What's a good web hosting company really?

killua · #1 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 03:45 AM

I've been doing a lot of research about hosting companies, reliable ones.

I've seen many hosting reviews and found out that some of the best cheap companies were:
Lunarpages.com
Ipowerweb.com or ipower.com
globat.com
dot5hosting.com

My question are the following:
1. Dot5hosting.com is a reseller of Ipowerweb.com. Some people say go for dot5hosting since it offers almost the same as those ipowerweb.com and with a cheaper price. My question is, what is better, a reseller or the original?

2. From many hosting reviews, Ipowerweb.com ranks #1 in many sites. If so, how come there are sites and people who says Ipowerweb.com is not good and very bad if it ranks Top 1?

3. I found a website called www.hostdetective.net. Many top shared hosting listed there are not popular but ranked so high. And I was amazed when I didn't find any list of popular hosts like ipowerweb.com. Does it mean that big companies aren't always good?

4. I kinda like Webzpro http://www.webzpro.com/shared.htm (the 3.95 dollar plan). My question now is what's better, Ipowerweb.com OR Webzpro? If Webzpro is better, why many people in these forums said that hosts offering less than 5 dollars have no good support and won't last long in business?

One other thing, webzpro.com and many other hosts in hostdetective.net don't have their own datacenters unlike ipowerweb or lunarpages. Mostly are hosted in theplanet.com. Is that good?

I hope you can clarify me with all of this.

Thanks.

Jonathan VanSchaack · #2 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 06:29 AM

1.
I'd suggest reading reviews on both, one might have better tech support then the other. One thing a reseller cant provide that the original can is a new server when the one your on is maxed. The reseller normally has to wait for the original to move their accounts over.

2.
Many review sites are not actually review sites at all, they are just high bidder sites.
Basicly these sites will get high rankings in google and other search engines for good search terms then sell off there top10 spots to other companies. These big companies have the advertising revenue to buy all these slots. Ipowerweb is a big name basicly becasue they have the ad money to spend. Some of those review sites sell top spots for close to $10,000 a month. Another reason these big companies have to get so many customers and pile them onto servers. They need to cut costs to profit.

3.
hostdetective.net is a different kind of review site, hosts have to sign up then ask or post a review form for their costomers and wait to get reviewed. Big sites like ipowerweb and webzpro never signed up. So this is most likly why they have no reviews on it from their costomers. hostdetective.net has mainly smaller to mid size companies, that work hard to get those good reviews from their costomers. Smaller hosts tend not to oversell as much, big hosts like ipowerweb seem to put hundreds , even thousands of costomers onto one webserver, this is very bad for perforance of a website.

4.
Most people that say hosts offering plans lower then $5 a month might not be a good choice deals with fly-by-night hosting companies. They ar enormally very new hosting companies that are out to make a quick buck. I'd suggest just doing research before going with any host.

Having your own datacenter can have its advantages, cutting costs over a long period of time if you supply dedicated servers and such. but having your own datacenter does not mean it is better, this could actually be bad since some datacenters don't have the capital to get multiples lines of bandwidth into the center and rely on 2 or 3 lines. While big datacenters like "the planet" or "equinox" have a bigger choice for there clients when they get racks.

I hope this has helped a big, any more questions just ask.

Dark_Matter · #3 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 08:11 AM

resellers tend to have little or no tech support, 24 hour email support is worthless if they don't reply to your requests. Reading reviews is definitely key, and if you get a server ip or domain name run it through whois.sc to see how many websites are being hosted there. the $5 a month packages are usually on servers with hundreds and hundreds of sites. be careful about paying in advance for a year of hosting...pay the first couple of months separately to see if the service works out for you.

Waddle · #4 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 06:39 PM

I have been very happy with lunar pages!

killua · #5 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 09:34 PM

Thank you very much for all your detailed explanations.
I have some other couple of questions:

1. I can only afford hosting within 5 - 7.95 USDollars price range? What could be your most recommended host for that price? I know that you recommend v7inc.com but I can't afford that?

2. I wanted to choose www.ipowerweb.com at moment. My current host is www.hostgool.com. It goes down for 2-4 hours a month. Last December 2004, it went down for 16 hours all in all for that month only. If we will move to www.ipower.com, WILL MY EXPERIENCE of downtimes IMPROVE?

3. Waddle mentioned about Lunarpages. Lunarpages and Ipowerweb.com has the same prices. When it comes to uptime (not tech support), what's better?

4. Finally, I won't choose Globat.com, but I have a question about this host. They seem to provide huge amount of storage and bandwitdth at a very cheap price. Are they overselling.

Thanks

Affiliate Boss · #6 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 09:41 PM

theplanet.com for servers
surfspeedy.com for CHEAP CHEAP plans..

nuthin · #7 (**permalink**) 01-14-2005, 07:11 PM

in my opinion 'cheap' doesn't necessarily mean quality or a good option for you to take many times.
i suggest searching through www.webhostingtalk.com on the companies that you narrow down.
you will find good feedback & opinons.
i have had the best experience with the following 2 hosts, where i still host my sites.

www.myacen.com (been there only a few months now needed an australian ip address so i picked them, you can check there active forums for feedback or webhostingtalk, no down time here. have never had to ever ask for support.)

www.iminteractive.net (been there almost 2 years now, have a resellers account through them, beau's a great guy & i constantly talk to him through MSN from time to time just mainly general chat, as i never have any support queries for him ever, the servers are always up

there not that "cheap" but they are affordable, for people that take there websites & online business seriously.

seriously if you read / do your research at webhostingtalk, you should end up at a good host if you pick them right :-)

killua · #8 (**permalink**) 01-15-2005, 03:59 AM

Well, thanks. I found that www.webhostingtalk.com is a great place to check for hosting. Yeh. Now I know that most Hosting Review sites were fake. It's because big hosting companies have a lot of $$$.

HeadBuilder · #9 (**permalink**) 01-16-2005, 06:10 AM

Regarding your question about theplanet and whether it is good. I have leased a server from them for the past 8 months and so far it has been excellent. I'm sure that if you do engage the services of a hosting company that has their servers in theplanet, it would be pretty stable.

littleFella · #10 (**permalink**) 01-16-2005, 10:26 AM

I have been using ipowerweb.com for over two years now. I had very a few problems with them. In the 2 year period I had downtime 3 times, for a combined total of about 1 hour. According to netzero, they are on top of the uptime list.

I live oin Canada, and yet anytime I did have a problem, or just general technical question they were just a phone call away and I was never sent away without the issue issues being resolved. Their tech support certainly sounds like they know what they are doing, and as a bonus, they speak English - the real American English, not the Asian version of it.

docquesting · #11 (**permalink**) 01-16-2005, 10:03 PM

hostinginnovators.com

Jonathan VanSchaack · #12 (**permalink**) 01-17-2005, 12:01 AM

please dont self promote

Waddle · #13 (**permalink**) 01-17-2005, 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by killua

3. Waddle mentioned about Lunarpages. Lunarpages and Ipowerweb.com has the same prices. When it comes to uptime (not tech support), what's better?

I think Lunar Pages has like 99.9% up time, or some other really high number. However to get the best price you have to pay a year in advance.

killua · #14 (**permalink**) 01-18-2005, 03:48 AM

littlefella wrote:
"I have been using ipowerweb.com for over two years now. I had very a few problems with them. In the 2 year period I had downtime 3 times, for a combined total of about 1 hour. According to netzero, they are on top of the uptime list."

Hello littlefella, could you tell me your website that is currently being hosted by ipowerweb.com? I would like to monitor it via Siteuptime. I would also like to check how many websites they are hosting per server.

About netzero, is it an HONEST monitoring company or a paid one?

Oh, Is there any other hosting reviewers like www.findmyhosting.com. I need HONEST hosting review websites. Thanks.

FGTH · #15 (**permalink**) 01-22-2005, 07:22 AM

webster · #16 (**permalink**) 01-26-2005, 04:03 AM

dose anyone know anything about "yhoo! hosting"? I've been trying to find out about them.

SN3 · #17 (**permalink**) 01-26-2005, 04:49 AM

I heard Yahoo hosting was horrible.

Jonathan VanSchaack · #18 (**permalink**) 01-26-2005, 11:58 AM

yahoo hosting is fine for started webistes or personal websites, but unless your willing to pay them alot of money, I would aviod them for business websites/purposes.