Oh man, there are so many hosts out there, and I don’t want to rush into things.

In my comments I’ve been recommended two hosts, plus there are some more that I have been looking at and may also be good, but it’s hard to tell. Some have very few reviews, some have some bad reviews, some have good reviews which may be suspect – how do I know they didn’t pay someone to write that review?

So, I am going to really have to think about this carefully, since it is something very important to my business. Now, my current international host servage.net has a lot of bad reviews out there, though except for the hacker I haven’t encountered any problems, and their support system is great. So it’s not only the good reviews I have to take with a grain of salt. Some decent companies can have their names tarnished by just a couple of angry customers – and given how huge Servage is, it’s natural that there are a handful of people that aren’t satisfied.

So I’m brought to a point where I may just have to fling myself at a host, and if I’m not satisfied with it, I’ll need to move.

Here are some of the plans weighed out. Included are the things I consider somewhat important.

Host:	MD	Flexi Hostings	Net Logistics	Web City	XKO
Disk Space	0-20gb	1-300gb	1.5-2.5gb	5-100gb	0-10gb
Bandwidth	1-20 gigs	50-4,000 gigs	30-50 gigs	50-500 gigs	1-40 gigs
PHP and MySQL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add-on Domains	0-10*	0-3*	2-6	0-5	Unlimited
cPanel	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reseller or Referral Programs	Yes	Yes	Yes	No (apparently, this comes from a reseller program!)	Yes
Price/Month	$3-$40	$5-$23	$20-$40	$7-$20	$10-$55
Reviews	Bad	Not Great	Good	Not Great	Good (but lacking in general)

*Unlimited for reseller plans

Now, I don’t necessarily want to be a reseller, but it might be good to have that option there.

So looking at these laid out this way, I can see that each company has its strengths and weaknesses. I suppose I have to ask myself what is most important to my business, taking into account the most balanced plans in the table.

MD Web Hosting has some awful reviews, but the cheapest domain registration (not shown in table) and okay plans. It also has a large reseller program.

FlexiHostings is, ironically, the least flexible when it comes to Add-on domains, offering no more than three. However, it is great in most of its other stats. If I chose this, I wouldn’t be able to host any client websites through my account if I wanted to do so. It also has the odd scathing review. Bonus: I have had a personal recommendation.

Net Logistics is well-rounded, but can be pricey. It offers a reseller program, but comes short of FlexiHostings in terms of most of its stats. It may allow for up to 6 domains, but that hosting is $40 per month, which is simply too much for my fledgling business. I can actually get better value, in respect to this factor, at FlexiHostings.

Web City is apparently an offshoot part of the Enetica reseller program, and supposedly may have congestion problems (though I’m sure it’s probably better than Servage). It is quite good in its other respects, however. This is heavily edited thanks to comment #1; I was misinformed. Bonus: I have had a personal recommendation.

XKO is a little bit of an enigma. Its plans aren’t spelt out that well, but it seems like a nice little business. I think it may be a small operation compared to the rest, which I do want to support. Plus they have the whole “green web hosting” thing going on, which is pretty cool.

So, which one?

I just don’t know. I will sleep on it. Feel free to help me out if you want, but I guess the decision is ultimately my own.

Tags: computer, goals, Internet, NEIS, Projects, Websites, Work

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Internet, Projects, Web Design and Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.