Looking for good webhosting

[anti.machine]

I am wanting to start a website, but I do not know what web hosting company I should go with. Does anyone have any advice for me?

I am currently looking at webhostinghub

 

[heynow85]

I'm a web developer, and for my personal sites and client sites, I use InMotionHosting. I discovered them with a simple Google search, and they were ranked very well in reviews.

The web design agency that I work for uses Rackspace to host client sites. I don't recall us having any issues with them.

 

[stacey1981]

I second Rackspace. Never had an issue (Only bee with them 5 months or so mind).

 

[Locut0s]

Just got a site with Hostgator. I know they are usually consistently well reviewed usually and their prices are good.

 

[Locut0s]

This also depends on what type of site you want to host. If it's a business then you'll want to look into things much more carefully.

 

[Broheim]

it's rather hard to recommend you a host if we don't know what your requirements are. also, we'll need a monthly budget.

 

[Locut0s]

I just noticed Hostgator billed me twice for my purchase However I created a ticket and they fixed it in like 15mins which is nice! 4 AM here too on a Sunday (yeah I know it's not 4 AM where they are prob). Extremely fast email response on a few other things too, almost chat like.

 

[anti.machine]

The site will most likely start out as blogging and forums...A monthly budget will probably be in the realm of no more than $20 a month. We wont be needing a dedicated server or anything crazy to start out with just a good host to secure a domain name and host our site.

 

[Geekbabe]

I've been with Hostgator for quite awhile & have been very happy with them, their customer service is really good!

 

[stargazr]

I use InMotionHosting. I discovered them with a simple Google search, and they were ranked very well in reviews.

+1

 

[Broheim]

The site will most likely start out as blogging and forums...A monthly budget will probably be in the realm of no more than $20 a month. We wont be needing a dedicated server or anything crazy to start out with just a good host to secure a domain name and host our site.

honestly, I'd go with http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/ because then you'd have a clear and easy upgrade path should your site grow. also, it's scalable unlike your typical shared hosting so you should be able to withstand a sudden surge of visitors, from say reddit. plus good cloudflare (free CDN) integration is nice.

 

[dwell]

If you're feeling adventurous, Amazon EC2 offers a free micro instance for a year to new subscribers. You'd have to install all your own software and manage the server yourself, but if you're the type it's awesome.

Standard rate is $0.02 an hour so even if you paid it's only like $175 a year.

 

[fjmeat]

godaddy. limitless features. great prices.

 

[anti.machine]

Ok so its looking like from everyone is saying,

Hostgator
Rackspace
Inmotionhosting
Godaddy

Anyone have any more comments or suggestions? I leaning towards Godaddy, hostgator, or webhosting hub.

 

[Broheim]

Anyone have any more comments or suggestions?

do not fall for the "unlimited x" bullshit, because if you read the fine print you'll realize they can pull the plug whenever they feel like it.

 

[waffleironhead]

http://www.madgenius.com/

iirc its run by an at member

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Get a business internet line and buy yourself a small server. Host it yourself ^.^

 

[anti.machine]

Haha dont temp me that is what I would really like to do! I would have to warm the wife up to that one

 

[bhanson]

Although any webhost will get your website online choosing the appropriate provider depends on numerous criteria.

If you don’t expect much traffic and high availability isn’t crucial then it doesn’t really matter. Practically any webhost will be fine for this purpose. I’ll give a rundown of the hosts people have mentioned in the thread thus far.

Rackspace – They are the leader in the managed hosting industry. When you want the best support—you go to Rackspace. When you want to call someone at 3am and have someone pick up the phone instantly that is familiar with your website—you go to Rackspace. They are notoriously expensive, but good support costs money. They are probably overkill for your purposes.

Hostgator – This is one of those mass shared hosting providers. It will be cheap as in cost. Your website will be crammed on a dedicated server along with hundreds of other websites. You will be allowed a “reasonable” amount of usage of the server resources where reasonable is loosely defined as not interfering with the other people on the same box. Performance will likely be okay as long as you have low volume and do not have any intensive scripts to run.

InMotionHosting – I have no experience with this company.

MediaTemple – These guys have a unique product. They were one of the first companies to mass market “cloud” hosting. They had some problems in the past because the technology was so new, but as far as I know most of those kinks are worked out. With this company your website should be able to handle “spikes” in traffic better than a shared hosting provider like Hostgator. Because of the distributed nature of the product, if your website gets “slashdotted” you shouldn’t have any issues. With a shared hosting provider there’s a decent chance they just shut down your website.

AmazonEC2 – This is another “cloud” offering, but is targeted to developers. Do you want to build a website (and the associated business) or manage a server?

GoDaddy – Mass marketed, crap in a box. Say no.

I’d like to throw in another option. The guys at MediaLayer have a product called “application hosting.” Basically it’s a shared hosting product but it’s optimized for speed. They’re not as cheap as some other providers but they’re very, very fast (think Google fast). In a time where people’s attention spans are at an all-time low I always like to remind people of this metric (page load time).

There's no "best" webhost. It all depends on your needs.

 

[anti.machine]

Thank you for the in-depth response bhanson!