -- I've used them and love their customer support, features, & bandwidth...
Just my 2 cents.
And one more recommendation -- once your site is up, add a link to [SELF-PROMOTIONAL LINK REFERENCE REMOVED BY ADMIN.]
Sophia
Sophia,
While you are entitled to your recommendation of bluehost.com, as the moderator of this forum I will ask you to please remove your recommendation of mygive.org, as we don't allow advertising anywhere on our forums.
Your previous message in the Fundraising forum was a solicitation for mygive.org, and that message has been removed from that forum.
Please read our
community rules before posting your next message on our forums.
Thanks,
Yann
Joined on 11-21-2005
TechSoup Member
I also want to reccomend ICDSoft. Prices are good and techsupport is knowledgable and very fast in their response times (usually a matter of 5-10 minutes). Always compare and ALWAYS read reviews from trusted independent sites.
Chris Brackett
Joined on 07-20-2006
TechSoup Member
This is a great topic. I am blurry eyed from reading dozens of on-line reviews and, just when I target a highly rated, affordable hosting company meeting our needs, I look further and find an entire web site devoted to blasting them out of business. One thought comes to mind, once a hosting company gets a high rating it's business suddenly increases, it's tech support then suffers (as well as reliability) and they then experience a backlash from unhappy customers.
Now a question - do you suspect that some of the rating companies have their ratings influenced by those they are rating through something akin to "payola"? I want to find the most reliable and disinterested rating web site (or even a print publication)
Your opinions?
Most of the web hosting ratings sites are all affiliate sites. If you click on the links and become a customer they get a commission. One clue about this aside from looking at the links closely to see the affiliate codes is the fact that all the reviews are generally very good.
You have a number of recommendations from those of us that have used hosts and had good experiences. Using that information and checking out the ones we mention should provide you with many choices from which to pick one.
Hosts I can currently using and recommend are:
Hostforweb.com
Hostgator.com
Coastinc.com
Bfgweb.com
Joined on 05-09-2006
TechSoup Member
I second the 1&1 recommendation and have been very pleased with them for three years.
Joined on 07-20-2005
Hartford, CT
I like
MyWebDept.com's approach. Very web 2.0. They are local to me and I've done some work for their infrastructure needs. Very easy to work with.
Joined on 07-20-2006
TechSoup Member
I am perplexed at some of the recommendations here. My budget is about $100.00 /year for hosting. This means I am looking at features from companies that push their lowest monthly rate for my budget goal of around $6.00 to $8.00 as the bait. The first specs I look at are base storage and max transfer. There is an incredibly wide range. Some companies mentioned give a paltry 100 mb (storage) / 1.5 gb (transfer) whereas others for the same price (and receiving good reviews) offer 3 gb / 50 gb. (or better) which in terms of ratios means 30 to 1 times more for the same money. Why would anyone host with limited capacities when for the same price they can get more capacity and bandwidth than they may immediately need? Although one can perhaps accurately predict one's storage requirement, it is much harder to guess the bandwidth ceiling, particularly if one puts up an extraordinarily exciting site that includes some downloads and highly active email accounts. My organization is small right now but suppose I strike gold with my web design and get swamped with hits? I want some pad for storage and bandwidth – not just a bare minimum for starters.
In considering this, I am thinking maybe the companies in the lower end of the range do not have as many clients and therefore may be more reliable and responsive giving them a great track record. But they are also smaller and more at risk from the competition of the big boys with the big cheap plans. There's no question that some of the highly rated and majorly promoted companies all have at least a few really horrible negative reviews, but with so many clients one would expect that. Yes I'm rambling, but these are concerns I have not heard addressed in any of the "how-to-select-a-host" readings.
We provide NP's with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth.
Price: Free.
See also http://www.google.com/a
Great emails, IM, chat, and google page creator.
hth,
jimandy,
Your concerns are quite valid. Cost is a concern, but other things like service, server downtime, "overselling", and what other sites are hosted on the same server may also impact your hosting experience.
There is no sure answer, since your milage may vary. I offered 3-4 of the hosting companies that I currently use and have been satisfied with. I didn't list a couple others which I have had problems with to some degree. One is a host that costs $10 a month and the other is a host that costs me $30 a month. All of the ones I listed I am paying about $20 a month. They range from 1-2GB disk and 20-50GB bandwidth. And these are reseller accounts where I can host as many sites as I want for one flat fee.
I know there are a LOT of other good hosts and I have collected a list of sites to check if I need a new one.
From my experience, most sites are going to use upto 5-10GB of bandwidth a month, if they are pretty big. Most of my 40+ sites are < 1GB but one has hit 40GB in past months, but that's very rare in my experience. If you think you may need lots of space and bandwith and you don't have to pay too much for it, then I'd get it now. One the other hand, it's generally not too much trouble to move a site, unless you have a lot of POP3 mailboxes, a database backend, or a large, complicated site.
I think at this point you have more than enough choices, now it's a question of how do you determine exactly what you really need and then how to choose someone based on as much information as you can find out about them.
Joined on 07-20-2006
TechSoup Member
Your advice is greatly appreciated. I have now moved past looking at specs and pricing. Just learned that one company high on my list was started by a person of questionable background. He was a co-partner in a hosting company that went belly up several years back and so he re-opened with a new company name. I am now reviewing all on the "short list" to see if I can determine the names of the founders/owners, length in business and if they give a locatable business address.
I am curious about hosting reseller programs. How do I know that a hosting company I might do business with is not re-selling me a package that he bought from a company that I could have bought from directly at a lower price? And does the re-seller have the same control over the actual physical facilities as the wholesaler? Doesn't it add a second "hop" in the tech support link?