If you have a website, you probably know how tough it is to find an affordable and reliable hosting plan. If you don’t have a website but are planning to, well, be warned.
One thing that can help in this decision is a web host rating website. It will allow you to compare different hosting plans side by side, including the features and prices offered by each. Good comparison sites will also have independent reviews written by the users, and this feedback can be very useful when choosing between a handful of companies that seem to offer similar plans.
Finally, here are some quick tips that might help you in the research process:
- Give preference to Linux based hosting plans, as they are more reliable and have more features.
- Don’t go with the cheapest plans. You will always get what you pay for.
- File a customer support ticket to test how fast they will answer it. Responsive customer support is a must.
- Don’t get seduced by huge disk space or bandwidth offers. It is very likely that your new site won’t consume even 10% of that.
I see GoDaddy listed in the top 10. I have a love hate relationship with this company. In July I built a web site that was critical in terms of reliable hosting – uptime and loading. The organization (a non-profit) needs this site online.
The load time was outrageous – at times as much as 90 seconds. They put me on an overloaded server. Using Pingdom, I discovered in the first 30 days the site was down 98 times with a total outage of almost 14 hours. GoDaddy refused to budge on this – I of course will move the site to another host.
On the other hand, GoDaddy has great tech support. You call, talk to a real person, and if they can fix the problem they will – except for things like this. In fact I have one site hosted there that is as reliable and fast as any other.
For my personal sites I now use Doreo (shameless plug for DBT) and Hostgator. So far I’ve had no problems with either. ‘So far’ being key.
Over the years I’ve used so many different hosts I can’t remember who did what. I don’t believe a good name means much anymore – that can dissolve quickly these days, with any company.
I believe being prepared to move is something to take seriously if your site is critical. While I may have a great experience with a given host, you may not. Because of this I don’t take ratings seriously.
I used hostgator for the past two years (shared hosting). Nothing fancy, but I was always happy with their ticket support and the way they handled my account. The only thing I don’t like is that for renewal you don’t get the 20% discount that they have for new customers, even if you pay anually. Or maybe I just didn’t know how to do it.
All in all, I definitely recommend Hostgator, they have great plans, inexpensive, unlimited bandwith, lotsa space and lotsa features (free templates, fantastico, etc).
I chose fat cow for all my sites. comparing them side by side they got it all and are one of the cheaper ones.