Hosting

[filkertom]

Okay, that's it.

I put tomsmithonline.com on Surpass Hosting in Orlando, FL, some years ago, because the price was very good. Unfortunately, their service has, by and large, sucked rocks. They constantly refer you to their inadequate, written-by-techies-for-techies FAQs. They answer e-mails, when they answer e-mails, in Terse Mode. They don't have a phone. I presume their building must have a phone, in case they have to call the fire department. But I can't find it.

Other places seem to have passed them in terms of value. And now, I'm trying to post a couple of minor updates to TSO, and I'm getting a "Disk full -- try upload later" message.

A pox on it.

Anyone know any good hosting, reasonably cheap? Is that 1+1 thing in all the magazines lately reasonable? Should I give DotEasy more money? What? I'm looking for good bandwidth prices, obviously. Storage concerns aren't all that much trouble. Relatively cheap domain transfer would be nice. But the biggest thing I want is to be able to call and speak to a semi-competent tech in this country. (Completely off-topic, by the way, Charter Cable has them. I did the phone work for Les getting her internet fixed up yesterday, and Brian and Tony at Charter rocked.)

Any suggestions?

Update: Okay! You guys are great. Thanks so very much. I now have a whole buncha research to do. I'll let you know -- I'll probably have to, as TSO would likely be down for at least a little bit while things transfer over. Not this week. Probably not next week. But almost certainly the week after AnthroCon.

Comments

[andrianna.livejournal.com]

Possibly Laughing Squid...??

[pixel.livejournal.com]

I have to put in a huge vote for laughing squid (http://laughingsquid.net/). They've been hosting blert.net () since '99 and I have never had a significant problem with them. Total downtime in all those years is probably 24-36 hours. They have been helpful with issues, flexible with payment options, etc. Basicly I have had no complaints in that time. They host some significant stuff so their backbone is pretty robust, but are still good to the little guys (like me).
If you do go with them let them know blert.net refered you and I get a small credit (this has nothing to do with my recommending them though, if I didn't like them I'd have switched a long time ago).

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

I really like www.asmallorange.com
I've also had good luck with www.routhost.com and www.coastlandtech.com

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

I used to recommend z-host.com but I had to ditch them as they progressively got worse.

[cassiopia.livejournal.com]

I used to work for Charter. The call center is in Louisville, KY. I spoke to many people who were happily suprised by this fact. I can't tell you how many times I heard "oh good you speak English" *sigh*

[thingunderthest.livejournal.com]

We've been using web.com (http://www.web.com/) for sites at work. You can choose windows based or linux and the servers are in Georgia. Of course recently tech support seems for have gone to Bangalore, but that is getting more and more common.

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting to hear back from a friend in the hosting/colocation business to see what he might have available but perhaps this will help temporarily:

http://www.samspade.org/t/lookat?a=www.surpasshosting.com (http://www.samspade.org/t/lookat?a=www.surpasshosting.com)

The info includes what appears to be at least a fax number. IF they fail to respond I suggest taping a piece of long paper together in a loop through a fax machine and fax them endlessly. ;-)

No I've never had to deal with bad I/T vendors before...nope...nope...

[lanchid.livejournal.com]

I have no personal experience, but User Friendly webcomic is always going on about their host.....

[gamerngeek.livejournal.com]

Check out Bluehost.com, Tom. I host several sites through them. They're VERY reasonable, their tech support has been completely awesome, and they offer 10 GB storage in the base package. :)

[ladyskada.livejournal.com]

I've used DotEasy for years now and love them. Good prices, excellent hosting support and no hassle transferring to them!

My username with them is scohenlmt, so go check 'em out.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I've been using Cyberus since 1996.

NO FRILLS WEBHOSTING

[giza.livejournal.com]

Allow me to pimp these guys out: nearlyfreespeech.net

They charge you $1/GB of traffic of $0.01/meg of disk space/month. That's it.

DNS, if you need it, is a whopping $0.02 per day.

I've hosted several websites with them for the last few years and the service has been pretty good. Also, they are run by geeks.

Their FAQ with additional details can be found over here.

Since you pay only for what you use, you can always give them 5 dollars for an account, tinker with it, and then cancel and get the unused balance back if you don't like the service.

If you have any additional questions about them, or the tech side of webhosting, feel free to pick my brain during Anthrocon. Any member of the Dorsai will be able to point me out. :-)

[alymid.livejournal.com]

Site5 - After bopping around a bit they really do a good job, they offere quite a lot, for not very much. They have been very reliable.

The biggest downside - no phone support - but their email support is very good, I hate to admit, but the lack of phone support has never been a problem.

[mannoftalent.livejournal.com]

GoDaddy.com. Their rates are cheap and they have humans you can call 24/7.

[jenrose]

I use GoDaddy, too, and have no complaints, but my needs are minimal. I like their email system. And they're cheap.

Did we mention cheap?

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

We're liking drak.net. They have very good support, and are very reasonable.

http://www.drak.net/

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Been on Drak for 5 years. They're very good.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

I've always had good luck with doteasy. I've also used poehosting.com with no complaints -- I was just not using as much as they gave me so I transferred over to the free doteasy service.

Domain/Web/Mail host recomendation.

[johno.livejournal.com]

I've been with 1&1 for over 2 years.

DNS and Hosting has been rock solid.
Mail service is bursty, but considering I'm a email guy, I understand why that happens.
Phone support used to be very good, now it medium. They outsourced but to a decent company.
Email support is still very good.
I like their UI for managing your account.

Plans from $3-20 a month.
Every plan includes domain name service for 1-5 domains.
Additional domains (com, net, org & us) are $5.99 a year.

With the $20 account you get 1.5 terabytes of bandwidth.

More details here: 1 and 1 Internet

Disclosure: I'm just a customer of 1 and 1, but the above is my affiliate link and I would get some small commission if you order using it.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

I don't see ever, ever, ever leaving DreamHost (http://www.dreamhost.com). I've never called a human there, but I'm pretty sure you can. They've been adding bells and whistles by the truckload since I signed on about eight years back, and have grandfathered my account-type-that-no-longer-exists by exponentially increasing my disk space and perks without changing my monthly fee ($17.95). I have the check the admin panel every time I want to actually tell someone how much space I have now, becuase I swear it's higher every time I look. :: looks :: At the moment, it's about 50GB (up from 40 MB when I first signed up, which was long enough ago that 40 MB for under $20/month was a helluva deal).

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to the price but I can say that we've been *really* impressed with the service at host my site.com . They really do have 24/7/365 service! And the people have been without fail polite and helpful both.

We have several accounts through them ourselves including 1 programmer type account with bells and whistles for Ed. When I was looking for a new place for Lorraine Lee Hammond's site I pointed her there and she's been happy, plus we had our cohousing group using them when they were still around and everyone as far as I know has been very happy with them.

Good luck!

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah - and we've almost never experienced any problems with the service from their end including mail. Plus they tell you exactly when they will be doing maintenence.

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention Hostbaby.com
I can't actually speak to it and it may not do what you want but I really like CDBaby (related company) and think that they have been terrific to work with and have a good business policy (let's all make money by helping each other all make money!) ;-) So it might be worth looking at anyway. Their "digital distribution" program has been golden for us (mostly for Champlain Summer so far). We don't have time to try to get it into the 9 zillion places that distribute digitally but CDBaby did it for a small fee and we regularly get checks. Works for me! ;-)

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

my only beef with charter is that they fired a friend of mine for a no-call-no-show when he did in fact call in sick and has phone records to prove it. his supervisor just didn't log the call for whatever reason. but that's irrelevant to their web services; by all accounts, they do indeed kick much tail.

off topic..

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Since you already got your answer.

You know that song a week project idea you were kicking about, with the idea of a featured artist every so often maybe.. paid for my a mix of subscriptions and donations..

I have a name for it: iBusk !

*sniggers*

Re: off topic..

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Heh. I may use that, or something like it. If you don't mind.

Busk A Move.

Buskin' Raiders.

Busk In The Sunshine.

(I'll get guest vocals from Anne or Karen or cadhla or vixyish or folkmew or braider or allisona or ohiblather or jhayman or ladyat, and I'll call them the Busk Hotties. Or the Buskxum Wenches. Or something.)

Re: off topic..

[ericthemage.livejournal.com]

Buskin' Raiders.

These audio tracks are side by side. Buskin' Raiders always record in a single file to hide their numbers.

Re: off topic..

[jenrose]

Buskxum Wenches
I resemble that remark.

Re: off topic..

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I soitenly hope so. [Groucho eyebrow bounce]

Re: off topic..

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

My votes for Buskin' Wenches [or maybe Busk'um Wenches]

I like the Buskin' Raiders as an overall name... very piratical! [although iBusk is at least good for cocking a snoot at iTunes.]

Either way, by all means, use something like that!

[jhayman.livejournal.com]

In addition to whatever other suggestions you may have had, talk to Spencer Love. He hosts filkontario.ca, interfilk.org and hotelhayman.ca. The server has been down twice in five years, for short times. And he's cheap. As in he forgets to bill you ;-)

[gan-chan.livejournal.com]

I have friends who are pleased with HostDime (http://www.hostdime.com/) and PowWeb (http://www.powweb.com/).

On the spendier but coolier side, there is SolarHost (http://www.solarhost.com/), ThinkHost (http://www.thinkhost.com) and Sustainable Websites (http://www.sustainablewebsites.com/), whose facilities are powered by renewable energy. ThinkHost also supports non-profit progressive organizations by offering them free or discounted hosting services.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I've had nothing but good luck with Cedant, although that's only for personal domain hosting. I don't know what business hosting is like.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I am a wee bit behind.

I used to work for a place with extremely robust hosting and still (kindasorta) work with them a bit. It's called Boston Datacenters and has unlimited data transfers even at its most basic shared webhosting. If you want me to find out pricing then please let me know what exact needs you have.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Forgot to mention: it's one of the very few webhosting centers actually on two full power grids, as opposed to two nodes of the same power grid. No downtime for the center, and they always have somebody there on-site 24/7.