When picking web hosting you want to make sure that the services meet with all your needs. It is well worth the time to look into several web hosts before making a final decision. This way you will not have to change host and go through the trouble of moving your website(s) and DNS settings.
This is a simple guide where we have compared prices on shared and dedicated web hosting and we also evaluated the technical support. The lists is not arranged by how good the web hosts and web hotels are. From the rating stars below you can easily see what web hosts are worth looking into.
Explanations on the 2 most common web hosting plans:
Shared hosting -means you are sharing the server with other people who also have their websites on the same server. This means you are may have limited space on the harddrive and/or bandwidth. Dedicated server: Means you alone use the server but the web host are responsible to make sure the server is running and that it works.
Host
(click on banner to visit each web host)
Shared hosting: Prices start from
Dedicated hosting: Prices start from
Fast support?
Comment
GATE
$4.98/month First 3 months only $1.66/month
$69/month
Average, around 8 hours to get a reply to a support ticket
Cheap but still good value:
Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited Data Transfer Unlimited Mailboxes Unlimited Databases Rating:
Yahoo!
$8.96/mo
N/A
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket.
Recommended! Free domain name
Unlimited disk space
Unlimited Data transfer
Liquid Web
$14.95/mo
$149/mo
Yes they answer to tickets within a few minutes
Recommended! Our favourite webhost because of the excellent support. Rating:
ApolloHosting
$6.95/mo
$99.95/mo
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket.
Allow PT sites on dedicated servers Rating:
One.com
$1.45/mo Cheapest!
Mediocre
24-48 hour for reply on ticket
Only one domain per account. Rating:
ServerPronto
N/A
$29.95/mo Cheapest!
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket
99.999% Uptime Guarantee Rating:
FastDomain
$5.95/mo
N/A
Mediocre
24-48 hour for reply on ticket
Allow unlimited domains Rating:
Easy CGI
$7.96 / mo
$39.96/mo
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket
Shared hosting starting with:
3,500 GB Monthly Data Transfer
300 Gb Disk space Rating:
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket.
All prices in GBP (£) Rating:
FatCow
$7.33/mo
N/A
OK!
2-48 hours for reply on ticket. Becoming more and more popular among our readers
Recommended! Unlimited Domains Rating:
HostMonster
$5.95/mo
N/A
Mediocre
24-48 hour for reply on ticket. Note: HostMonster don’t like PT sites and can close your account without notice.
UNLIMITED Hosting Space UNLIMITED Bandwidth UNLIMITED Domains
Note: HostMonster don’t like PT sites and can close your account without notice. Rating:
Host gator
$4.95/mo
$174.00/mo
Have improved their support tremendously. Live chat always answers within a few minutes.
Recommended!
Unlimited domains for shared hosting. Fast servers and quick support. Rating:
ThePlanet
N/A
$89
Fast
Normally get reply to ticket within a few hours
Only dedicated servers. One of the fastest and most secure web hosts out there. They also have a good protection against DoS attacks! Rating:
Rackspace
N/A
No pricelist, only custom build dedicated servers
Fast
Normally get reply to ticket within a few hours
Only dedicated servers, quite pricy but good support. Rating:
IPower
$3.98/mo
$129
Fast
Normally get reply to ticket within a few hours
Unlimited domain on shared server Rating:
IX Webhosting
$4.95/mo
N/A
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket.
Unlimited GB of Storage
Unlimited GB of Transfer
Unlimited Domains Rating:
HostDime
$9/mo
$100
Average, around 24 hours to get a reply to ticket.
10 Domains for budget hosting Rating:
GoDaddy
Average
Note: Only 300 GB Transfer and 10 GB Space for budget hosting Rating:
JumpLaunch
$4.95/mo
$199.95/mo
Fast
Normally get reply to ticket within a few hours
Unlimited GB of Storage
Unlimited GB of Transfer
Unlimited Domains Rating:
HostRocket
$4.99/mo
$99.95
Fast
Normally get reply to ticket within a few hours
Unlimited bandwidth, 10 domains per account for shared hosting Rating:
ImHosted
$6.95/mo
N/A
Mediocre
24-48 hour for reply on ticket
Host unlimited websites/domains on your account.Live support requires of you to install ICQ and their website says it is only supported by (Windows 98/2000/Me/XP/Mac) NOT VISTA?! Rating:
StartLogic
$5.95/mo
N/A
Fast
Normally get reply to ticket within a few hours
Unlimited GB of Storage
Unlimited GB of Transfer
Unlimited Domains Rating:
NetFirms
$4.45/mo
$49.95/mo Clustered servers
The support often ignores support tickets and if they answer expect 2 -4 days of waiting, before you get an reply.
They use a weird interface and no regular cpanel. Cannot import sql files and or even paste in sql. Lots of features you find in cpanel are not supported by this company. Stay away if you are not a computer genious, because you get little or no help from the support. Rating:
YourSite
$2/mo
N/A
Mediocre
24-48 hour for reply on ticket
Only 50Mb storage and 5Gb monhtly traffic for budget shared hosting Worst deal! Rating:
The best thing about changing site platform is that we are now able to see what web hosts our visitors seem to prefer.
Hostgator - old favourite thats has been around for ages. Hostgator’s support was pretty bad for a long time but after they sorted out the Live Chat Support, the customers get help withi a few minutes. We have tested Hostgator for 4 years now and they have never been better than they are now.
GoDaddy - One of the largest and cheapest ones out there. This one is very popular for domain traders and those looking for cheap web hosting. The support is not as fast as Hostgator’s but still satisfying enough.
Yahoo Web Hosting – We already knew this one was big but we didn’t know it was the 3rd in the top 5. Highly popular och cheap. Support is OK even though there are room for improvements.
FatCow – This is a nice web host with good prices and we have seen it growing more and more popular over the last year. They have improved support and features like plugins: CMS, Blogs and so on. We like this one!
Just Host – This web host have had som problems with support in the past. Recently they shaped up and they are definitely back in business. Just like most top web hosts their hosting plans include unlimted hosting space
NetFirms use their own control panel with very limited features. There are no fantastcico features and it took Netfirms years to allow Wordpress installs even.
There is no index protecion which means every folder on the server that doesn’t have an index file can be browsed by anyone unless you password protect it.
Logging in to the control panel is like gambling, sometimes you can and sometimes you cannot. The same goes for the email servers. If you automatically check send/receive every 5-10 minutes you should count on the mail server not responding at least once per hour. You will get error messages that your username/password is wrong (even when they aren’t) or that the server timed out.
Netfirms seems to have some serious issues with their servers in general. Count on a lot downtime on a daily basis when you websites are not accessible to you nor the public.
At least once per day the web servers seem to be offline for one hour or more, this is specially painful if you are usig database driven websites. Their database server cannot handle a lot of traffic and if a database gets more than 50000 request your server will crash.
You cannot name your own databases so if you are moving from another webhost then prepare to rewrite all config files for all your databases.
The support is anything but great. Up to 6 days to get an answer on a simple support ticket. The staff seem to like to just copy and paste an answer from the FAQ and that is even if the FAQ doesn’t answer your question or solve your problem. We strongly recommend you stay away from NetFirms.
The BuyDomain support staff take 2-6 days to answer a support ticket no matter how urgent the matter is. Unfortunately the staff doesn’t really read what you write and they copy and paste randomly from their FAQ regardless to whether that answers your inquiry or not.
Login problems are common at BuyDomain and their system requires of you to have your customer number ready. If you don’t have your customer number you need to fill out your street address to retrieve it. This should not have been a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that their system does not recognize the street address and give you an error and the email with the customer number never shows.
The only thing to do then is to write an email to BuyDomain security department and request that they send the customer number to a different email address. This takes a few days. If the email still doesn’t show up you will have to repeat the procedure over and over again and hope that it finally comes through.
The BuyDomain staff consistently refuse to help you manually no matter if you write or call. They always refer to their system and say it should work even when it doesn’t.
During our test we correspondence with BuyDomain for 4 months to try and retrieve our customer number. We had to ask the security department to change our email address 6 times and still we did not get the information. Since the support staff took their average 4 days to respond it means over 30 emails sent back and forth
It wasn’t until we called a lawyer and had him send BuyDomain a letter that we actually got some help. Not that we by then had uploaded both photo ID and utility bill 3 times to BuyDomain to verify our identities.
We strongly recommend to stay away from BuyDomain.com Note: BuyDomain is not to be confused with BuyDomains ..note the “S” at the end.
