Alas, you get what you pay for 
I had a free hosting service that seems to get canned every once in a while. I’m a bit hesitant to fork up 70 bucks since the last hosting company messed up my domain registration.
Can some of you guys that do have hosting services provide me with some insight as to what to look for. I’m fairly capable of creating websites, so technologies don’t matter (ASP, PHP, CGI, etc is fine with me).
Sitesled is a very good completely free web hosting service that I host my website on. I don’t think that it does domain name registration but you can get that from some other site the would redirect to your site. thier website is http://www.sitesled.com
well at a different post I mentioned Godaddy, and valarking mentioned Dreamhost…
you can check out what valarking said about dreamhost at this post:Open-Source 2D MORPG Engine
hope that helps…
Aaron
jworld2: Would it allow image hotlinking? This is not really a special requirement for me but it would be nice! I’ll check it out right away.
POWER 3D: The Dreamhost coupon code thing is kinda iffy. After the first year, I will still need to cough up $90+ to keep the site. I’ll checkout these in details.
Thanks for the reply guys.
Dreamhost is a major overseller. You can not get what they are offering for shared hosting due to an Acceptable use policy
You’re likey to get less value for money cause the true ammount is hidden behind silly resource allocations and it is hard to tell what you are actually getting for $25 especially when server spec and the ammount of people allocated per server isnt disclosed.
Basically, if you have a small, personal site with like 2 hits a day, they’ll be reliable, otherwise any decently sized site will have many problems.
Plus, lets pretend they did actually give people all those resources, they’d have to pack so many people onto one server /CPU inorder to get their money back, that the performance, downtimes and so on will be so bad.
i use www.webhostingbuzz.com
i had really bad experience with them at the beginning when i started to host my web site - that was in may 2006 - i wanted to “get my money back” , etc. … but after that everything went surprisingly smoooooth … no complaints at all … they solved all my tickets really fast … i have no idea if they “grew up” or what, but i had no problems to complain for more than half an year … hope will be this way for long time … a
I have used godaddy for a while and I pay about $40 a year for my 6 domains… I got (.com .net .org .name .biz and .info)… I am only using .com right now… but will probably have the others link to the .com later on… and I used awardspace to host my page… since I did not have a lot to host… I used the free version… but for most things awardspace is not that good… since you cannot load certain files… but mabey thats only for the free version… but I think it applys to all versions… but with godaddy I got a good bit too for hosting a site and such… but since I already had mine on awardspace… I just left it there…
Aaron
Awardspace looks like it charging more for less. I looked up StartLogic: http://www.startlogic.com/ and they have a pretty good deal (Prologic package). I had signed up on IX Webhosting earlier but asked for a refund because they screwed up the domain registration (and the did refund the money).
Some other people and I have hosted some big files there with traffic at least in the 500gb+ range in a short amount of time. It worked fine and they didn’t do anything, but I’m sure that raised a red flag.
Hmmm, I don’t need to host 500gb files I’m looking at a host for personal website; that’s why I’m going cheap in the $5-$6 per month range. So far I like StartLogic, Dot5 Hosting and I’m divided on Dreamhost. I looked up user reviews on for these hosting companies and looks like Dot5 is better in terms of customer support.
BTW: Dreamhost’s coupon code for $97 off does work but I’m kinda stumped as to how they can keep offering these discounts for a long time.
[EDIT]I misread valarking’s remark. I guess I don’t really need or expect 500gb transfer on my site but I’m sure I can upgrade when such a situation arises. I just want to showcase some of my work as I continue to struggle with Blender’s intense powe r:D
hmm… I’m amazed nobody posted http://www.1and1.com They have some of the best deals i’ve seen,I’ve been using them for nearly a year and my site’s never randomly died (though it did when i messed up a php e-mail script :o). The admin panel is easy to use. They’re prices start at $2.24/mo-comes with a free domain too :).
~Nyth
you dont have a gmail account? i use google pages…
This looks like an awesome host. What kind of hosting do you have with them? I’m trying to decide between Hatchling and Baby (these names sound funny) plans. I’m inclined towards the first as it is cheaper and I could always upgrade when I want to add more domains.
Best regards.
also for a list of different free webhosts… this site is pretty good: http://www.free-webhosts.com/ I only used it a little… but it might help with the search…
Aaron
The problem with free hosts is that most of them have either limited bandwidth or they place ads on your site or some other restrictions. I had one that provided ASP and added an add in a frame on top of the site. It was websamba.com.
My father was hosting his site on brinkster.com and he’s paying way too much, like 20USD per month. I’ve asked him to close it and I can put his domain and mine on a shared host for half that price.
At this point, I’m willing to fork over some cash to have a proper domain name and a host and remain ad-free (unless it is generating revenue for myself and not the host). My idea is to showcase my work in a professional manner.
Anyhow, thanks for all the replies. If you guys have more suggestions, feel free to bombard this thread :D. I’ve been researching all your suggestions.
well these are my only other lists of hosts:
http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Web_Space/
http://www.100best-free-web-space.com/freeHosts.html
hope that helps…
Aaron
Well, it depends for how long, what time ranges and so on.
Dream host are big and can generally offer what they say, but the fact is they can’t offer it to every user. Since sending a couple of files isnt that bad compared to a real site… (see below) 500Gb you can get away with. 1.2Tb their’ll be on your ass for sure.
500Gbit of bandwidth per 28day month is similar to having a 2Mbit line, so that’s quite a hefty strain for a server who’s resource are probabily limited and resources allocation per person range generally to 1% CPU (they will have more than 100 users on a shared server so…) Since the serer are almost always hooked up to a single 100mbit line… You’ve technically gone over another person’s bandwidth’s rights based again an a 100+ user base per server.
If you were, for example hosting a 700MB video - It is possible for 500GB to be eaten up pretty fast and still be ok - but for a site that host many files, especially dynamic web pages as apposed to sending a single file prepared to to get kicked off the server under that AUP.
I used to use surpasshosting.com They are a pretty good, average host. downtime isn’t usally that bad or often… Support isnt too bad either (speed wise) and is top notch for setting issues solved. They even hooked my account back up after i cancled so i could get some files off of there.
Other than that, my opinion on shared hosting in a pretty bad one. If you can, I’d go VPS. Much more reliable… Other people such as valarking who upload big files to abuse the 2TB overselling allocation wont lag your server either that way 
lol
Hostgator is generally well respected btw.
It was more like 10 such 1.5gb files.
=/
IM NOT PIRATING
Oh wait that came out badly. :rolleyes:
Hehehe… I’m far from producing a 700MB video, hell I can’t even produce a small one 
VPS is quite expensive. Even dedicated and semi-dedicated servers are quite expensive. If I was running a business, these would be great. Right now, I cannot afford a solution like that.
What you’ve said is very interesting. Imagine if all 50,000+ websites on Dreamhost suddenly started drawing attention at the same time. It would cripple their servers.