Which Web Hosting
Posted on April 28, 2010 by Amit
Being an affiliate marketer, I have multiple websites in various stages of development. And I keep adding sites to my basket. When I had just a few websites, I used to host all of them at GoDaddy.com. But as the list grew, I decided to move to other shared hosting providers where I can host multiple sites in account, since Godaddy doesn’t allow multiple domain hosting from one account. I moved all my five sites (that’s how many I had at that time) to a shared hosting account with IXWebhosting. The move from five accounts with Godaddy to IXWeb did save me some money.
But… One fine morning I noticed all my sites were down. Yes all five of them.
Lesson Learned: Never put all your eggs in one basket.
Downtimes, planned or unplanned, happen however good the webhost may be. Not long back Yahoo Stores was down and with it many sites that use Yahoo Stores to host their sites.
The light bulb went off and I decided to divide the risk. As I added more sites I made a conscious decision to have them hosted at different webhosts, so if one webhost is down, only a handful of my sites are down, not all.
Here is a list of webhosts where I host my sites now. And also my experience with each web host. Hope it will help you decide if you are in the market looking for a web hosting service.
One of my requirements for web hosts is that they must offer PHP5, mysql, cPanel and cron jobs. Also I use shared hosting because they are extremely affordable.
I have been hosting with Lunar Pages for quite some time. They suuport PHP5, Cron, cPanel. Never have had any major downtime. Their support is ok but not excellent. They don’t have any chat support. You have to create a separate login and login to the support portal to submit and view tickets. But since technically they have been reliable, and I haven’t had any major issues with them I still use them.
Freebies: $50 Facebook ad credit, $50 Google Adwords credit, $50 MySpace MyAds credit
HostGator:
HostGator is an excellent web host. Offers PHP5, cPanel, Cron. Live chat support, knowledgeable staff. All the tools you will need to host a small/medium website.
Freebies: Google Adwords $50 credit for new accounts, Free Website Templates
But if you are an affiliate, and promote HostGator as an affiliate, they may not be best web host to promote. There have been some reported issues about sales not being tracked or reversed.
BlueHost is as good as HostGator as a webhost if not better. Provides all the tools you will need. Plus live chat support. Their support is very responsive and will accommodate reasonable requests.
I have had no technical issues with them. BlueHost uptime has been excellent. I highly recommend them.
Freebies: Google Adwords $50 credit for new accounts, Yahoo Search $50 credit, Ask Search $50 credit, Miva Search $50 credit.
Though I switched to them when I moved from Godaddy, and still host a few sites with them, I wouldn’t recommend IxWeb. They are ok, but not the best. So why not go with Hostgator or BlueHost when all pretty much cost the same. In the initial year I had a few long, frustrating downtimes with IXWeb. I have moved most of my sites away from them. But I still host a few there. My site being on an old server doesn’t support PHP5. And moving from the old server to a newer server within IXWeb is possible, but you will need to do it yourself and the steps are complicated. It will be much easier for me to move my site to another webhost and that is what I am planning to do.
Plus they don’t use cPanel, at least on the server that my sites are on now.
Other than the above web hosts, I have used StartLogic, iPowerWeb in the past.
But decided to move away from them because
- they didn’t offer cPanel hosting.
- I think both are the same company, one being a white label outfit of the other. So having web sites hosted with both of them didn’t really distribute my downtime risk.
- Support was offshore based and not upto the mark
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