anyone recommend a good host?

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The 2 cheap ones mentioned (Bluehost and Sharepoint or something) both appear to suck immensely judging by all the hate a Google search brings up.

I was happy with myhosting.com for a while until I started having problems. Their communication goes straight down the toilet and I can't deal with these people anymore.

So, I am looking for a good new host that is $20/month or less. I sort of like pairnetworks, but I actually really hate their interface, website and control panel. I also don't understand why their public_html folders are aliases instead of a regular folder when you're FTPing, but I don't like it.

 
madeforspace replied on at Permalink Reply
madeforspace
I use quite a good UK based one,http://www.blackfoot.co.uk
Reasonable prices, £40per year for basic package and VPS from £30per month.
The support guys are very helpful and are normally quick to reply.
CPanel and a few other goodies thrown in too. You may not want to use a Host that is so far away but I have sites with them that get a lot of US traffic with no problems.
I am sure you will get a few more suggestions as well. It's a tough market and lots of good deals out there.
BHWW replied on at Permalink Reply
BHWW
Hi

We use United Hosting and they offer the best customer service from any company we have ever dealt with, they aren't the cheapest, but well worth the money.

But i would seriously consider the C5 hosting if you just wanted to host C5 sites?

Regards

Ben
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
Just a note, if you're serving millions of customers your absolutely going to have some who dislike you. Any successful budget host is going to have haters - same as any politician. People tend to just be more vocal when they're negative.

My own experience with bluehost has been that their techs are responsive and their boxes are configured well for what they do.
zoinks replied on at Permalink Reply
I'm aware of that. There's a certain amount of negativity, however, and the sort of details involved which I have enough experience to evaluate and decide it's not worth it. For me, both of these hosts are not worth it.
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
I have been extremely happy with Hostgator,
if you go with them, ill give you my aff link cause i need $$$ ;)
myFullFlavour replied on at Permalink Reply
myFullFlavour
Zoinks, sending you a PM.
bryanlewis replied on at Permalink Reply
bryanlewis
Hostgator has been quite good for me as well. Where do you get your link from Mnkras... I need to get mine!
lackadaize replied on at Permalink Reply
lackadaize
Mnkras, have you ever had issues with getting paid when clients go through your affiliate page or use your coupons? It's the first time I referred a client to hostgator and the commission isn't showing up. I'm currently in full haggle mode with them.
c5studio replied on at Permalink Reply
c5studio
Hello,

We have teamed up withhttp://www.cirruslab.com/ to offer concrete5 hosting. We love using concrete5, and use it to host several of our own concrete5 sites as well as sites for clients. We have APC installed and we offer automatic concrete5 installs. Basic hosting for a site is $10/month, and includes full cpanel access.
ralanyo replied on at Permalink Reply
I just started experimenting with C5 after years of using Joomla. So far i love it.

Anyway, I have successfully installed concrete5 on my virtual dedicated Godaddy server. Ran into only a few issues. Had to chmod 755 to one file and install GD library 2.0 or higher.

So far it works like a charm. Note this is not as easy setup as a shared hosting account and requires some knowledge of how to setup your server.
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
GD should be installed by default on every server, if it isn't, i would suggest switching companies
zoinks replied on at Permalink Reply
We ended up going with pair networks. Even though their setup is a bit unusual, I think there's something about them I really like. This is our second site with them... they really seem like a super-stable, no-nonsense company.

You're kind of on your own with customer support, though. I asked how to unzip something and they were like, "you have to SSH, here's some links..." I prefer stuff like this to be do-able through checking a box and clicking a button in the control panel. Or, failing that, support should just do it for me when they get the ticket :)... anyway, I learned how easy it is to do through OS X Terminal, so that's good.
rbucky replied on at Permalink Reply
rbucky
You all know that Concrete5 will host for you right? Can't think of a better way to spend your cash.
zoinks replied on at Permalink Reply
Yeah, I wanted to do that, but it was too expensive. If I was building a big ecommerce site or something, I would probably go that route first to see what kind of support is provided, at least.
CodeOtaku replied on at Permalink Reply
CodeOtaku
I tried many hosts over the years (some ok, some terrible) and now I use hostgator reseller hosting without any complaints for years, only praise.

If you are stuck for ideas then I would try C5 Hosting since it's very unlikely that they would let you down IMO ;-)
ThemeGuru replied on at Permalink Reply
ThemeGuru
I'm currently with hostgator.

Personally a lot of hosts suck in the US. Crappy support crappy servers.

The only thing you might want to look into is VPS. A lot faster than shared but it does come with the price tag.
monkeyArms replied on at Permalink Reply
monkeyArms
I've been using icdsoft.com for years, and I don't have a single negative thing to say about them. I'm a reseller and pay $36/year for hosting, but it's still only around $60/year for anyone else. Their support is the best I've ever encountered.
dancer replied on at Permalink Reply
dancer
Hi
Just wanted to bump this thread and thought I would keep it alive. I am about to put my own portfolio website online.

Could I ask, as well as which hosting companies could people also mention what package they are using.

Also, if you have come across some sluggish poor hosting then also post. I feel this would help everyone.

Here is what I have seen recommended around here so far:
http://www.blackfoot.co.uk/hosting/hosting.html...
http://www.hostgator.com/
http://www.bluehost.com/
http://getconcrete5.com/
http://www.dreamhost.com/

I am really in 2 minds about what I am going to do for hosting. Ideally I would like to use a UK company but I would also like to support C5. Ultimately I just want something that loads quickly at an affordable price.

Any thoughts would be grand :)
tallacman replied on at Permalink Reply
tallacman
I use both dreamhost and inmotionhosting. Inmotion is the cats pajamas!

Steve
TomVdP replied on at Permalink Reply
Another (rather happy) dreamhost customer here.
Dreamhost added a "one-click install" for concrete5 recently. Setup cannot be easier.

If someone needs a referral token (gets you 50$ rebate on the first year or something like that), just yell.
wavemedia replied on at Permalink Reply
wavemedia
BlueHost all the way for Concrete 5. I had a client site on Godaddy and it was super slow until i tried BlueHost. BlueHost has Concrete 5 as an Easy Install module and was super speedy with no mods, just out the box setup. Godaddy tried to get the client to purchase a dedicated server plan to speed things up. Cheap and gets the job done. Im sure you can also find some coupons to sweeten the deal.
kirkroberts replied on at Permalink Reply
kirkroberts
I have a client on Bluehost right now. Sometimes it's quite speedy, most of the time it's okay, and some of the time it literally takes 30-45 seconds to load a page. So I'll never trust Bluehost again. It's probably hit or miss depending upon what server you're on, but I don't want to roll those dice.

Similarly, I recommend others avoid MediaTemple's grid server.

I have a few sites on C5 hosting and highly recommend it if you can afford it. I see consistently good speeds (although not always great). Plus they'll actually help you troubleshoot your installation. No other host is going to do that!

A2's shared hosting has been pretty good. I'm interested to see what their managed VPS offering is going to be.

The bottom line is that C5 needs a little oomph behind the scenes to run well, and shared hosting plans are going to waver in performance as varying needs are placed on the server by your neighbors.

To me it's well worth it to pay up a bit to get good, consistent speed. That is, assuming your website is supposed to support your business.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
concrete5 is not the most lightweight of apps. We include a fair
number of zend libraries, which like concrete5, were designed for
flexibility above speed. That means its always going to run slow on
shared machines that are pushing the bounds of how many sites you can
fit on a box.

We've had really good experience with bluehost. They do some clever
stuff with tweaking the kernal on their machines to do CPU cycling
when needed, so the dreaded spikes in activity from one site tend to
have less of an impact on the other sites running on the same server.
Dreamhost customers love concrete5 as well, and while its not
particularly fast today I've even seen people say they can get good
performance out of godaddy. We're working with them to see if that can
be improved. I've never heard of anyone having positive experiences
with network solutions shared hosting, and i have often heard that
media temple's grid is painfully slow for anything at all.

Our own hosting has gone through an awful lot of changes in the past
two years. We are admittedly developers first and sys admins a far
second. At this point with our business class hosting we've got
things running consistently fast. If you're not happy with speeds
hosting here after 30 days we will happily refund your hosting costs.

best wishes

Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
Phallanx replied on at Permalink Reply
Phallanx
I've been with Haswweb for over 8 years on a shared host
http://www.hasweb.com/linux-web-hosting.php...

They are a division of HostDime
http://www.hostdime.com/

which has a world-wide reputation and HasWewb support comes direct from Host-dime. I have been very impressed with their service. They answer my emails usually within 2-3 hours and the contacts are real engineers/admins that know their stuff. I have probably only needed to contact them 2 or 3 times in my 8 years with them. They also send me e-mails of potential issues when they are about to upgrade something or running disk builds and inform you what may be the implications (if any).

They have a forum where you can ask questions about any aspect of web ownership (not just the service) and there are lots of tips about htaccess, spider traps etc as well as server info and what packages are installed on the servers. You can also ask pre-sales questions and one of the admins will answer your specific question (if it's not already covered).

http://forum.hasweb.com/index.php?showforum=16...

As I said; my account is an old one. But it has most modules enabled which seems rare nowadays on shared hosts (mod_gzip, mod_deflate, mod_headers et al). They might have changed that (ask in the forums), but I would be very, very surprised if they have. Accounts have CPanel (for linux) and fantastico with a shed-load of installable apps (ticket apps, CMSs, Bulletin bords, help-centers,real-estate et al.) Unfortunately CC5 isn't among them otherwise I would have probably tried it sooner than I did.
RadiantWeb replied on at Permalink Reply
RadiantWeb
I would look into A2hosting . I think for the resources you can't get a better buy. My opinion.

C
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Hi,
Only one for me now, after trying few.

http://www.webhosting.uk.com

Less than £30.00, $50.00 a year with unlimited email, sub domains, databases, etc.

cPanel with shared linux hosting packages and Softaculous, never had a problem, great stuff.
zoinks replied on at Permalink Reply
I used a UK-based hosting company once. They closed my account for hosting some mp3's of a band I was involved with and making their website. They said it was against their rules and sorry but tough luck, no second chances. I let them know I thought that was b.s. and that I would definitely be leaving poor reviews for them on whatever sites I could. Far from good customer service, they replied like pompous twats and said "feel free to say whatever you like, but we shall get our solicitors after you." I thought that was quite hilarious. I had to look up "solicitor" because in the US the term is "lawyer." No US or Canadian-based host would have behaved like this. I chalked it up to a cultural thing.
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Oh dear,

You found a bad one!

But were they from the the UK?

I had a bad time with a so called UK company, spoke my english on the phone, but they were actually a Russian company!

The hosting company I suggested is operating out of Bellevue, Washington, USA!
zoinks replied on at Permalink Reply
Yeah, they were in the UK for sure. I heard about them through someone on a forum whose friend worked there and she was trying to tell everyone how great they were. They had an address in England somewhere. I was pretty p.o.'ed because I paid for a year of service and got about 1 month. Man, I remember being furious about that one...
exchangecore replied on at Permalink Reply
exchangecore
We offer Concrete5 Hosting and development. Doing all of our development work on accounts most of our clients actually switch to our hosting after project completion because they see how much faster their sites ran on our servers during development.

Check us out athttp://exchangecore.com/web-hosting/concrete5-hosting...

Also, to show my opinion aside from my biased one, we have done a lot of work with Concrete5 sites on GoDaddy servers, Bluehost, and Host Gator. GoDaddy is usually fairly slow but we've seen decent speeds with both Bluehost and Host Gator.
tanv1101 replied on at Permalink Reply
I know one who are good in providing shared hosting, reseller hosting and VPS. check them outhttp://paknode.com
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Sorry, Away until the 10th September 2015