It seems finding a GOOD web hosting company is one heck of a challenge these days. There are so many offering amazing service, which turns out to just be yet another reseller squeezing even more accounts onto an already overloaded server.

Can someone recommend a host which offers php, mysql, reliable email & web servers, and a nice chunk of bandwidth.

Of course, they all say they offer this, but I (and I'm sure many others) would like to know of one that is actually good at what they do.

Thanks!

I have been quite happy with DewaHost (www.dewahost.com). I've only been with them for about 3 months, but they have been incredibly reliable and their tech support is excellent. Their prices are very competative. They also have the FileBurst service if you need more bandwidth for downloads, and it is very reasonably priced also.

Many ASP members use and recommend pair.com. I've never used them, but my wife recently switched to them for her site a few months ago, and she's been very pleased with them.

For extra bandwidth you can always use fileburst.com ($1 per GB) or getafile.com ($3 per GB). These services are designed specifically for file downloads.

I use webaxxs.net, I don't know if they are just a reseller, or if they are that competitive, but I haven't had any problems that I can think of. I like their reporting tools, and I reckon I have 99.9% uptime (a few hours down over a period of 1 and a half years).

Originally posted by cliffski
I use webaxxs.net, I don't know if they are just a reseller

Actually, they are a reseller. I can't rembmer who the actual host is, but it used be that if you went into the Control Panel demo, it would take you to another site. If you poked around and went to the home directory of that site, you saw that they offered the exact same packages. They seem to have fixed the control panel now, so it doesn't do that any more.

If you go with webaxxs, you would definitely want to get a separate download account. When I spoke with them, they told me that if you go over the bandwidth limit, they just take your site down for the remainder of the month rather than charge you a per GB fee.

I use www.dzones.net they're pretty good. Lots of features, web space, and bandwidth for a reasonable price. And tech support is pretty good too. Also they upgrade their servers and plans once in a while, and you can just email them to move you to a new server with all the new features free of charge. I've done that twice so far. :) Signed up for 150 megs of space and 5 gigs of bandwidth and now i have 250 megs and 8 gigs of bandwidth for no extra charge. They also give you a static IP for the site.

I use FutureQuest (http://www.futurequest.net). They're very supportive of people who want to telnet in and develop on the box itself. Cron, java, php, perl, c/c++, mysql, etc. They also will allow you to set up a second domain to a subdirectory for $25. For example, www.secondaccount.com is actually www.mainaccount.com/secondaccount. This is a feature I was hunting for. :D I also considered Jumpline (www.jumpline.com).

I have run my web based business on www.cyberworldhost.com for nearly 3 years.

I've looked at various other solutions each time I set up another website and have decided to stay with this company.

When I compare features to other hosts it seems cyberworld looks pretty good

for basic $9.95 account you get 100MB space support for ASP, ASP.NET, PHP. A SQL Server account etc. I can't see if MySQL is offered

They used to offer a linux basic account but I can't see it now

see http://www.cyberworldhost.com/995.asp

I started at basic and moved up to semi-dedicated as my biz grew.

I've been with pair.com for about a year, and it's worked out really well. You can start el-cheapo ($5.95/month) and work your way up to custom cgis and credit cards from there. I've only had to contact their service people a couple of times, but they've done well by me thus far.

I've gone through Selectedhosting.com for about 8 months now. $19.99 a month for 300 megs of storage, all the blah blahs, and unlimited traffic. Let me qualify their unlimited traffic deal. Unlike other providers (like CIHost.com) that advertise unlimited traffic but exempt images and files, Selected follows through on their promise. I had a couple months where the site i had there did 100+ gigs worth of file transfers and it wasn't a problem. Before that we would do 2 to 3 gigs of traffic a day with no problems at all.

Their tech support is top notch as well. I've called them up at 2am with a problem and they had it fixed in about 10 minutes. Their turn around time has always been less than 12 hours when it comes to fixing issues.

I really can't say enough about how great these guys are, they're fantastic.

Specifically regarding file hosting:

Has anyone had any particular experience with fileburst vs getafile?

Fileburst is cheaper, but getafile "seems" more trustworthy to me... and have been around longer. I definitely want fast and reliable file downloads - I'm wondering if the extra expense is worth it.



BTW, for web hosting I use Dellhost. I'm pretty happy with them, except that I find that on some internet connection it takes a while before the site starts loading - which is strange, since once it starts loading it pops up immediately. Never could figure that one out.