Forum Moderators: phranque
In no order of merit:
interland.com
pair.com
verio.com
westhost.com
Basically, I'm looking for good uptimes, fast servers/connections, good tech support and ease of use/management. If you have any other to suggest, feel free.. (please, no resellers, etc. only original servers.)
Hostpro:
No complaints.
They give you a nice admin control panel (at least for Win2K servers) where you can do most all folder permissions, database setups, reinstall FrontPage extensions, etc. yourself (no need to call support).
The email control panel is very complex, but has a listserv feature and lots of other features.
Support is near instant on the phone and they are quite good. They actually understand FrontPage and IIS, unlike most pure UNIX sys admins (I still use FP for a couple of low-budget sites).
Things were rough during the HostPro merger/migration last year, but it has been smooth sailing for many months now. No downtwime that I've been aware of. Lots of features and options for your accounts (they are BIG and well funded). And they seem to stay on top of all the new technologies.
I'd say they are about as good as you can expect a huge hosting service to be, without being really great.
Verio:
Hate their support! Fast, but useless. It's like the inquisition - you will always be guilty of reporting a non-existent problem until you prove otherwise, if the tek will listen to you.
Then you have to prove it's not Microsoft's fault or your fault.
And some of the low level teks are not good, but you can't speak to the high level ones, until you talk the low level ones into escalating your case, then you get the real tek's email a day or two later, sluffing off the problem and closing the case. When you respond, they need all the details of your case all over again, with all the proofs that it's not your own fault. Hate It! (feel my pain yet?)
Their FrontPage forms email handlers fail regularly. I had to go to ASP forms, Access/ASP databases for feedback forms and ASP email handlers for all my Verio clients.
Verio goes down once in a while for us. Not for long or very often.
I would not recommend Verio.
HTH...
interland.com
pair.com
verio.com
westhost.com
All of these companies offer lots of products. Interland is considered the king at Windows products. When HostPro purchased them they accuired a rather good unix product called Freedom.
Verio offers great dedicated hosting accounts. They used to be the best you could find on the market.
Pair is known for the price, if you are looking for price go there.
WestHost offers basic hosting. Nothing to special.
I've tried several other hosts over the past while and I always wind up moving my sites over to my pair account at some point.
Pair also allows you to set multiple domains on one account and seperate the logs and mailboxes etc. Pair may seem a little pricey at first but once you setup a dozen sites on one account you find it's really quite reasonable for what you get.
It goes without saying that you get cgi, mysql and all the bells and whistles.
Tech support is pretty good and if you sign up for a large enough account you even get phone support. Called them just today and wait time on hold was about 1 minute.
that is the only thing they are missing. When you ftp in you see everything so it doesn't work well for hosting client sites unless you want to maintain total control.
I've been hosting one site with them since the Summer of '97. Awesome uptime, although a few years back I wasn't happy with the fact that there was no customer service line to call (that's since changed) when there were problems, so I started to try other hosts. After trying at least 7 others, pair is still best overall: I just wish they'd offer ColdFusion or ASP hosting, but they're smart enough to stay with their strengths.
If you wanted to a host an HTML site, no CGI or any programming at all, they are absolutely the best place I've found, at the best rate, the FTP package - $4.95 a month, how can you argue that??
No problems with the site uptime itself. But email hasn't always been as good.
Just moved one client from Verio to Interland due to frustration at trying to deal with Verio's support team.
So far, we've been happy with the service at Interland. The support team has answered our quesions promptly and no downtime that I'm aware of. Interland does like tend to focus on Windows products. (all our clients are on Unix servers)
We have a number of clients at WestHost. Until recently (past two months)I have been very happy with WestHost. They provided basic service at a good price. Support always responded promptly via e-mail to questions. Over the past two months it has been impossible to get any response out of the support team. Hopefully this clears up soon.
My reasons are that I had heard so so reviews from folks who used the ones you're thinking about. I needed control over my web space (shell access) and wanted a host who would respond quickly to me when I got myself stuck - even if it was via email. I'd heard that the folks you're considering would take a few days or didn't provide very good responses. That scared me off.
I don't want to sound like an ad and in fact, I have no affiliation with PHPWebhosting, but I've got 6 web sites (4 clients) with them and have been super satisfied. I encourage you to check them out.
No comment about the others as I havn't used them.
