Web host advice, please.

Have been using ipower for several years now and it has been okay, but I'm wondering if there is something better out there for a minimal, very "non-tech" user. ipower's webmail features especially, leave something to be desired.

Any recommendations for/against specific providers? Any experiences with BlueHost, Hostgator and other web hosts? BTW, I'm looking for something comparable or lower in price to ipower (about $8/mo.). Oh, and it should include free domain name registration.

If ipower is as good as it gets (for the price), then so be it. Thanks for any replies.

You should check out fatcow. For you are wanting I think it's a pretty good deal. I think it will meet all your requirements. And, they are supposed to have awesome customer service from what i've heard. They are also doing some sort of first year 35% off promotion. It's on the homepage.

http://www.fatcow.com/

non tech user? what are you looking for?

hrm.. one piece of advice - avoid GoDaddy.. :sick2:

I use nixihost: https://billing.nixihost.com/cart.php

very few downtimes and fast speeds from my experience.

JonN06 and csshih, thanks for the replies!

I'll have to check out fatcow and nixihost. Is fatcow related to Tucows? I thought GoDaddy was the title of a movie.

Thanks again.

godaddy is a pretty large company..... honestly, they seem to spend more money on advertising than servers.... (superbowl ads, etc)

If you have some time to read a short novel, click here for CPF's woe's with ipower. IMO? They SUCK! And... FWIW, All CPF sites are hosted with GoDaddy and I have been very happy with them... including their pricing. They are STILL half the price of what I was paying ipower. My domains are not registered with them so I'm not sure about their pricing for that. And... the three dedicated servers that I have are non-supported.

And... the current issues with CPF are not due to a poor server. CPF is going through growing pains again and the servers just need to be tweeked in order to handle it.

i use bluehost and i love the email side of things as you can have 2500 email addresses if you want and they are quick and with unlimited file size and there are plenty of other features including webmail, POP, IMAP etc... along with other options but their hosting is a bit slow if you get a ton of traffic or have a lot of files.
you can't beat the price tho something like $5/mo

as for domains i use godaddy for most of them and have been pretty happy as they are within a dollar or so of the cheapest places and have a pretty good setup if you can navigate around it's site
there email plans are a bit expensive but if you only need a few email addresses and don't need the server side it is the way to go

Thanks for the additional replies.

Greta, the ipower story really is something to read. I skimmed through a bit of the beginning posts, but will need to go back and read it again. What a horror story.

usLEDsupply, I like the idea of unlimited file size for BlueHost email. 2500 email addys?!? Aside from large businesses, who would need (or want) that many addys?

I have my work cut out for me to look at what would work best...the input really helps, though, and I appreciate it!

Err uhh, i'm not 100 percent sure if they are still related. I just did some checking on google and it looks like they do their own web hosting and run the domains through tucows. That was as of 2009.

The company I work for uses Godaddy for some of their smaller stuff, and it seems to work pretty well for them.

Good luck whichever one you use.

I've been using bluehost for years--best service I've ever had, bar none. Speed is dependent on many factors--they do seem to hesitate sometimes, but othertimes they're quick. Just depends...

What are your real bandwidth and storage needs?

I use A Small Orange (ASO). They have a Tiny plan that starts at $25 per year (150 MB storage, 4.5 GB bandwidth, unlimited databases, email accounts, subdomains, etc.) There's a $50 a year Small plan (750 MB storage, 15 GB bandwidth) as well in your price range. I'm using the Tiny plan for my personal website.

Tech support is responsive. I had several minor problems today that were responded to within 10 minutes and resolved in about 2 hours. Supposedly the reason why their storage and bandwidth is small compared to other plans in their price range is that they try not to oversell their servers. BTW, they have user forums (http://forums.asmallorange.com/) where you can read both compliments and gripes from users. I actually trust a company more when they are willing to have a public forum for users to discuss the service.

If you do want to join ASO, you can get discounts by using these coupon codes:

15aso2010 (15% off)
2010aso ($5 off)

If you are joining the Tiny plan then the $5 one will save you more money.

Greta said:

All CPF sites are hosted with GoDaddy and I have been very happy with them... including their pricing.

Click to expand...

I know the current issues are not because of their servers.... but that was not why I advised the OP to avoid godaddy.

From personal experience, their shared hosting is abysmal at best... from all the sites I've touched that were godaddy shared hosting based, their server load was always too high, downtime was frequent, pages loaded slowly, etc. Dedicated servers would be much better because, well, you have a whole blade to yourself.

From what I can tell with the OP, he only wants a simple shared hosting account, nothing fancy like a dedicated!