Do you pay for web hosting?

[bob]

I do.  As pretty much the moron with technology that i am, i always found it easier to just pay $50 a year to have a website that i can use for whatever i need. Email, image hosting, sharing, etc.
I know there are a ton of free services out there to accomplish all this, but i have been very content to just pony up and have all the control i need.

However, lately my hosting company has fallen to shit in regards to service and reliability. Also, they removed the 800 support number a couple years ago and there is ZERO ability to contact them. The renewal has been on auto pilot for almost 10 years and Im considering switching.
Since i signed up so long ago, my allocated space is paltry compared to what you get today for the same $$$.

Im wondering if anybody has a suggestion for good hosting. I dont need a ton of space or any extras, just reliable hosting and ability to contact somebody when needed...BY PHONE.

The one thing that really sucks is unwinding the current site from my life.  Digging through accounts that i have used the email for, images hosted all over the place, and everything else.

[nodtveidt]

I have a reseller account through Hostnine, it runs about $35/month. All of the sites I maintain are on Hostnine's network.

[bob]

$35 a month?  whoa. you must need some serious stuff.

[xelement5x]

I've heard decent stuff about DreamHost.  I believe they also include private domain registration for free.

[nodtveidt]

$35 a month?  whoa. you must need some serious stuff.

Of course... all of the sites I maintain are hosted there, including Frozen Utopia, Boricua Goodies, Baby In Cloth, Luar de Prata, my own personal file storage (nodtveidt.net), several personal accounts for various people, and all of Eponasoft's Facebook applications. It's a reseller account, so I have an unrestricted amount of domains I can add, and I can set them up on any one of Hostnine's servers across several countries. It's actually a pretty good deal for $35/month... sure beats a dedicated server.

[Arkhan]

HOST GATOR BECAUSE GATORS.

[nodtveidt]

I used Hostgator for a few years until they started to royally suck.

[roflmao]

I used to use Hostgator, but also ran into problems with them. I've been using Hawk Host for the past 5+ years and they've always been pretty good to me, but I hear very good things about Dreamhost as well.

[jeffhlewis]

I've been a Dreamhost customer for about a decade now...they're pretty good - great control panel (once you find out where everything is), cheap hosting (about $150 a year or so I believe for a basic reseller account), good documentation and user forums.

They're not without fault though - I believe phone support will cost you extra, though you can file support tickets for free and you usually get a response within 24 hours.

They had a huge security breach a couple of years ago with bad Wordpress installations (don't get me started on Wordpress...ugh) that resulted in everyone's sites getting hijacked and forwarded to Russian porn. Fixing that was a fun weekend (involved changing all passwords, then manually cleaning out hundreds of .htaccess files and other PHP files for 30+ clients who were all screaming at me on the phone). Since that breach they've been a lot better about security, including shutting down un-updated Wordpress installations and setting up 2-stage authentication.

There may be better hosts out there but if you're looking for something better than the clusterf*ck that is GoDaddy, Dreamhost is pretty decent.

[SignOfZeta]

I use a place called 1&1. I can't say they amaze me, but they haven't pissed me off yet. I think it's $9 a month, or something like that.

I use them because, IMHO, if %90 of your website is on some skeezy shithole like Megaupload then you don't actually run a site, you run a frontend or an aggregator. Also, ads suck. They really really suck. 

[bob]

i used 1&1 in the past and had troubles with them.  granted this was in '03, so im sure they are better now. maybe i'll check them out again.  i remember them being affordable.

[elderbroom]

I'm on an old deprecated plan from ProHosters.com which was Carpathia when I joined many moons ago.  I get 3 domains hosted, 5GB storage each, no real limits on download/upload (of course there is some fine print), has POP3, MySQL and a few other handy things. I am not a heavy user .. but know they will eventually force me into a new plan .. and their smallest plan now is $25/month.  I currently pay $105/year.  So will scan this threat to find info on a backup service just incase.

[johnnymad]

I use godaddy for my website. Can't complain. Their prices are fair.

Just wish I knew more about HTML and CSS. Coded my own site but lost everything when I let my hosting expire.

[jeffhlewis]

GoDaddy's services aren't necessarily bad, I just hate dealing with their control panel. The whole thing is designed to lead you away from what you actually need and instead show you ads for everything under the sun.

Their whole business model seems to revolve around selling people services they would never need - people who just need the simplest of hosting (web space, 1 database, 1 email account).

[KingDrool]

I've used Bluehost for a while now and have had zero problems. In fact, we did a significant migration recently and they walked me through it both over the phone and via their chat. No complaints.