Hosting service: Recommendations?

[dasunst3r]

HostingWired apparently went belly-up with all my stuff on it ](*,) , so I'm looking for a new hosting service. Can anybody suggest a hosting service with:

At least 1/2 GB disk space
Has PHP, MySQL (obviously)
Costs less than $50/year (with domain) -- preferred

Thanks for your advice!

[aysiu]

I use ICDSoft (http://www.icdsoft.com/), and it's great.
Unfortunately, it's US$60/year, not US$50/year.

[Trel]

Any specific features, OS, control panel, bandwidth providers, or other things that you might want? :)

That will help narrow the field a bit.

[NoWhereMan]

www.webhostingtalk.com :P
or for free: www.freewht.com (many dying every day... :mrgreen: )

bye

[majikstreet]

I don't remember my webhosts prices, but here is their site: http://www.xaos-media.com

they rock! (they are owned by a forum member here, akurashy) support is great..

I used to have Reseller 1 but now I moved up to lifetime 2 :D

(the lowest plan he has is 500mb with 15gb bandwidth and it's 5 bucks a month..)

edit: if you consider a lifetime plan, unfortunately he doesn't have the specs on the site, but he used to.. I'll have to get a hold of him and tell him to put the specs there..
I paid $325usd and I have 4500mb (I believe) and 50gb bandwidth and cpanel and web host manager.. very nice :D

edit2: he will put up the lifetime stuff later... and a new server is going up today!
he has a yearly plan btw that's like 30 usd a year with 350mb space and 5gb bandwidth.. unlimited mysql and stuff.
he's really awesome!
unfortunately he doesn't seem to have a plan that is 50usd a year, he has the 5usd per month which works out to be 60usd a year but with 500mb space..

if you were willing to increase your budget by like 10 dollars and be willing to have less space, you'll get a really good host like xaos-media... IMO, cheaper than five dollars a month is just too cheap. (besides, five dollars a month is only about 83 cents more than 50 dollars a year (broken into months)


edit3: oh yeah I forgot about the domain thing.. well you'll have to register the domain yourself but they can help you get it set up.

[Tipo]

If you are willing to pay for hosting, Dreamhost is excellent.

http://www.dreamhost.com

They also offer a free domain registration and hosting service if you buy a web host package

[mips]

You might want to consider hosting outside of the usa. With it's current laws and all the DRM crap it kinda makes sense.

[Trel]

Hosting in the USA might be a bad idea if you are hosting something that might violate the law in the USA. Unfortunately bandwidth pricing makes that hard. (Yes I do mean the data per second calculation.)

Finding a colocation facility or dedicated servers in South Africa for example is hard because of the price of bandwidth. $1000 per megabit is hard to swallow compared to the $25 per megabit we're used to seeing in the USA.

[ubuntu-geek]

www.site5.com are pretty good.. I would suggest them.

[mips]

Hosting in the USA might be a bad idea if you are hosting something that might violate the law in the USA. Unfortunately bandwidth pricing makes that hard. (Yes I do mean the data per second calculation.)

Finding a colocation facility or dedicated servers in South Africa for example is hard because of the price of bandwidth. $1000 per megabit is hard to swallow compared to the $25 per megabit we're used to seeing in the USA.

Unfortunately we as non-US citizens are not that clued up US law, DRM etc.

You are 100% correct on hosting anything in South Africa (and some other countries) as the prices are ridiculously high and it forces people to go the offshore route.

[WildTangent]

Give GTX here on the forums a PM about hosting. I'm not sure what his hosting packages are, because we negotiated one personally for myself.

-Wild

[Swiss]

I would recommend Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?169608)

[Trel]

I would recommend reading these threads before even considering DreamHost:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/search.php?searchid=704008
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=495461&highlight=dreamhost
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=491278&highlight=dreamhost
--

DreamHost is overselling to an extreme.

Providers like DreamHost buy bandwidth by the megabit per second.

Example: They will buy a connection to the internet that allows them to push 1000 Megabits of data per second. That is 125 Megabytes per second.

Note: 1 megabit sustained for an entire month can transfer about 320 gigabytes of data.

Even if DreamHost were using pure Cogent bandwidth and had negotiated a price of $10 per Megabit. It would cost them $30 for each account they allowed to use 1000GB like they sell in that plan. It is more realistic to assume their bandwidth costs more towards $25 per megabit which is still VERY cheap.

Taking into account their pricing at that it would cost them $75 if a customer used their entire allocation of bandwidth. We know very few do or are capable but, it is still worrying that they are overselling this much. By this example they would be selling it for 10% of their cost. By the other example at $10 per megabit they would be selling it for 30% of their cost.

That doesn't add up to a very happy future for your website if you start using too much bandwidth or if they ever hit a patch where too many users use their entire allocations of bandwidth.

Just some thoughts.

Note: These are just hypothetical examples. I have no knowledge of DreamHost's bandwidth pricing and no connection to DreamHost. My only basis for these examples is my knowledge of bandwidth pricing from various providers and taking the absolute minimum reasonable values then plugging them into some math.

[nocturn]

If you are willing to pay for hosting, Dreamhost is excellent.

http://www.dreamhost.com

They also offer a free domain registration and hosting service if you buy a web host package

They're not too bad. You get a *lot* of space (increased every month).

I did have somewhat more downtime then I would have liked though.

[OffHand]

www.reworks.net (because my friend runs it :) )
The server is in The Netherlands.