Web Hosts

As a website owner who has owned several websites I have come across several web hosts through that and other websites I have worked with, I have worked on several different web hosts and some have been great, perfect up time, plenty of space and plenty of bandwidth while some have lacked in several areas. My first host for example had:

100MB space
30GB bandwidth
Windows hosting
Supported only HTML and CGI (no PHP or ASP)
0 Databases
100 pop 3 mail boxes except you had to use you isp mail sender to use them

I purchased this when I was new to web design and it was the only one who accepted my payment method (this was before paypal was so widely used) and I probably used it a maximum of 4 times, the rest of the time I just used it to store files or send them to friends. After that hosting ended I focused on working with other websites and developing my skills through those sites.

Eventually I was talking with a friend and we decided to launch a new website, another friend had a hosting account he never used so we decided on a design website called Deluxe Designs, the website was designed, I did the programming and we were ready to go but the hosting turned out to be terrible, we got constant blank pages, mysql errors and the server spent most of its time down, the owner also had an issue where I installed a basic download counter and they cancelled the hosting because he 'abused' the servers php software, personally I would have changed hosts there and then but he stayed with them which was a huge mistake and lead to Deluxe Designs never being launched, that and the owner had hosted a lot of wrestling videos which a Japanese wrestling website hot linked and drained his bandwidth (a few hundred GB's).

When deluxe designs was abandoned, I decided I liked the idea and began to look for a host and a new name, it was Soulz who came up with the name Rampant Designs which I loved instantly and registered, I then found what I thought was the best web host I have used and ever used surpass hosting, its so good I even used it again when I decided to relaunch the website. Although recently I have had issues with up time but that seems to have been fixed and was related to some hacking problems

A list of web hosts who have failed to impress me:

Canaca
123 Reg - Reliable (never was down) but just doesn't really give you much for your money
Powweb - Offered nothing but headaches when I worked on a site that used powweb, however that was then they seem to have decent hosting now but I don't have any experience with them lately.

A list of web hosts I like:

Surpass Hosting
Servage Hosting - Good service, with some good hosting extras (such as SSL)
Go Daddy - I use Go Daddy to purchase domains but when you buy from them I suggest paying attention they select a lot of addons by default (such as if you buy the .com it selects the option to buy the .net, .info and so on)


One word of warning I will give is avoid re-sellers unless they have a decent offering, I have seen so many web hosts who offer 'reliable' 'superb' hosting and only give you 500MB space, to be honest re-seller accounts generally have about a 10th of what there host will give you for the same price, one I have seen offered for $8 per month 2GB space and 30GB bandwidth, with Rampant Designs I have 600GB space and 5000GB of bandwidth per month and that would cost me $15/month but I used a special offer that got it for $1 for an entire year, but even comparing surpass's closest offering for $8:


Re-seller
Space: 2GB
Bandwidth: 30GB
Cost/month: $8

Surpass
Space: 200GB
Bandwidth: 2000GB
Cost/month: $6



The difference stand out, whenever I see a re-seller I can never understand why someone bought the account, the hosting package costs more and you get a lot less size and it can't be easy to get someone to actually register for an account.

Sites to check out:

Rampant Designs Baby Seal Productions Stick Guy The Club BSP Blog Stick Guy Blog