Order of Hasson

Ok since I know we have some programmers and stuff around I figure this might be a good place to ask. I've been searching the web for the past 2 hours looking for a good web site host to meet some requirements that I will list in a minute. Every single site I find that fits the bill either costs a buttload or has really bad reviews. My current host is about to expire and I do not intend to renew with them, their servers are slow and goes down at least once a week if not more and sometimes for up to 3 hours at a time.

Anyway my requirements:

- True multiple site hosting (at least 3, prefer 5) on a single account: I thought godaddy was looking good until I asked them and they said that you have to purchase additional email hosting for each secondary domain hosted on the account
- At least 5gb of storage
- At least 10gb transfer
- No more than 8 dollars a month when paid annualy
- No Setup Fee
- Sub Domains capable.. i'd say unlimited but I would not probably need more than 20 or 30 in reality.
- Media streaming ok
- I prefer to have multiple ftp accounts but this is negotiable
- More email accounts than I need (and as stated above each hosted domain must have its own email, but a shared quota is fine)
- Pop3 for the email
- 99.9% uptime
- Dependalbe fast professional customer service
- Servers located in the United states
- Good server speeds

And the biggest most important requirement
- Windows hosting with PHP support

I'll be doing the majority of my programming in ASP because its what I know best so it must be a Windows host.

I've tried using a few web hosting search engines that I found but have not had much luck yet.


So if anyone can help me out with this please let me know, I'm looking for something soon as my hosting expires this saturday (I know I wait till the last minute lol). I don't mind having some downtime ... I know I will since the DNS servers will take 24 to 48 hours to transfer anyway, but I dont want to be down for more than a week.

Thanks!

Ishamuel wrote:- Windows hosting with PHP support

Why bother? These don't mingle well at all. Windows and IIS is for ASP, UNIX is for PHP.

As they would say, never cross the streams.

I have my own server php works perfectly fine on a windows server as long as it set up correctly. I just dont have a good enough upload speed to host my own webpages here at the house. Most companies provide support for php on windows servers anyway, but the reason I specifically say I want it is because if I use php code from somewhere else I dont feel like having to recode it entirely in asp to use it on my page. No need to reinvent the wheel.. just make sure you got an axle that can hold it.

Since I find it impossible to find everything I need in a host I just have my own web server on my home theater computer. Nothing sucks worse then writing a program and loading it up on your host only to find out they don't support the framework you wrote the app on. Yea the speed is not that great, but since it is not used very much by people other then me I don't mind it.

If I'm just testing something thats what I usually do on my server here at the house. But I'm looking at starting a side business so I need something dependable and faster, just can't afford anything high dollar since it is a side thing. I've had the domain registered and pointed at the host I'm currently on for 3 years now and havn't done much to it hehe heck if you go to it you just get a under contstruction page for 3 years now (money well spent right there!) lol. I've mainly been using my current host for email hosting but at only 40 bucks a year can't really expect much more out of it. Thats why I'm willing to spend closer to 100 a year for something more dependable (around 8 dollars a month).

The multiple site hosting comes into play because I do have a couple of other sites spread around for personal stuff, like an astrophotography page and stuff like that and it would just be nice to be ableto consolidate them all into one account. Plus if I decide to host something else in the future it would be as easy as just adding it to my account.

Unfortunately all the decent hosts I know of are on UNIX. And that's not a coincidence. =p

I like 1and1.

Coincidence, no. but it does make you a dork!

Alluvin wrote:Coincidence, no. but it does make you a dork!

Even I find this offensive. UNIX is hands down better then any Windows OS. I used to work for a company that supported a UNIX based app and a Windows based app. When the UNIX app has issues it would always be something wrong with the app that could be fixed pretty fast. When something went wrong in the Windows app there was no telling wtf went wrong.

Burn! He called you a dork! DAAAMMMMNNN!

Seriously...

Ves wrote:

Alluvin wrote:Coincidence, no. but it does make you a dork!

Even I find this offensive. UNIX is hands down better then any Windows OS. I used to work for a company that supported a UNIX based app and a Windows based app. When the UNIX app has issues it would always be something wrong with the app that could be fixed pretty fast. When something went wrong in the Windows app there was no telling wtf went wrong.

Come on, after so much time on this forum how can you still take anything Alluvin says seriously?

Well 1and1 is definately out,

Read quite a few bad reviews about them, and sent them an email and they responded back just a few minutes ago. Tok them about 7 hours to respond, I guess that isn't horrible but considering it was going to their only support email, if I was a business customer with email down 7 hours is a pretty long time. The thing that ruined it for them, the email I got back the person obviously did not speak english as a primary maybe not even a second language, I had trouble even understanding some sentences he put in there.

I did find one that has relatively good reviews and has most of what I want, just a little more expensive than what I wanted. Lunarpages.com

I'll probably end up going with them if I cant find something better soon.

If GoDaddy had better options on their packages I would probalby go with them despite the no email on secondary domains.. if I register a domain with them I get one free email so I could make do with that I think on most secondar domains that I would have. But their windws hosting dosn't even have server side includes... this takes like 3 minutes to install on a windows server, pathetic that they dont have it on there already.

Godaddy gives you a free email account with domain name purchases, it's not as good as the one that come with hosting but it works. I just CC everything to my gmail account anyway.