As Cyber Monday in the United States is almost upon us, this seems like a good time to do a review of Webhosting.
I use three different web hosts and I thought I would do a brief overview of all three below and give an honorable mention to a web host that I don’t use but several people I respect do.
Starter Hosting 1: Hostgator
Probably my first option for people when starting out at buying their own web hosting would be Hostgator. The reason I particularly like them is that you can start off at a simple, inexpensive level and then work your way up to a dedicated server if that is your wont. Having said that once you are running what I call mission critical sites, I would move to somewhere a bit more specialised.
Having said that they are one of the few webhosts who cover the full spectrum of webhosting from simple Shared hosting, through to Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting and up to Dedicated Server.
The coupon code VashonClient will give you a 25% discount on your webhosting with Hostgator.
4 out of 5 stars.
Bluehost was the first webhost I bought hosting with.
Since I first wrote this blog post Bluehost and Hostgator now belong to the same company, and I suspect there is less to choose between them. Interestingly the worst webhost I ever had the experience of hosting with also belong to the same company as well.
There is a lot to be said for sticking with smaller companies, but when you first look for hosting and don’t want to spend a lot of money Bluehost and Hostgator both offer a reasonable service.
3.5 out of 5 stars
I used wired tree for a long time, and then they were sold to Liquid web. Liquid web ultimately became too expensive for my needs and I have now moved to Green Geeks. I am happy with them.
If you are looking for something more serious, I would not recommend Liquid Web, unless your technical team want to use it. As someone who does the technical side myself it became too unwiedly. To save money I also made the mistake of moving from cpanel to their own system, This was not as easy to use as unwieldy and for some reason they moved away from cpanel to a different admin panel. This was not as easy to use as cpanel and ended up causing me serious problems.
4.5 out of 5 stars
As an honorable mention I thought I would mention Storm On Demand which has been mentioned to me by a few people I respect as being a solid webhost. Again they are at the higher end of the spectrum, and had I not gone with Rapid VPS this would have been my second option.
Hope you find this useful, would love to hear your experiences of different webhosts.
If you want to test a web host support channel before you sign with them, then Tweet a simple question 'are @acbhosting any good' – the response you get is a great test.
As for your three choices – Hostgator, I've had a horrid 'big company' experience with them, I can't ever find anything – and everything is geared towards an upsell… to many whizz bangs for my liking… but I've hear reliability is good.
Blue Host is a pile of poo – again trying to wrest a customer off Blue Host was a logistical nightmare.
My personal recommendation is to always use a small dedicated company that you know will respond to your needs. A MediaTemple client of my had their website deleted for non-payment by just a few hours, the big companies have rules in place, that are just not customer centric.
Best results are when the people you sign with are flexible, offer the whole whole (albeit through a 3rd party) and are responsive to your call or need. Added they can often offer amazing deals.
I like the twitter tip.
I think it depends a lot on what it is that you want and need. I have had hosting with Bluehost since I first put a website online, which seems like at least 10 years ago, but is probably longer. I never had any problems and then they made a change to their T&C which limited you to the number of sql tables you could have.
This site is and probably always will be hosted with Bluehost. I havent had problems migrating sites from anywhere apart from 1&1, which really was a nightmare!
Hostgator I like for a similar reason to Bluehost which is that they have goodish 24 hour a day round the clock support which smaller companies don't, and are generally inexpensive.
Both Hostgator and Bluehost I maintain are the best value options for getting your first website online. Perhaps because I have never experienced any problems with either and as a marketer don't overly mind the upsell process as I find that I can often learn from good sales funnels.
I now however have my own server for my client sites which I prefer and indeed that is with a smaller dedicated company that generally responds to my needs.
I think I may have to tweet about it now….