Hosting: Where and Why?

[eluser]Derek Jones[/eluser]
Considering our partnership, some might hesitate to take me at my word, but even before I began employment with EllisLab (then pMachine), I was an EngineHosting (then pMachine Hosting) diehard. Why? Same reason I chose SmugMug over all other photo hosting services. They care about my data as much as, and possibly more than, I do. Their staff coddles their hardware, and takes their work passionately and personally. Coupled with their knowledge and specialization of hosting dynamically driven sites, and offering real load-balanced solutions on uncrowded servers for even their lowest priced plan, it's a combination that can't be beat in my book.

[eluser]chandlerou[/eluser]
Tootin' your own horn? lol! The only thing that I like about GoDaddy, I can host as many of my client sites/domains and they're all their own entity.

[eluser]Vik[/eluser]
Check out MediaLayer. They use an Apache replacement called LiteSpeed which is supposed to run PHP several times faster than Apache. My CI site is there, and they have great support too.

[eluser]Crimp[/eluser]
This one is deep: You get what you pay for. I presume it must be hard for people in the reality-based hosting industry to beat the quadruplezillionmega plans out there. By the sounds of it, you should go for a shared host with enough freedom to play with some settings. Second thing to consider then is reliability. If you host sites for other people and they pay you, however much, for it, you do want reliable. Otherwise they will phone you. All the time. The site to search and read for reviews and such is http://webhostingtalk.com.

[eluser]Daeli[/eluser]
I for myself use http://www.hosteurope.de. A german hoster though. Very good prices and the support is good aswell. We have a Linux VPS there with 256MB RAM for 9€/month! And we really get this RAM at a 100%.

[eluser]Michael Wales[/eluser]
Like Lee, and others, I was a huge fan of Slicehost - all my sites are still currently hosted with them.

But, like Lee said, it's just to damn much. Sure - I can drop into the shell and make a new mailbox, or setup a new domain, but it's just to much work. I want to click a link and be done with it. I want to manage my hosting no matter what ports are blocked on my firewall. I want to be able to tell my wife over the phone how to setup a new domain on my hosting.

I just landed a great deal, through Eleven2 who caught my request for host recommendations on my Twitter feed.

I won't quite tell you to go out and send them your CC# but I'll be able to advise a bit more in a week or so when I get everything going over there. So far, their customer service has been absolutely amazing.

[eluser]chandlerou[/eluser]
Man, a ton of resources, thanks guys! That Eleven2 has some amazing promotional deals.

[eluser]Tom Glover[/eluser]
You forgot one host, WackyWebs.net. As I own this company I will guarantee Support and SLAs. also because im an active CI user I will be able to help you deal with CI problems on my server more rapidly than the rest of my support team. I will only offer personalised support to CI users and members of the CI or EE community on my servers. Drop me an email or Visit the link inside my sig for more details about WackyWebs.net.

[eluser]Mirage[/eluser]
No on the original list, but I host my clients sites on VPS and exclusively so with ServInt and I'm extremely happy with the performance of the systems as well the the service they provide. Slicehost looks promising and seems to be price competitive.

I've looked into EngineHosting as well, but I just need [like] to have more control over my hosting environment.

Cheers!

[eluser]John_Betong[/eluser]
 
 
I have two hosts, PowWeb and DoubleDollarHosting. The former is retained because I paid a year in advance. Only about six months remaining before switching...