“Can you give me advice on which host to go with to host my blog?”
It’s a question that I’m asked a lot – but one that I can’t offer a lot of personal advice on as my blogs have been successfully hosted on b5media’s servers for a couple of years now. We use LogicWorks at b5 but I’m interested to hear who you use and recommend to host your blog?
Who do you use to host your blog? Why do you use them?
No affiliate links in comments please – they will be deleted.
I use 1and1.com. I’ve been very happy with them so far and they are inexpensive. I think I’m paying $4.95/month.
HostGator.com.
Excellent service. Reliable. Easy to contact real people.
I have WordPress & Joomla & Virtuemart sites on it.
My reseller account is there. Clients are there on their own package.
I have a blog post about HG.
Tip: choose “X3” theme in cPanel.
-Bob
Happy on Dreamhost.com for over 2 years. New customers should look out for the abundance of coupons from $50 to $200 online.
I have a dedicated server, Dual Xeon, 4 GB of RAM, at Hostdime.com
Another vote for VPS service from futurehosting.biz.
If you’re planning on getting any size, getting off a shared hosting account and on your own VPS is the way to go. And it’s reasonably priced.
Anhosting/Midphase based on a recommendation from Chris Pearson. It is really cheap and it has been a long time since I needed to contact support.
They are currently replacing servers so they seem to be proactive on management.
Dreamhost :)
I use Byet Internet Services to host my blog. They’re not very well-known, but they’re wholly terrific I have to say.
I used to use Brain Hub since they do free hosting—it’s ideal for newbies like I was back then, but you can’t beat proper paid-for hosting.
Dreamhost last 4 years or so. With the space they provide you could host virtually an unlimited amount of projects.
In the UK; http://www.eukhost.com and http://www.uk2.net
Both seem very similar and offer a lot for their money. I think both are aimed at the mass market and ideal for starter blogs. I moved over to eukhost because they had MySql 5 and allowed mod_rewrite, which at the time of writing, uk2 dont offer.
You get a lot of space and bandwidth for your money, especially compared with some smaller providers. But arguably you don’t get such a flexible package. That said, eukhost’s support has always helped me out just fine and the range of packages both offer should meet most needs.
GL!
I’ve been on Dreamhost for years and I’ve been happy with them, but I’m concerned that their Ruby On Rails Passenger performance won’t be good enough. I’m experimenting with typo blogging software – http://typosphere.org/ – and it seems a bit slow even though I have very little traffic since I just started.
I may have to upgrade my account to get more speed.
I use HubSpot to host the OnStartups.com blog.
But, I’m biased, as it’s custom-developed (and designed for business blogging).
Years ago, I used HostGator. These days I am with [url=http://www.knownhost.com/]KnownHost[/url] on a VPS in their TX location. The network is excellent, the servers are high end, and the tech support (they provide managed support for the VPS) is timely and knowledgeable.
There are a lot of cheaper hosts, but you really do get what you pay for in hosting. I would rather pay more to work with a company that provides high quality hosting.
I have a self-hosted blog with HostGator. Used to use GoDaddy, but so true about the control panel. Yikes! Their blog interface is very weak too.
I use WordPress because I love being able to easily customize it with plug-ins and extras.
I host my own blog site. And I use word press to power my blog. I just love its simplicity and quality and user-friendly interface. And not to forget the plugins as well.
Thanks again WordPress for making it happen.
My weblog ist hostet by bluehost.com
I have accounts with 3 hosts right now.
Hostgator is the only one that I have not seen any downtime with that I know of. I have had some downtime or significant problems with the other two lasting at least a day long even though both were quick to respond to tickets. I am considering moving everything to Hostgator in the near future.
Like several other commenters, I use hostmonster.com. I can’t say enough good things about this host. They offer unlimited subdomains, excellent pricing, and plenty of file space and tools to work with.
I haven’t had a second of downtime in two years. I had one issue with my site, sent out a request for help, and had a response in less than an hour.
I use nearlyfreespeech.net … its the best service i have found till now! they charge less.. and give more.. really… I used to pay$7 and get low quality web hosting.. now I pay less than $2 and get reliable fast web hosting!
I use Bluehost, always have, they are the best for hosting blogs and regular pages. Easy to install wordpress blogs, one click install.
When I was looking for cheap Windows resseler account I found vonetwork.com and use them for all my blogs and websites. I have also bought a Linux resseler account. I have just good expirience with them. They are cheap and their support is gret. I could only recommend them to although if you are looking for Windows hosting they don’t do that anymore.
I use a dedicated server hosted by 1and1. It’s simple and it just works.
Brent, I signed up for 1and1, and after waiting for 3 weeks for them to get my account straightened out, I called them and told them I wasn’t interested and to cancel. Of course one month later I got the bill. I fought with them for another month before I got all my money back. Glad you’re having success with them, but I will never go back to them.
I’ve been using Bluehost for a couple of months now, have to say I’m very happy with their package!
Happy to recommend them to anyone searching for a new host.
All the best,
John.
I use an outfit called Host Excellence. They’re cheap and fairly reliable – very few outages.
I use http://blackbox-tech.com/ they have great scalability, and the service is exceptional. They are a small company, but the guys that are running it are very knowledgeable and run several blogs of their own.
I actually had really bad experiences with a hosting company I’d used in the past for other projects (I’d actually used them, and recommended them to others, for years), to the point where I actually reported them to the Better Business Bureau. While I was at the BBB website, I looked around at some of the hosting companies listed and ranked well by the Bureau, and decided to give one of those hosts a try as a replacement for the company that I’d been with previously and was experiencing such poor service from.
The hosting company I’m with now is Lunar Pages, and they’ve been extremely good so far. Their prices are reasonable, they have a variety of different hosting packages to choose from, even their most basic packages have a lot of nice perks, in my experience they’ve had 100% network up-time, and they’ve had prompt, polite, and helpful tech support the couple times I’ve needed to ask questions.
I can see now why they were ranked so well by the BBB. :)
I also am a web developer so i have hosting with Media Temple…. they are the best!!!
I use BlueHost as well. What really sold me on them was the ability to have multiple sites on one account. That way I can expirement with different sites without paying for hosting on each of them. They also were highly recommended by others and have a good price.
David
I use HostGator for my blogs and website.
Great plans, good price. Support has been sterling. One-click installation and upgrades for WordPress software. No problems at all.
What more can I say?
GoDaddy has been fine so far … although you pay for the tech support call and it is a total crap shoot as to the quality of the knowledge on the other end. Sometimes you get a tech guy who knows it all, other times it’s some sales kid. Nothing has ever been down for me, and they are improving and adding all the time. I would not buy anything from them without using a coupon code, costs are reduced by 20-40% typically.
GoDaddy’s been mine for a couple of years now.. Been my domain registrar for like six years.. Took me this long to realize they did hosting.. Oopsie.. :grin:
Cognitively, I agree with an earlier poster.. Just.. Yikes..
But.. Customer Service.. Outside of a (for your protection) glitch in how you get locked out instantly if you breathe wrong when you store your credit card on file, GoDaddy’s been very, very, *VERY* good to me over these past few years..
A tip I wish I’d understood better early on about using hosts is to use FTP where you can.. These days I use Filezilla, purely by accident..
Being on dialup, starting right off the bat with FTP would have saved an amazing number of hours of frustration in dealing with transferring files to a “weighty” webhost while on slow transfer rate dialup.. Not to mention the pain of getting timed out off the web host and having to start back through their (tedious) step-by-step log-on process over and over and over ad infinitum..
So totally cool to not have to endure that particular stress-inducing part of [blogging] anymore.. *HIGHLY* recommend taking the FTP plunge to those who haven’t already..
Peace and best wishes from North Georgia.. :D
Great list of all web hosting companies. Right now I use NearlyFreeSpeech.net and haven’t got any very high traffic spikes.
I moved to GoDaddy about a year ago and have been very happy there. I actually have a virtual dedicated server that I host a number of blogs and other sites on. So far so good.
I use a small company in San Francisco, called Hostito. Couldn’t be happier.
i am currently moving my blog hosting over to shiftplusone.com. Mark Davidson runs it and is there to personally help you with your questions. I’m very happy!
~Laura Iriarte/aka lauralovesart/twitter
http://lauralovesart.com
http://thesmartmomsnetwork.com
Using WordPress – as a relative novice to this I just looked at Blogger, didn’t get on with it and then found WordPress, it’s done the trick for me and is easy enough for me to yse!
Dreamhost, and I have a dedicated page on my site listing all the reasons why I use them and why others should as well, but since it has an affiliate link…
Spoil sport.
Liquid Web. They are the best, bar none.
I use bluehost.com and I am veeery satisfied!
I use HostGator. My main reason was that my $10 a year host had 0 support. I opted for the Swamp Package on HostGator, which lets me host multiple blogs and domains.
So far (just over a year), they`ve been great, rescued me from my own stupidity (accidentally erased my blogs. :S) and have had amazing, fast support. They even helped me figure out what was wrong when something completely unrelated to them happened (domain account on GoDaddy was hacked). Definitely a good service. I like the fact that I can pay by the month, too, via Paypal, because in the beginning, I didn`t have the money for a full year.
i still use bluehost mostly because i’m too lazy to switch, but unlike many of the people here, i think they’re terrible.
i submitted a complaint that was absolutely ignored after a support person was extremely rude to me — told me that “the server no workie” and that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Every time my site has gone down, they’ve told me it would be back up within 30 minutes and it has taken hours.
i have better things to do than follow up with them, but i definitely wanted to add my two cents here.
Hostmonster / Bluehost are great for most bloggers
We have a dedicated server with The Planet.
Not to expensive and good hardware.
I have been using blogger for a year now but I’m looking into switching to a webhosting service. Blogger is great because it’s free but I think I can have more freedom to custom design my page if I use a different host.
I recommend slicehost.com. It’s a VPS, so you have to install everything but the OS yourself. I recommend it for cheap ($20/month) full control.
Oh, wait, I shouldn’t mention SliceHost, because I don’t want more people on their servers. . . . no, it’s good, they don’t oversell. That’s the main thing, they don’t oversell.
So many recommendations…I wish there was a consensus!
@liz – i think the reason there’s no consensus is that there are so many good (or at least adequate) hosts out there.
I’ve used several hosting services and even have hosted my own server.
Here’s the two I have had most experience with:
IPowerWeb – Mediocre hosting service. I liked them in the beginning but their customer service has been declining, their uptime has been marginal and I hate their new control panel.
Midphase – Overall I’ve been very pleased with them. Great customer service. They’ve had a few issues with uptime during their growth spurt, but I haven’t had issues in about a year.
Half of my blogs are hosted on Blogspot and the rest of my sites & blogs are hosted on a friend’s dedicated server, for free. He’s a great host, but since he isn’t in the hosting biz, I can’t recommend him to anyone.
Prior to that, I was with what was once a marvelous inexpensive hosting company, but it was sold to a bunch of guys that run the company as if they were children hosting sites on a server located in their parent’s basement.
Whatever you do, stay away from Elected Hosting! (I am not providing their URL because I don’t want this blog promoting them by accident)
They failed to inform me that they were moving my account to another server. Failed to inform me the nameserver info was changed, and when I contacted them after my site went down a few days before Christmas, they told me that someone must have hacked my account at my registrar and changed the nameserver info on me. (not true)
By the time I got all that straightened out and could access my account again, which took about a week because they never added it to the new server, I found that they had replaced everything I had with a 2 year old backup of my site, revoked my unlimited add-on domain privs that I paid for, and had the database backup & restore functions disabled in CPanel.
They told me backups were my responsibility, which I can agree with, but they disabled my ability to restore from my own backups and denied anything was wrong on their end or that any part of this fiasco was their fault.
After I freaked out and accused them of ruining my Christmas, they got spiteful and told me they wouldn’t be offerring me any more support and offered to cancel my account without refunding the rest of the one year contract I had paid for, if I didn’t like it.
This didn’t affect just one blog, but all 10 websites I had on my account, including a friend’s final research project for his degree.
So don’t give Elected Hosting a dime of your money, because all they do is lie, cheat, steal, and give really bad service.