[Darth-Apple]

There are literally thousands of webhosts out there. Some are better than others. Have an experience at a webhost you'd like to share, a recommendation, or a warning to fellow admins about which hosts to avoid? Discuss here.

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So far, the best webhost that I've ever used is Ramnode. Their prices are reasonable, their policies are honest, and their service is good. They also have a great support team, so I'd say it's a win in a lot of ways. They are unmanaged, so you have to be knowledgeable about servers, but it's worth it.

The worst paid host I've ever used is probably dreamhost. They aren't terrible, but they are very slow and have a lot of downtime. Just go to http://hardwiredgoogle.com to see how slow their servers are. Dreamhost has some other features that are pretty cool, but I'd rather have good server performance than lots of features.

Of course I have had far worse experiences at free webhosts, so I won't complain too much.

[Acko]

I was about to post about dreamhost, then I read your post. I guess they don't live up to their name, do they?

[Darth-Apple]

They aren't as bad as 000webhost or SMFnew. They don't really suck, but they aren't really worth the money. There are far better webhosts out there that won't charge any more.

[Acko]

What about hostmaster?

[Darth-Apple]

Are you talking about hostmonster or hostgator?

They aren't terrible, but I don't really care for them either. I've found that most of the mainstream ones aren't as good as the smaller, independent hosts.

[Acko]

No, hostmaster. Though it doesn't seem like you know much about that that, judging from what you asked

[Darth-Apple]

Ah, I hadn't heard of them yet. At $7/month, they seem a bit pricey for a shared host, but that's pretty normal these days.

Do you have any experience with them?

[Acko]

Actually, I just remembered . Yeah, I hosted a site there once. It got abandoned, and I don't think it's still up.

[simlink]

My experiences are:

Zymic: Meh, it's free. Can't complain about how slow it can be. Not good for non-static hosting (no phpmail)
000: Do I really need to say anything?
Forumotion: Not bad uptime wise, just horrible customer service, admin panel in lame, kind of restrictive and way too intrusive with their ads.
SMFnew: We have an entire topic on its downtime. Need I say more?
IcyBoards: Stunning everything. Open, properly supported, advanced notification of downtime, and if you get your own domain no branding. Can move ads to suit your theme better, under certain rules, friendly and helpful support. My recommendation for free forum hosting as it stands right now.

[Darth-Apple]

Agreed 100%.

Icyboards is under-rated as a forum host these days. They are pretty awesome.

[Hoolio]

I like Nimbus hosting http://www.nimbushosting.co.uk

They are a UK based forum hosting specialist company

They dont just toss you the keys to the server and say 'best of luck'

They are always tweaking, helping your with speed, CDN, back ups, new technology

I have my forums on two machines and a shared load balancer with them.

If you have a high traffic site and want reliability, uptime and real people to brainstorm with - I can recommend them highly.

They aren't a bargain bucket nickel and dime set up.

http://www.nimbushosting.co.uk

[Darth-Apple]

Ah, I see that they are a cloud host. I've never heard of them, but from the looks of it, they look great. I'll have to check them out sometime.

[Hoolio]

Ah, I see that they are a cloud host. I've never heard of them, but from the looks of it, they look great. I'll have to check them out sometime.

Well I have my main forum whirring away on 2 hardware servers and a loadballancer in their database cages at a London server farm - (ain't no cloud as far as I can tell). The other is virtual shared hosting.

[Darth-Apple]

Yeah, someone needs to come up with a good definition for cloud hosting. It seems like people throw out the term without really defining what exactly it is all the time. I had a "cloud" VPS account a while back, and I can say that its performance was very slow in comparison to non-cloud alternatives, but that was probably due to the host.

What is the difference between "virtual shared hosting" and normal "shared" hosting?

[Hoolio]

No idea. I am sure I am mangling the jargon badly!!!!