Domain hosting recommendations?

[Dave McElderry]

My present host seems to be getting greedy. They're charging me $14.95 per year for domain renewal and $8.95 per month for hosting unless I commit to multiple years (2 years @ $7.95, 3 years @ $6.95). This hosting cost has been increasing each year when it seems that hosting in general is getting cheaper. My needs are pretty simple. One domain name, no ecommerce, just a small informational site. I use a half dozen e-mail addresses and I use some of the space for personal use (backup storage), and the occasional place to put photos or videos for family and friends access.

I'm looking for recommendations from anyone who thinks they might have a better host. I see some who say "free domain for life." Does this really mean that they won't charge me a yearly domain renewal fee? Some claim as little as $3.95 per month, but I'm skeptical. I suspect that I'd have to commit to several years in order to get that price. There are an awful lot of these places that are doing this now. One more note...I have a personal problem with Go Daddy, so that's not an option.

[Bobby]

I have a problem with GoDaddy also. Their pricing structure is built to suck business in with artificially low prices, until you actually price the features you need. Don't like 'em.

I have been with APlus (www.aplus.net) for years and years now. Not sure if they are competitive, but their prices are stable and very good customer service. I recommend them to my clients also.

[Dave McElderry]

Thanks for the reply Bobby. It looks like their low-end plan would probably serve my needs and could save me several dollars per month. I do have a problem with them wanting to charge $9.99 per year for the domain. That makes the equivalent monthly fees about $.84 higher. So a $5.95 hosting plan would really be about $6.79. It does say that if you purchase one of their hosting plans the registration is free, but it appears that they will charge the yearly fee. I may have to check into this further. I'm still wondering about the places that claim "free domain for life."

[rebekahj81]

I'm a big fan of Tiger Technologies. They've hosted my personal blogs for three years.

It is true that you will only get those $3.95/month promos from other places if you commit to years at a time and pay up front. That seems to be the standard.

I have a basic plan with Tiger and pay $6.95 per month. They don't charge you to register the domain name or to transfer an old one. And I have had STELLAR customer service from them, from dumb questions up to big fixes. They email back promptly and I always feel like there's a real person helping me address my issues quickly. That, to me, is well worth the extra dollar or so per month.

(My problems are usually just me being an idiot though, not them having hosting trouble! My website has NEVER, to my knowledge, been down.)

If you do like them, I'd appreciate if you use this link so I get referral points...

http://www (dot) tigertech (dot) net/referral/therealrebekah (dot)com

Hm, I can't post real links yet. But you get the picture.

[Dave McElderry]

rebekahj81, thanks for the info. I'll put tigertech on my list to check out. If I should decide to go with them I'll see that you get the referral. Welcome to our community!

[Chuck Engels]

Dave, I have used Yahoo for the past 5 - 6 years for the chuckengels.com site.
Lots of plans and excellent service.

I have also heard that GoDaddy is good for basic hosting.

Netfirms is another one that we use at my office, they are very good also.

Problem is that there are probably hundreds of hosts these days, too many to sort through.

[Dave McElderry]

Problem is that there are probably hundreds of hosts these days, too many to sort through.

That's for sure Chuck. I've been trying to find a site that would give good unbiased reviews of the best hosts, but it's more difficult than one might think. Instead I'm finding bunches of "pseudo" review sites that are really intended to point you toward hosts of their own bias. These sites nearly always have about 10 hosts listed, and if you bother to go through them each you find out that 8 or 9 of them are all owned by the same outfit. What a racket.

I appreciate the response. I think that I'm especially interested in checking out Yahoo. At least I know they're a reputable company that's not likely to go under in the near future.

[Bobby]

...Yahoo. At least I know they're a reputable company that's not likely to go under in the near future.

Well, actually not. Yahoo is holding on by its fingernails and there is much bad press lately about the company and its new leader Carol Bartz. I have read reviews that call its business related websites inaccurate and inept.

[Dave McElderry]

Well, actually not. Yahoo is holding on by its fingernails and there is much bad press lately about the company and its new leader Carol Bartz. I have read reviews that call its business related websites inaccurate and inept.

Shows you what I know. I actually haven't even been on the Yahoo website in years, but I thought they were a pretty solid company. Thanks for the heads-up Bobby.

[tiny]

If you know how to build your own site, and are comfortable working over FTP, then I highly recommend DreamHost. It is probably the most powerful/flexible host at the best value. I have used them off and on for years. You generally can get your first year of hosting for near free with some promo code or another. Their name consistently comes up in polls I see on tech sites as peoples favorite. I just can't say enough about how awesome of a host they are.

[Dave McElderry]

Tiny, although I used to publish with FrontPage, my present host dropped FP extensions a couple years ago and FTP is all that I've been using. Handholding in general would be minimal, but good support is still a requirement. This is the first host I've seen that isn't using cPanel management. I can't say that cPanel impresses me. I can usually get things done with it, but it's kind of klutzy sometimes. So a different interface would be okay, but I wish that they had shown some screen captures or samples of their web panel. Right at the moment it doesn't look like they're having any promotions, and they're just as expensive as my present host. They're very full-featured, but probably much more than I require. I'll keep them in mind, and I appreciate the response.

[Dave McElderry]

On a whim I decided to contact my host's billing department to see if they would meet last year's price for my renewal. They did. Problem solved.

[Bobby]

Like many things today, such as credit card percentages, ANYTHING is negotiable...

[Chuck Engels]

Reminds me of just last week when I called DirecTV to cancel my service.
They gave me a slightly smaller package with free DVR and 3 free receivers (used to have 5 and only 1 was free), old price was $74 per month, new price is $30 per month and they gave me a $60 credit too

[Dave McElderry]

I think most companies today will do what they can within reason to keep an established customer. A couple of months ago we bundled our phone service with our cable TV and Internet. Saved over $20.00 a month doing it. When the changeover happened I was surprised that the old phone company didn't at least send a letter saying that they were sorry to see us go. It took 6 weeks to get an $8.65 refund check back from them for the unused part of our service. No warm and fuzzies there. Didn't make me feel guilty at all.