Who has the best deal for webspace/hosting?
 

Hey guys. I'm hoping some of you may have recommedations or advice regarding websites.

I'd like to get a site going where I can post video, stories, info, and sell my own DVDs... but unfortunately I'm pretty ignorant about the companies I should deal with and the best approach.

Maybe I should find a "Websites for Dummies" book, but I think I'm a little past that... maybe not.

I was thinking about going with 1&1 or some company like that.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Matt,

I'm in the same boat. After going through 3 providers, I've settled with ipowerweb.com.

I've been with them for about 3 weeks and I'm happy with the service and support. I was a little turned off by their cheezy marketing and the promised feature set was a little hard to believe for the price, but they have delivered all the goods so far.

I had some DNS, technical, and configuration problems which they were able to answer and/or correct within a few short hours. I used both the telephone and their online tech support system which logs all previous queries so everyone can go back and look at the previous Q&A.

I also like their web site control panel and was pleased with the quality of the web applications they provide. Very easy to setup and configure. A forum like dvinfo.net took about 10 seconds to install and I was off and running (they use phpBB). Same for the chat, ecommerce, web portal, photo album apps as well.

So after messing around with ipowerweb's system, I'm happy. You can take a look at some of the features on my site:Bungalow28.com, right now it's just the webmail and forum but I'll enable some more when I get a chance. I set the forum so you have to register to see the posts. Feel free to register for now.

I'm still designing the site so there's no content yet. It's mainly going to be a private site for my production "crew" and family to share info, scripts, video, and photos. I'm still looking for a good web design company though that can give the site a cool overall look.

The other providers I tried were Yahoo!, Earthlink, and Verio - all very good, but they all were missing one or another feature that I wanted and charged about 3 times more per month.

For the $7.95/month deal, you have to pay for one year up front, it came out to around US$95.40/year. Include an extra $20/year to register the domain.

Thanks Michael... I only needed a little nudge in a direction and that may do it. Naturally I've googled the "best host" thing for a while and ipowerweb comes up a lot... so maybe I'll give 'em a try.

I enabled some more features if you want to take a look: Bungalow28.com

If you want free hosting (but very little space) for your own domain try Doteasy. You can assign your existing domain name to their servers (you have to pay a one time fee) or have them register your domain (but then you have to stick with them for life I think). It also works for emai. And they have paid options like more space, more email accounts, PHP and stuff like that.

It all depend of your needs, but you should have a look at 8-95.com . They host my web site since 2 years and the service is awesome! I have signed for the 8.95$ / half a year plan, which offer 50 mb of disk space, 50 emails, 1 gb of bandwidth / month, support PHP and mysql. Hard to find better. If this is not enough for your needs, they offer others great plans .

For domain registration, try http://www.10-domains.com/ . Domain name registration for 10$ / year.

i have beeen using powweb (www.powweb.com) for about 6months or so and couldnt be happier. plus for the price i think they offer some of the best specs.

check out my site. tell me what you think.

Not bad Alfred... that's about what I need for now. I don't need a bunch of email accounts but I would like to have as much space as possible and I'd like as much bandwidth as possible... for a given price.

There are a couple hosts which give something nuts like 500mb of space and over a gig of bandwidth for under $8... so that's where I'm leaning at the moment... but basically all I want to be able to do is post videos I've shot and sell DVDs off the site.

I'm not sure exactly what I need to do that, but I think the specs above will get me there with plenty of headroom... the other thing is I want the video to load as fast as possible... some hosts seem to pop video up instantly and others act as though we're hitting a dial-up bottle-neck...

There are such cool sites out there that I don't expect to have one of the coolest... but I'll be tenatious about it until it's pretty good... with plenty of audio/video...

I want the excess space so I can have the option of high bit-rate video/audio for those that want it. Some of the sound-files I've been swapping have an incredible amount of detail in them and they're 96 bit rate with no video...

Matt, you don't have your location mentioned in your profile. Are you in Vancouver? Well, I guess it doesn't matter where you live if you're looking for web hosting. I use uniserve.com - their prices are reasonable and they are a stable company. I've been with them for about 10 years.

You mentioned 1 and 1 in your original post, Matt, and I recently took them up on a free 500 MB for three years. Yes it sounded like a scam to me but it wasn't and after a month or more of hosting a number of high speed video files on their server I haven't found anything to complain about. I've forgotten what their monthly rate is for the basic package they gave me but it was quite reasonable compared to the two packages I have with Bell in Canada right now.

David Hurdon

Thanks David... I went to your site and that's along the lines of what I'll be needing. I'd like to be able to offer visitors several clips to view and have them load and play quickly.

I see your site does that very well. I'm craving a dungeness crab and pale ale... or stout. With the B.C. backdrop that looked like heaven.

If I don't go with 1&1 I may go with ipowerweb or else startlogic... both of those companies are rated high and they have an obscene amount of alotted space and bandwidth...

Hopefully later this month you'll see a "www" tag under my posts. I may not make it available until there's a reason to go there... but since I have a stupid sense of humor I might not be able to wait...

Anything comical on my site will be lost on most people, but if I can make people pose like the RCA dog then I'll consider it a success.

A friend at work raves about digitalinet.com.
I've heard that you can buy service for about a little over $7 a month. I'm looking into it myself.

Jeff Patnaude

Matt,

As did Michael W, I also went with iPowerweb. From my limited experience, I cannot say they are any better or worse than the next hosting company, but it has been problem-free for the minimal use I have made of it so far. (If you waste your time to look at the beginnings of my personal web site, you won't be impressed...but that's due to my lack of free time, not iPowerweb's fault!!!)

The reason I went with iPowerweb as opposed to something like Glob@t, which I considered and decided against, was the FINE PRINT. iPowerweb had clearly written policies that did NOT include clauses about limitations on file size, allowable file formats, or DAILY bandwidth limits that you see on a lot of the really, really cheap hosters like Glob@t. The cheap hosters tend to not like large files and popular formats (eg music files!) because then people actually USE more server system resources. But some put restrictions in place, as Glob@t did, and some don't, such as iPowerweb.

It is obviously a competitive market and it wouldn't surprise me if they regularly update their user agreements to respond to market pressures. My advice is to pick a couple of likely contenders and then "suck it up"...take the extra half hour to do the tedious reading of a few pages of user agreement to look for red flags like max file size, or daily limits.

Here's another host with a low monthly rate, high up-time, and a good reputation:

http://www.ehostsource.com/web-hosting/standard-plus-web-hosting.html

I think I'm paying just $7.33 per month for 500 MB space, 50 GB/month transfer rate and a self-renewing domain name, which they registered for me in the first place. This is a unix based server. The thing I like about it is subdomains. Suppose you register penultimatevideo.com as a domain name. With subdirectories you can compartmentalize this into many other entities such as

cameras.penultimatevideo.com

lights.penultimatevideo.com

This helps if you are really cheap and need to share a subscription with one or more friends.

using the subdomain setup page they provide.

Based on reputation, features, and total package I think ipowerweb has the best deal. They are $7.95 per month BUT you must pay for 12 months in advance to get free setup and domain registration.

Startlogic looked better with nearly the same deal. (Startlogic gives a gig of space vs. ipowerweb's 800mb) Both hosts allow 40gig of bandwidth.

I tried to find a detailed disclaimer as mentioned here about ipowerweb... one for startlogic... but I couldn't.

I'm also annoyed that startlogic pops up in so many searches BRAGGING about what they give for $7.50 per month. They don't tell you that you STILL must pay a year in advance to get that price! There is no indication of that until you're actually paying.

ipowerweb is clear about what you must do to get the $7.95 right from the start. I respect that and that's why I'll go with them.

Who cares about a .45 per month savings anyway? For an extra $5 per YEAR you get a longer established company that is UP FRONT about the total/actual package price.