I'm gonna start an online affiliate biz and am looking for a good reliable and cheap hosting service. I came up with these. Now I'm finding it difficult to decide which one to go with.
I noticed that HostGator, HostMonster, and BlueHost are very popular, but I would really like to know which is better overall. I plan on running vBulletin, and when it gets more traffic I will upgrade to a VPS.
Based on your experiences, which one should I go with?
I conducted a couple of questions for each host and this is what was said, it seems HG is abit shy on giving out details, where bluehost didn't mind telling:
Please wait for a HostGator operator to respond.
Welcome to HostGator Live Chat! You are now chatting with 'Jefferson S.'
Jefferson S.: Welcome to HostGator, how may I assist you?
Stuart: evening Jefferson
Stuart: could you tell me how many shared accounts use the same ip address
Jefferson S.: no, i don't have that information
Stuart: couldn't you find out?
Jefferson S.: no, I can not see how many accounts are on a server and we do not give that information out
Stuart: ok its just a performance related question i thought you could answer and to many accounts on the same ip isn't good really as you must know... for your information Bluehost have 500accounts per server and a couple of hundred that use the same ip.
Jefferson S.: we fill our servers 80% capacity
Stuart: ok thank you for your help Jefferson
Jefferson S.: You're welcome!
AND HERE'S MY QUESTIONS WITH BLUEHOST
Ann A. [5:48:14 PM]: Thank you for contacting the Sales Team. Please give me a moment while I review your question.
stuart [5:48:14 PM]: could you tell me if you have any uptime stats and do you own your servers or lease?
Ann A. [5:48:52 PM]: Hi! We average 99.9% network uptime. You can google bluehost uptime, there's several sites that monitor uptime for different hosts. We manage our own servers, which are located in Orem, Utah, USA
stuart [5:49:47 PM]: how would you say you are as a company compared to hostgator?
stuart [5:50:59 PM]: thinking of an answer lol
Ann A. [5:53:23 PM]: Our hosting packages are pretty similar. The way we run our scripts is more secure. Bluehost's scripts run using user:user based permissions, which means your scripts and files are as secure as Linux itself. HostGator runs scripts as nobody:nobody, making the individual script security not as secure.
Ann A. [5:53:46 PM]: We also offer free backup restores, which I think hostgator charges for.
Ann A. [5:54:08 PM]: They also use cpanel, which is what we use. I'm not certain what their cpu and process limits are,
stuart [5:54:31 PM]: excellent answer thats what I call good customer service! even though you had to ask a collegue lol [5:54:53 PM]: how many people share the same ip?
Ann A. [5:55:43 PM]: On average we have 500 accounts per server. Each server has multiple ips, let me see if I can find a more exact number. one moment please.
stuart [5:55:55 PM]: thank you
Ann A. [6:01:35 PM]: Thank you for waiting. There's probably a couple hundred that share the same ip address.
stuart [6:03:16 PM]: thank you Ann for answering the questions ohnestly..hostgator wouldn't tell me theirs they just said they fill their servers 80%
Was actually wondering what you guys recommend as far HostGator Reselling opportunity vs Bluehost re-selling opportunity. I came prepared for this questions, so here are my goals:
Goals:
Long Term - I've biz established already and would like to add hosting as unlimited bonuses and even start a hosting business slowly as my own forums start to pick intensity
The 24-month option of Bluehost seems irresistable with unlimited bandwidth and 1tb of space (as their chat), kind of skeptical as it isn't in writing, but it seems they have a better offter at first then Hostgator, but they don't provide a billing system like: whmautopilot. PL nameservers are also $2/month with Bluehost, but Hostgator reseller options has them included.
I'm thinking of finding a webhost in US. I knew these hosting company - Bluehost, Dreamhost, Hostgator are the famous one. They are offering quite similar package as well.
No sure which to choose.
Usage: just normal wordpress blog with a lot of photos. Might want to have my own photo gallery in the hosting server as well. Must have Fantastico Deluxe and must be in cpanel. lol.. I'm used to cpanel.
I signup bluehost early this month, i am very satisfied with bluehost hosting. Bluehost established since 1996, and hosted more than 250,000 sites.
I had no problem of any until now, FTP access is reliable and fast, website is loaded fast, and no downtime detected yet.I also find their bluehostforum.com very useful in getting helps.
Bluehost $6.95 plan allow me to host up to 6 domains My domain i mentioning here is:
Time to time i perform speed test using hostpulse.com online test, the result can be view at here:
anyone had experienced with bluehost are welcome to post here
I've heard/read many bad reviews about JustHost. Even couple of my friends had very bad experience with them and i witnessed it. But my question is that Why is it everywhere?
Whenever i search on google "best webhosts", "good webhosts", i always get JustHost between top 5. On the other hand my hosting "Hostgator" many times ranks in 7 to 10 position. I am highly satisfied with my host.
I would just like to give you a little warning about justhost.com. This is my experience, but I think I was just very unlucky.
I signed up last Thursday, everything seemed to be great. When signing up it said that everything will be setup within 24 hours. The money was withdrawn and I got a confirmation email from paypal.
After 30 hours I still haven't heard anything from the justhost. I checked a whois for the domain I had signed up for; it still wasn't registered. I chatted with one of their agents. I have mixed thoughts about the agents. They respond really quickly which is great, but they don't seem to have any privileges to do anything. They will only answer your questions and they will tell you who to email if something is needed to be done (from my experience).
The agent said that I should email their billing section. So I emailed them, but I didn't get any response to that ticket.
After 3 days I talked to an agent again. Same story; email billing. But they said everything will be setup within the next 24 hours. I emailed them again...
After 4 days (still nothing had happened) I talked to an agent again. He said he can't find the information about me. So I patiently emailed them my info again.
After 5 days I talk to an agent once again. I started asking why nothing has happened.
After I started getting a little angry over the chat (because nothing was happening) he shut down the conversation.
I then emailed their billing team to say I want a full refund. The refunding worked better than I would expect (since nothing had worked before). My money was refunded on paypal about 24 hours later. They apologized in the email and said that this is very unusual.
I feel that it's very unprofessional to charge a customers credit card and then lose the information about the customer and not doing anything about it.
I am looking for a host for a website I am working on.
It is for an association of about 200-300 members, and I do assume that not all of them will visit the site.
The site consists of mainly text, and one weekly podcast.
Considering this kind of usage, I have been looking around for hosting.
I first looked at JustHost and FatCow.
JustHost sounded great because of the price at 2.95/month and free domain for life, but if I decide to change host, I wonder what they will do to my domain. They also promise "unlimited features" and that is usually too good to be true. Although they have amazing reviews all around the internet, not only the biased ranking websites but I snooped deeper, I am not quite sure they are what I need.
Same thing for FatCow, but I do have a little bit more confidence in them because they have been in business for 10 years I believe where JustHost has only been there for a year. FatCow was at just under 5$/month. Plus, its 100% wind-powered...
Last option I found was SharkSpace.com. I found it, being a sticky in one of the forums here. I am interested in the Hammerhead Shared Hosting package. I believe they do not oversell, and its not UNLIMITED webspace and bandwidth. They have been in business since 2004 so its still longer than many other hosts. They also have amazing reviews, I have yet seen a negative one. And finding a coupon for 3.98$/month is also a really good deal for something that looks more reliable. But to that I will have to buy my domain elsewhere as it is not included. 10$/year = 4.81$/month.
Longest lasting business: Fat Cow, Also most expensive. What I believe is the most reliable: SharkSpace Cheapest Price: Just Host
If you know another host that you know is reliable, fast, and trustworthy, in the same price range. Let me know too.
i am changing my hosts from hostgator to the JustHost or ImHosted.
I am trying to buy shared hosting plan. I DO NOT want a video sharing website. My website will serve around 100-150 videos of each 5 mints duration.
I am confused about speed of these hosts.
My questions are
1. How can i check the speed of these hosts (JustHost) & (ImHosted). (Any sample file download will do)
2. How can i know which of these host has the fastest data transfer rate to my country. (PAKISTAN)
3. ImHosted says it has OC-192, JustHost says it has OC-96. But how to confirm it?
I am inclined towards JustHost as they are way cheaper than ImHosted. But i am also concerned about speed. Will a OC-96 connection(JustHost) will serve a 5mint video well.?
i frequently read these forums for offers/to stay up to date with web hosting in general.
I never felt the need to register until now.
I have experienced what i believe to be sub-standard service from my paid hosting.
Here's what happened:
I got up, as usual to check my emails and i was hit with the following email
Your web hosting account for xxxxxxxx has been deactivated (reason: terms of service violation). Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.
Thank you,
HostMonster.Com Support xxxxxx (couldn't have url's in this post) For support go to xxxxxx Toll-Free: (866) 573-4678
I checked my domain, it returned nothing.
I don't believe that i have committed any terms of service violation and i am quite peeved off with the results.
My account was just suddenly deactivated with no warning, my domain (also registered via them) no longer works (i have no way of telling current visitors whats happened, the domain just wont work) and i have 15 days to contact them (via email) as phone is not an option as i live out of the US.
Not to mention after all that, i wouldn't review host-monster very greatly at all for speed, at first it was great but it just kept degrading from there until it was just extremely poor.
One thing they did do right was refund me (but i bet it doesn't include the domain) so ill be taking that money and my business else ware.
In general I have been happy with hostmonster. Mostly because their support staff is polite and are willing to help. However, I do question the server reliability at times.
Lately when a customer registers at my forum or gallery, the customer does not get the activation email 4 or 5 hours later. Today, I tested it and sure enough, the activation email took 4 or 5 hours before it came.
I talked to tech support and they acknowledged they had over 250,000 emails backed up. That there are too many connections with hotmail accounts and that was causing a problem as well.
A customer having to wait 4 or 5 hours before they receive an activation email seems a bit long.
I'm not sure if hostmonster is going to do anything to prevent this from happening in the future, but for now they seem to be satisfied with the emails backing up on the server and the time it takes for them to be sent. They indicated this does not happen often, but I really don't know since I don't send myself emails on a daily basis.
I would rate email as one of the most important functions there is for a webmaster. Otherwise, hostmonster staff has been responsive and my hope is this will not be a constant problem.
If there are any other hostmonster webmasters out there, I would appreciate your feedback. You may have to send yourself a registration or a email to test it.
I'm come here to complain the hosting company hostmonster which is the very bad hosing provide company. Until now,
I have contact with them for 36 hours, and my website is still down. the first 12 hours, the server is down. after that, they are installing sever packages on it. after that, they did
not do any work on it. they not recover my data, my website's content is gone! I contact them many times, some time they reply me, and tell me server will be back up momentarily. I'm very tired on this problem. I'm charge an comerece site, now some customers is going to refund from me, they
thought me as a cheater.
If you see my post, I suggest you to choose the other web hosting. Stay away from hostmonster, do not harm
yourself. Bluthost.com is also the same hosting company. so, please be clever.
here is our email I contact with Hostmonster:
Take care, this mail is replied from bluehost. dateFri, May 22, 2009 at 9:53 AM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
Dear Customer,
Currently the admin of your server is swapping new drives in to better improve system performance. Your site will
be back up momentarily.
Thank You,
Jonathan L. S.
Support Level 1 BlueHost.com 888.401.4678
dateFri, May 22, 2009 at 11:59 AM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
Dear Customer, We apologize for the trouble you've been having. Our administrators are working as fast as they can to get the
server back up on line.
Again I apologize for the wait.
Thank You, EricJ L1 Support Hostmonster.com 866-573-4678
dateSat, May 23, 2009 at 2:10 PM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
hide details 2:10 PM (12 hours ago)
Dear Customer,
There is no eta on the server at this time but please bear with us as we get it back on line.
Thanks for contacting us.
We apologize for the trouble you've been having,
Thanks JChristensen
Level 1 Support Engineer Hostmonster.com (866) 573-HOST
dateSat, May 23, 2009 at 2:30 PM subject[ #318137]: Not Found mailed-byhelpdesk.hostmonster.com
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we have encountered some unexpected problems with the server. We currently
have no ETA, but I would expect that it won't be for maybe another 12 hours. Our SysAdmins have been working on
the server round the clock to get it back up as soon as possible. When it is back up, your files should be back as
I have a shared host with them for a few months which the disk usage for home/backup is usually around 85-95%. Right now I am experiencing very slow download speed. What about yours?
Server Load 2.92 (8 cpus) Memory Used 42.6 % Swap Used 0.01 % Disk /dev/sdc1 (/home) 91 % Disk /dev/sdd1 (/backup) 90 % Disk /dev/sde1 (/backup/cpbackup/weekly) 43 % Disk /dev/ram0 (/ramdisk) 24 % Disk /dev/sdb1 (/) 22 %
I'm down to only 2 web hosting plan that I want to join and I wonder if anyone is using any one of them.
It seems siteground has a better plan(more space, traffic bandwidth, other feature) but hostmonster allow ssh access and I think that maybe good for installing our own software.
I also interested to see if anyone uses there free shopping cart software like osCommerce, zencart and cubecart.
Anyone has any trouble with them in PHP5 environment?
Wanted to share a bit (read vent a bit if you're cynical ).
Just got the following e-mail from hostmonster.
----------- Dear Dale:
Your web hosting account for ibycus.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
If you feel this deactivation is in error, please contact customer support as soon as possible.
Thank you, Support
For support go to Toll-Free: (866) 573-4678 -------------
Apparently, there are two files on my website that are being hit quite a bit, and causing the server to slow down. (I admit, its a busy site, and the files are very big).
The files aren't new there, and neither is the traffic, but the plug was pulled with no warning what so ever, and no offer of remediation on their part beyond refunding the remaining portion of my contract (I would hope so too!).
I can understand that they may not be able to continue to host my site due to the volume of traffic it generates, but they really could have handled this much better.
I just want to move from hostmonster to dedicated server
the problem is the database(vbulletin) size about 1 GB
when I try make backup for it through ssh it arraive to 723 MB then stop becuase it have highload on hostmonster system they not allowed more than 20% cpu
I take to them they tell me can’t do any thing I please them make backup but they say we can’t do any thing for you and I’m sure they can log by root and do it with ssh on less than 1 minute
how can I make backup or if there r way to move the database to the new server
I had two websites on hostmonster for over a year and last weekend they migrated my site without a proper back up and completed DELETED both of my entire websites along with 900 other websites. If you have had problems with hostmonster in the last three years, please get in contact with me to join a class action law suit against them. They are claiming zero responsibility for the horrific act. Not only do they expect us to rebuild our websites at our expense they are expecting us to be o.k. with the loss of revenue this has also created. Hostmonster generates millions of dollars each month in revenue. Corporate america - enough of your passing the buck. It's time for us to stick together and make they pay for their mistakes. Please contact me to join the class action lawsuit.
There seems to be a lot of negative press for bluehost... are they really that bad? Or was it a short period they went though? The bigger a service is, the more people there are so the higher the odds are of someone having a bad experience... have they really gone downhill?
So when you got a website for a service and it says "$6 per month for 3 years" would you take that as they charge you monthly, $6?
Well Bluehost doesn't. They charged me $250 and I didn't realize what they were doing until the charge went through.
I called within 24 hours and spoke to billing. I cancelled the entire service. She said it was only a "hold" on my account and she would make the hold credit me back and it would be done within a few hours and that I would receive an email from her confirming. Well, I got another confirmation email NOT a we are cancelling the service email.
Then, one $250 charge dropped off... AND TWO MORE APPEARED.
In one of the confirmation emails they sent there was an email address for the help desk. So I emailed this to them. I am not speaking to them on the phone. I want it in writing this time. Two seconds after I sent the email I got an auto response telling me they don't read the email and I must formally put in a ticket.
I didn't think I would be able to since my account was supposed to be cancelled. Well, it did let me log in. She didn't cancel it and if she did she went and put it back in again twice.