Web

[sillylucy]

I am looking to buy a new domain and was wondering what host everyone else uses. Who should I go with and who should I stay away from? Any hosting nightmares you want to share? I am looking for something on the affordable side, but if I hear about any amazing customer service I might pay for a pricer one. Thanks for the help!

[pizzaz007]

If you are going to start your first web, you should preferably go to buy your hosting / domains from godaddy. Godaddy has the best name in market. They are providing very reliable hosting / domains plans with full security and customer support. I am using their services from long time have no problems with my four running sites / domains. I rate the godaddy 10/10.

[sphinx]

Uh I will disagree partly with that - you should always keep your domain registrar and your host separate. If you ever develop a problem with your host and they are also your registrar then they can tie the domain up - or worse several domains up - while you sort things out. Say you are not happy with the speed of your server or there is too much down time and you feel the host has breached terms of service but they disagree, if they are your registrar they can stop you moving to a different host until you pay out money. So long as your registrar is separate you can simply get another host and change your DNS and there is nothing the problem host can do about it other than settle it in court.

For what its worth I have my domains registered with http://www.123webdomains.co.uk/ who I have found absolutely fine, no problems there, my host is http://www.dataflame.co.uk who I have found to be brilliant. They are very very reasonably priced for a good amount of resources, you can take their packages a month at a time and terminate at any time without extra fees, their support is online 24/7 very fast and very helpful - the one time I had something not instantly fixable they updated me regularly and still had it sorted in a couple of hours. Obviously both my registrar and host are UK based because I prefer working in sterling and I cannot recommend the hosts highly enough.

[sillylucy]

Thanks for the tip sphinx! I have heard that you should keep it separate in the past. I have heard some horror stories about whole blogs (like 5 years worth of blogging) just disappearing and not being able to be recovered. I am going to be posting lots of videos for my production company and some of this will be time sensitive material so I can't have any of that happening. I am going to check out the sites you posted. Thanks!

[sphinx]

The only way to avoid that sort of loss is to back your site up every day - any host not allowing you to back up avoid like the plague. Any server at any host can go wrong - its only machinery after all, and it only makes sense to back stuff up yourself - some hosts including dataflame offer paid backing up but you can do it yourself.

[TheMonkman]

Hi, I personally am on my second year of hosting by FatCow, they might sound funny and so on, but they are worth it in options, tools and support. They offer a very user friendly interface, unlimited storage and unlimited traffic. On top of all this, they are a green company and have very few bad ratings and a very good uptime record. The only issue we had with them is that they doubled the hosting fee on the second year of hosting, so from paying a cheap host, we're now back to paying normal fees. Most of the hosts do this if you go and read in the small print of the hosts, so whichever one you go with, go read that small print! They also offer a free domain or you can transfer an existing domain to your account. You can also have unlimited subdomains, mailboxes and so on and have a number of different domains on your one account.

[sphinx]

I am always very very suspicious of anyone offering unlimited stuff because 999 times out of 1000 there is your "fair usage" policy in the small print which does indeed involve limits - and in the one other time you get slow speeds because other sites are taking more than their fair share of the resources. I much prefer knowing what my limits are in clear black and white and having the security of knowing if another site on the server starts taking too much they will be restricted so they dont impact on my site too much.

[Microsuck]

I really recommend 1&1. They're fantastic and located in Europe. I love them.

[phase2]

Not a big fan of GoDaddy at all. I do however recommend namecheap for your domain registrar. They have always been rock solid with great prices. You also get free domain privacy for any new domain you register. This would normally cost you $8.99 (or around there) at GoDaddy.

As far as hosting goes, I wouldn't get hosting from your domain registrar. If you are on a budget, there are plenty of hosting companies out there will do the job for dirt cheap. I personally have accounts at both Hostgator and Hostmonster (Hostgator is my personal favorite) and both have been very reliable. I know there is a coupon available for Hostgator that offers you 1 cent hosting for the first month, essentially giving you the first month for free so you can give them a test run.

[Shepard]

They have the worst support for a hosting company I've ever used. Just google 1and1 complaints

Stay away!

I really recommend 1&1. They're fantastic and located in Europe. I love them.