Know of a good Web hosting provider?

I have several websites at http://www.icdsoft.com, they are fabulous, have a support ticketing system that is truly unreal - with answers to questions from the high tech to the mundane withint a few minutes, literally. I recommend them without reservation.

Now that TSS is offering donated hosting services by Concentric, I wonder if anyone has had any experience with them.

It takes resources to move from one host to another. Might not be worth it just to get the free year if the tech support and level of service are not there.

Thanks,

JMR

Gee, after looking at all the suggestions and not seeing the ones who host my sites, I'm concerned. I'm not unhappy with my hosting provider, but I may be paying more than I should. Can you give me some feedback on web.com and brinkster.com?

I'm hosting a web based database ( Tutor/Mentor Program Locator) on Brinkster and it is often very slow to open. I'm not sure if it is because others are using it at the same time, or if my hosting provider does not have enough power.

Can you offer me a suggestion, or an alternative?

Love Ipower.com great extras and the price is right....7.95 per month....they have all the service you would ever need too. cneer

We use Infoplex Communications, a "boutique ISP" in central Iowa, (http://www.infoplex.com). Sometimes you can luck out and work with a technology expert who works with non-profits as a personal *passion*.

The article appears to be a list of things to scare you into switching to an expensive and very professional service company. We have an 8 year history with our current ISP and while he is small, he helps us with technology at every turn, even making sure we can easily move the site to another host (general Perl/PHP/mySQL solutions) so that we are not "trapped" for the future.

His prices are also much lower than other hosts we've checked into. (Less than $10/mo for a site on a shared host that he maintains... not a reseller of services.)

If you are fortunate to be so cared for, stick with the people who care for you. If you're starting with no experience, this article can help.

I posted a reply to this yesterday, just to share my experience with my hosting provider. My post showed up after I submitted it, but seems to have gone missing today. So I'll just mention again that I have very happily used JaguarPC for several years now.

Customer service, the very few times I have contacted them has been responsive, pages load fast, their rates are very low and they have essentially unlimmited disk space. The specs on their data center according to their web site are pretty impressive.

I can't remember the last time our web site was down.

In case my last message was zapped because the moderator thought it was spam, I don't work for JaguarPC, I am an IT Director at a non-profit in NY providing services for adults with disabilities.

Ralph S

I am using A2Hosting and they seem to be verry suited to my needs. I am able to sell space to clinents, and I am able to use some of the space as way of archiving unreplaceable files. For about $20 a month I have 25GB of space and Bandwidth of 250GB for uploading/downloading.

My website WWW.WrightImages.Com uses a database containing my DVD Movie Reviews that uses a Postgres Database environment that many servers did not support, that this web hoster does. Their tech department was also very helpful as well as I am legally blind.

I used Ipowerweb for several years. Rarely did I have any trouble with the site or email. I switched to WebHostingBuzz.com about a year ago because I needed the flexibility of multiple URL's on the same account. They also have mailing lists, unlimited emails, umlimited sub-URLs (i.e. theatre.destinationtc.org) and many more program options. The price is also great! I would whole-heartedly recommend either of these hosts (depending on what the specific nedds of a company were).

Notice that they said that they asked 7 nonprofits for their favorite...they were choosing from literally hundreds. My suggestion would be to search others prices and features. No one host is right or best for everyone. Like I said in another post, I started out with IPowerWeb and switched to WebHostingBuzz becuase my needs changed and WHB provided the additional tools I needed for my current site.

I utilized LunarPages for about seven years and loved them.  Then, all of a sudden, LP became a nightmare (shortly after this article came out, actually).  They had a set of programs that you could install from your control panel and we used one of these programs.  It was a poll script.  Being that we could install it right from the CP, we figured it was safe to use.  I would go back and check for updates once a month. 

Well, in May 2008, our poll got hacked.  We disabled the poll script.  In the process of doing this, LP must've seen we got hacked and shut our site down (even though the problem had been fixed hours earlier).  I contacted them, confirmed that the script was still safe to reinstall and use, and they put us back online and I installed the poll script again.

About a month later, we had a problem where our Cute News script got hacked.  LP notified us and told us they were able to rectify the problem and not to worry about it.

Then, about a month after that, the poll script we installed from their CP and checked for updates on monthly, got hacked again.  LP took our site down and kicked us off their servers.  No notice was provided nor was a warning given.  They failed to take responsibility for a script they vouch for getting hacked twice and being the main source of the problem.  They said they had a very strict three strikes rule in these cases and they don't take into account how long a customer has been with them with no problems.

So, we had three issues in a three month period, two of which were caused by software they encourage you to use, and they boot a customer of seven years with no previous history.  The best part is that they wouldn't take responsibility for the poll script but after I raised a stink, they took it off the CP by the next day.  It's a shame they choose to punish their customers over an issue that started with the company.

I went to IPOWER after that and have had more timely customer service and they are much less technical.

As for email, I have 2 words: Google Apps. It's completely free for registered 501(c)3's and offers up to 25 GB per account of on server storage. It is simply head and shoulders above any email hosting that costs less than $5/account/month (adds up quickly), but the word of the day ... it's free! You really can't go wrong and the added ability of sharing documents using Google Docs, is simply unmatchable in the current web environment.

Though for website design, I feel completely different. I think it is best (especially for small to mid-sized non-profits) to go with a boutique web design/web development company that has a strong presence in the non-profit sector. One specific company I've worked with, 360 PSG (www.360psg.com), puts out pretty slick designs, works well with 3rd party designers if need be, and most importantly has a very strong, always growing "Web System" that has alot of strong features as is and can add 'specialty' customizations relatively inexpensively.

Web Hosting is mucho cheap these days.  I would stay away from Google for email because they already have too much information.  I don't feel comfortable with google reading my business emails.  I have used tons of web hosting providers and in the end settled with one that my friend recommended.  If you want, you can look into my provider - Chime Hosting.  Make sure to get all questions answered before you sign-up because as websites gain too much traffics, providers start getting picky.  I had my site suspended in past because of too much cpu usage and guess what, I was just running a blog.  haha.

I was recently evaluating web hosts for a couple of organizations (and myself). Besides research into the features each host offered, I had trouble figuring out customers' overall happiness with the hosts. So I did a survey of numerous large hosting providers, combining the reviews from several large webhost review sites. In case anyone would find it useful, it's at www.blazingmoon.org/news/2009/07/choosing-a-web-host/.

I agreed Homestead is terrific. I have used them for several clients. However GoDaddy, Yahoo Small Business, MSN Live, Google Sites, and Coffee Cup are also worth taking a look at before making a decision. When making a decision, the following are criteria are must haves with any provider:

•  Stability and reliability      •  Communication   
•  Security                              •  Technical Support
•  Ease of use                      •  Space & Tools

-  La'Shon
   www.visuals4u.com

I've been using livehost for quite sometime now and it works quite really good and convinient for me.

 

You try to look and see for yourself.

 

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