Reply to: Hosing provider recs

[Joeman]

Google AppEngine now has Cloud SQL, so if you could manage a re-write into Jave or Python you could get some cheap AppEngine hosting - and whilst traffic is low, probably host for free.

[xoggoth]

recommend not be a cheapstake...

Stopped reading your advice beyond that point.

[AtW]

eukhost.com is good - used them for years and still do, recommend not be a cheapstake and get VPS rather than shared Virtual Hosting.

[Freamon]

I have had dealings with Rackspace before, not cheap but I think very good (quite high pressure sales staff though once they get your contact details)

I've used Rackspace professionally before a few times, and their level of service is very high. It really is invaluable that you can go onto a client site and have VM environments for continuous integration / UAT / staging up and running in next to no time.

I use 1and1 as a dedicated hosting provider, they are excellent value for money but have had a few outages over the last year of several hours each time.

[Pondlife]

Cheers folks. Will have a look at the recs over the weekend.

[TheFaQQer]

Of course, to meet the thread title - I've also found this quite good.

[TheFaQQer]

I'm moving mine to HostPost.

Unlimited plus 5 - £8 a month for up to 5 websites (£150 for two years if you want to pay up front)
Unlimited plus 10 - £16 a month for up to 10 websites (£300 for two years if you want to pay up front)

Even though I only have two at the moment, I'm on the unlimited plus 5 plan. Once they can work out how to deal with my Libyan domain name, then I'll be moving another one there as well.

[doodab]

While traffic is low, host from home using a free dynamic DNS to mimic a static IP address.

If traffic ever gets to a level where home is no longer feasible/desirable get a cheap VPS.

If you like having a state of the art broadband connection then home hosting may continue to be good enough if you get Fibre To The Cabinet/Home in the meantime.

If you're worried about power cuts get a cheap UPS. Only those living in the sticks will have seen a power cut lasting more than a few minutes in the last 10 years, and if you're in the sticks you'll be wondering what broadband is anyway.

That can work for basic sites but if it needs to be on 24 hours a day and the hosting machine uses an average of 50W it will actually cost more than a cheap hosting plan. You also need to consider network performance, the upload speed of standard broadband tops out about ~1mbps and will be less if you have a less than stellar connection, so anything large is going to be painfully slow for end users to access, especially if you have several going on simultaneously. You may also find that your router struggles if you have a lot of distinct users all needing to be NATted to the back end server.

If it's anything that will cost you money when it's down then you also need to worry about network & hardware resilience, which most shared hosting plans offer to some degree.

[PAH]

While traffic is low, host from home using a free dynamic DNS to mimic a static IP address.

If traffic ever gets to a level where home is no longer feasible/desirable get a cheap VPS.

If you like having a state of the art broadband connection then home hosting may continue to be good enough if you get Fibre To The Cabinet/Home in the meantime.

If you're worried about power cuts get a cheap UPS. Only those living in the sticks will have seen a power cut lasting more than a few minutes in the last 10 years, and if you're in the sticks you'll be wondering what broadband is anyway.

[FiveTimes]

freehostia will offer a tailor made package

[doodab]

I use a company called Superb who have lived up to their name, they are cheap as well (from $4.99/month if you sign up for 2 years) and all their plans include unlimited traffic. I've also had dedicated servers through them. The only "downside" is they are based in North America, but I haven't found that to be a problem in practice.

[cojak]

+1 for Webfusion.

[Bacchus]

There are a number of virtual server providers out there. £100/year won't get you much, but assuming the traffic to these sites isn't high you may not need much. Providers to consider are:

Gandi
Linode
Bytemark
Contextshift
Rackspace
VPS247

I have had dealings with Rackspace before, not cheap but I think very good (quite high pressure sales staff though once they get your contact details)

I use a virtual server from Webfusion which has proved ok so far - I needed a windows box to host a demo version of a plan b product and they were good value, but I have no complaints about the support

[SimonMac]

I would throw Vidahost into the mix, an excellent host I have 4 or 5 websites with them on their basic £17 a YEAR package, their support is excellent which is why I stick with them and recommend them where ever I can.

I also think I have a 10% discount code if you want to PM me

[Spacecadet]

I'm still using 1and1 and they still seem fine