I’ve been researching web hosts over the past several days, preparing to move foldedspace.org to one offering more space and a lower price.
What is a web host?
Foldedspace.org, and every other web site, resides on computer called a webserver. This webserver is connected to the internet at all times, allowing you faithful readers to have instant access to this site’s content.
While it’s possible for a person to host a web site on their own personal computers (a la Matt and his family of sites), there are many reasons to pay another company to do this for you.
I’ve been paying Omnis Hosting to host my web site. In the four years I’ve been with them, they’ve not altered their service packages an iota. When I signed up, it cost $17/month for 100mb of disk space, 10gb of transfer, and 25 e-mail addresses. It still costs $17 for 100mb of disk space 10gb of transfer and 25 e-mail addresses.
The foldedspace.org family of web sites has grown so that it occupies about 95mb of disk space (more if I forget to clean out the stats files, or if Denise uploads a bunch of cute pictures of Ryan and I don’t remember to reduce their size). Combined, we generate about 2gb of traffic every month. Omnis’ plan is no longer acceptable.
Take a look at what other companies offer:
| Company | $/mo | Disk | Transfer | Subd. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Powweb | $8 | 1gb | 150gb | 650 | unl. |
| Citizen Hosting | $8 | 500mb | 20gb | 300 | ??? |
| iPowerWeb | $8 | 800mb | 40gb | 400 | ??? |
| Total Choice(a) | $9 | 850mb | 12gb | unl. | yes |
| Dreamhost(a) | $10 | 500mb | 25gb | 75 | 15 |
| Surpass Hosting(a) | $10 | 2gb | 30gb | unl. | ??? |
| Surpass Hosting(b) | $15 | 4gb | 35gb | unl. | ??? |
| Total Choice(b) | $15 | 1gb | 18gb | unl. | yes |
| Omnis Hosting | $17 | 100mb | 10gb | 25 | no |
| Dreamhost(b) | $20 | 1.6gb | 40gb | 375 | 75 |
Omnis Hosting provides the weakest package of the bunch. Whenever I’ve contacted them about adding a la carte features (in other words, adding more disk space at some set fee, say $5/100mb), they’ve refused to do it. They say I need to upgrade to the next plan. Even their top plan, at $27/month, only offers 200mb of storage. A change is in order.
I’m currently leaning toward Powweb. For $8/mo, they offer quite a bit of disk space and unlimited subdomains. I also like their great help forums.
Here’s my plea to you: if you have a web site (in particular, a weblog), please share your experiences with your hosting service. Who are you with? What do they offer? How much does it cost? Are you happy with them? I’m trying to make an informed decision, and the more info I can gather, the better.
Matt H. and I both use 1&1 hosting. They ran a potentially too good to be true deal last year (3 years free). I don’t have time to figure out what their deal is now, but they’ve been reliable so far.
www.1and1.com