Webby hosting - its almost time!!

mikeanywhere

Can anyone recommend a decent hosting service as I am now almost at the point of being online?

I have used 365hosting & another one that escapes me and I found them both to be pretty crap especially when it comes to pricing too.

Appreciate thoughts and comments

Fenster

Will it be a dedicated site, or a blog using Flickr as a backend?

Borderfox

I use clikpic for mine, then again I didnt want to design a site.

mikeanywhere

Fenster wrote:

Will it be a dedicated site, or a blog using Flickr as a backend?

Dedicated but might have a blog on the ass of it (still tbc)

Borderfox wrote:

I use clikpic for mine, then again I didnt want to design a site.

I am also looking at that Border, seems pretty good and as you say, painless too.

rymus

I charge 1 pint of stout per 100mb per annum if youre interested...

Borderfox

Found them excellent to deal with, easy frontend and lots of choice to the way it looks, got my domain .com off them too

www.keithjackphotography.com

Borderfox

rymus wrote:

I charge 1 pint of stout per 100mb per annum if youre interested...

Good rates!!

mikeanywhere

Borderfox wrote:

Good rates!!

Cheap as chips!!

rymus

ooh.. that reminds me... throw in a bag of chips and I'll up the monthly transfer to 40gb

Quackles

I use hosting365.. not sure how competitive their pricing is, but very little downtime with regards to the site (email not the best, but improved over the last few months). Excellent support when needed.

GristlyEnd

I use hosting365 as well. Never had an issue with them. I recently installed wordpress after rymus mentioned it on another thread and I'm finally happy with my site.

rymus

how do you find them with the extras? I had a h365 account a few years ago but couldnt bear the extra charges for every tiny detail so I moved. Maybe that was something unique to my setup, but it seemed every month there was some spurious extra cost on my bill...

I went with a budget host in the US; I stick all my 'fecking around' non critical sites on that and keep the important stuff on more expensive hosting. Cant beat the ol' budget hosting

digitalbeginner

I use these guys for most of the sites I design. Cheap and good (you can get a human voice on the 'phone very quickly) http://www.stormweb.ie/

Dave

GristlyEnd

I've never paid any extras myself. All I pay is €4.54/month for 10GB traffic, 1GB disk space and 2 x MySQL databases.

Diarmuid

I use Dreamhost which costs around $10(8E?)/month for 160Gigs + 1.5TB/month transfer

Ok it's total overkill but it's got some great features such as on click install for Gallery2, Wordpress and plenty more apps. You can see all the features on the site above.

I have never had to contact them directly so can't help out with that. There are tons of promo codes so that you can end up with the first year almost free too.

rymus

I ended up with my first and second years completely free

They may not be the fastest host around but one can't exactly quibble on the price... 200+ gigs, 2TB of transfer for free

GristlyEnd

Wow those prices on dreamhost make mine look very expensive

rymus

everything is ungodly expensive compared to dreamhost

Dara Robinson

rymus wrote:

I charge 1 pint of stout per 100mb per annum if youre interested...

I'll take some of that action

sineadw

letshost.ie I recommend to everyone. I maintain a good few sites hosted there. Very little downtime, fantastic extras, great support, very *very* reasonably priced, 99 gig monthly bandwidth and 2 gigs of space.. 3.95 a month

http://www.letshost.ie/The_News/Latest_News/The_Lets_Host_%22COMPLETE%22_Hosting_Plan/

rymus

I love the whole blurb about being 'local' and 'always around to support you' blah blah..

Their server(s) are in the US so undoubtedly they're reselling someone elses service. Local support, yeah... Unless a disk goes down or someone decides to stick a fork into a server. Then tech support is reduced to the standard "our technicians are working on the problem, we expect to have service restored shortly" when what they really mean is "we bloody hope someone has figured out that our server is turned off".

They're cheap, no doubt about that but the main reason to go with Irish hosting is because the data centre is in Ireland. If something blows or a router goes assways, at least they know about it immediately and can get their own technicians working on it.

Or maybe I'm just taking the thing a bit too seriously... Either way, it's a damnsight cheaper than hosting in Ireland. Maybe if Irish companies oversold like alot of US companies do (dreamhost for one), the space would be alot cheaper over here, and well possibly alot less reliable too)

Either way they look good, apart from the latency. That's the only thing that bothers me about dreamhost too.. I'd rather have a 10ms ping to my server instead of 200ms...

sineadw

I take your point on the servers (hadn't realised they weren't here!). The difference in the price and all the extras is really significant to any other company though. And their support is great (they've even sorted out problems I've had with software add-ons - nothing to do with them). And you get a phone number to call, to talk to an actual human.

Off topic - why is it sooooo much more expensive to go with an Irish host? Is there something inherent in being Irish-based, or is it just lack of competition and the market here?

rymus

I'd say it's a trait unique to Ireland. Bandwidth, premises, electricity, hardware; all more expensive in Ireland than elsewhere. There's plenty of competition in the Irish hosting market, but I'm sure the more the merrier would apply...

That said, if an Irish data centre decided to sell off 5gigs of space and a 2tb transfer for €100 per annum, I'm sure they'd get plenty of customers. That is, they'd have plenty of customers up to the point where they almost go bankrupt and have to move to Poland to stay afloat...

It is the way it is and the way it's going to stay I'd say. Thank God there will always be budget hosts!

steve-hosting36

Irish Hosting is actually very competetive, if you are comparing like for like. For the 100 euro per annum price point you can get 2.5GB space and 25GB per month transfer - but - you also get local freephone support, best possible performance and latency, and the knowledge that, in most cases, your site is hosted on proper, enterprise grade infrastructure.

There will always be budget hosts offering everything in the hope that no one will use it.

magicbastarder

have been with hosting365 for several years now, very little cause for complaint. sure, you can get cheaper deals, but myself and a few mates own a domain on the scheme steve mentioned, so it only costs each of us about €20 per year, and we don't come anywhere near 25GB per month - it may as well be advertised as unlimited for all the difference it makes.