I’ve been looking at web hosting alternatives for a while now for some potential web site ideas I’ve had. I went with Bluehost and have been reasonably pleased, but I don’t like how they handle multiple domains. Since they have a 30-day grace period, I’ve been thinking about canceling and switching to a new web hosting service. The problem is that there are hundreds of web hosting companies out there. I’ve spent several hours reading reviews about different ones, trying to assess and compare their offerings and it’s hard to know what you’re really getting.
Then I found an incredible offer from Netfirms where you get an entire year’s worth of web hosting and two free domains for $10. Note that it’s not $10 a month, which is less than many web hosting services, it’s $10 for an entire year! I haven’t come up with two good domains yet, so I haven’t signed up yet, but from what I can tell you just enter “MAX2” as the special offer code when you sign up by October 31, 2006.
I’m going to keep the Bluehost account because aside from the multiple domain issue I’ve been pleased with their service. Besides, for $10, it’s hard to go wrong even if Netfirms turns out to be not so great.
Dan,
A few years ago (as you may remember) I went with phpwebhosting.com.
They’re decent, give you basically unlimited (within reason) disk space, a shell account (SSH). All for $10.
I’m not sure how they deal with multiple domains (or what your problem with your current web hosting company is). I’ve had a problem with the Gallery software and the way they map my domain. When I start using the gallery scripts, the domain name changes from http://www.mydomain.com/path_to_script_etc to myusername.phpwebhosting.com/path_to_script_etc . I’ve not ever cared enough to figure out if I can solve the problem.
-Scott
Hmm, Even i was in lookout for a different hosting service, thanks for the info.
Scott: I’d forgotten what host you went with. I’ll have to look into them. The issue I have with multiple domains is that there is one principle domain, and all other domains have a directory in the root of that principle domain. It’s just a bad way of handling multiple domains.
Thejaswi: No problem. I’m planning to post more info on Netfirms once I’ve used their services for a while.
I don’t host multiple domains, but I believe that I read that you can configure the directory (within your account) for each domain. Each domain points to a folder that you configure.
So I think phpwebhosting.com would work for you if you ever wanted/needed to switch.
They’ve been pretty reliable and only had one problem about a year and a half ago when the machine that hosts my site had a hard drive failure and their backup stuff didn’t work too well. They didn’t loose any of my data, but it took about 2 days (if I remember correctly) to get things back online. I think they’ve learned from the experience and I wouldn’t expect the same delay if they had another hardware failure in the future.
Scott: That’s how multiple domains should be managed; each domain should get it’s own root directory at the same level so they’re not intermingling with one another. Reliability and performance are the other two big requirements I have. Dreamhost has a great price, loads of disk space and bandwidth, but from what I’ve read, their uptime has been rather poor as of late.
I am currently with dreamhost, they seem to be having problem with their servers every single day!! But their customer support is pretty good and they attend to problems almost immediately. Iam pretty happy with what i got but looking out for alternatives anyway.
It looks like a good deal. I assume after the first year it switches to $10 per month instead of per year.
Thejaswi: That’s what I keep hearing about Dreamhost, and that’s the one thing I don’t want to have to deal with. My current host hasn’t had issues that I’ve been aware of in over 2 years.
danithew: That’s my guess as well, but I’m not sure.
Hey, I just noticed this deal is still active. It’s at http://www.netfirms.com/max and it looks like they recently upgraded the specs. Sweet!
Get your website online today! Netfirms provides the tools you need to make building and hosting your business website quick and easy.
* $10 for one full year of Netfirms Advantage Hosting!
* 2 FREE domain names
* 250GB of disk space
* 2,000GB data transfer per month
* Host unlimited websites with a single account!
* Support for PHP, Perl, and MySQL
* 24-hour technical support
Dave: If you just want a cheap web host, go for it, but I’ve been very unimpressed with their quality of service. Granted, I only paid ten bucks for it, but it goes down regularly (every few weeks). I’ve been meaning to write a review on them but haven’t gotten to it yet.