Start Date: Aug 28, 2000
Wise-Women List Archive File
Web Site Hosting Recommendations
Question:
I know this subject has been covered before, but can you
recommend your fave hosting services? I am setting up a brochure
ware site, which may add ecommerce. I think I need to have CGI,
multiple mail accounts. What else should I be looking for?
It is for an artist, and he is very price sensitive.
I use:
http://www.communitech.net/
http://www.crystaltech.com/
http://www.cwiservices.com/
I've heard good things about
http://www.amhosting.net/virtual.shtml
Look for more recommended WPP's on this page under "Hosting"
http://www.womenwebdesigners.com/url.html
i recommend www.netmegs.com ........... thats who hosts my stuff.. I've
been with them since 1997.. check out all their different accts. They are
bound to have what you need at a reasonable price.
There's a great site that has loads of information about
web hosts - http://www.webhosters.com . It is ad-supported so I'm a
bit skeptical about their "top hosts" ratings....but what's kind of
invaluable are the Customer Comments, which seem to be uncensored...
you'll see that some of the top-name hosts, like
Interland for example, are really badly rated. Also, some hosts
do some kinds of plans better than others - for example, one of my
favorite hosts, Burlee http://www.burlee.com has a cheapo "Unlimited"
$12.95 option which seems to be the cause of more trouble than
it's worth...probably because people don't read the fine print about
only 15% of the traffic should be downloads only (in other words you
can't use the site for distributing graphics or software or something.)
On the other hand I have tons of their Basic and up plans hosted on
them...and they are absolutely great when it comes to customer
service.
Long story alert: we recently had a situation where we took over
a site....they had a kind of domain name "hostage" situation, where
they had had their site hosted on a big online magazine (the NY
Times' NYToday, to be exact) - the Times was listed as the domain
name owner, even though the company actually had paid for it
(the bozo who'd done the registration for them had done it that way
and of course our clients didn't know anything about that)...well the
bozo at the Times had long since left the company, his email was dead,
and so no one could confirm the transfer from their side. (and
repeated phone calls, letters, faxes, etc did nothing...they weren't
interested since our clients had cancelled their advertising with
them anyway.) So, after about 3 months of this nonsense, in
desperation I contacted Burlee support to see if they could do
anything. To wrap it up - about 3 days later, the NIC transfer
was done...and a week or so later we have the domain pointing
correctly *off* of the Times site. And they didn't charge anything for the
wrestling with Network Solutions part at all! (ok we do host like
I said a bunch of client sites on them..plus we're slowly talking
about colocating a server with them, that could have something to do
with it)
I'd also recommend Pair, which a lot of people here like too,
http://www.pair.com - they have excellent rates for smaller-need
sites...the Wise-Women site is on them. But Pair has almost no
customer-service as far as I can tell, so you do have to figure
things out on your own. (but they do have an excellent support
site.)
I recommend Internet Communications, Inc. www.icom.com, they have
low-budget but high-performance hosting for only $8.25/month ($99/yr.) with
POP mail and CGI. Check them out.
Hi all Wise Women: I finally got my "domain moving issue" settled and
wanted to get back to you. One: ICANN did get back to me (I was
pleased), but my message to them wasn't very clear and because of me
they weren't able to be helpful.
Two: Once someone directed me to "better whois" versus the one I had
been using I was able to see who the registrar really was. The one I
had been dealing with was a re-seller and that was at the root of the
confusion for me. The better whois link is here:
http://www.betterwhois.com/
Also, I think in the future I'll check out
registrars through ICANN, if I'm thinking of using something other than
Network Solutions. And I had forgotten about the internic site.
http://www.internic.net/
Life is more complicated since the deregulation of Network Solutions -
that's for sure!
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