Ok, we're gonna have to search for a new company to host our website, just not getting crap for service, mail server goes down at least once a month, etc. Anyways, wanted to see if there was anyone that you would recommend? We need website hosting, email hosting, possibly a file hosting service, no more than 10mb storage at a time, really. Any ideas?

What about something like this?

I'm really new to this aspect of computers, so trying not to get fooked in a deal.

I use the same host as XOC. But I'm on a cheap shared plan, I bet XOC is on a dedicated host.

www.dreamhost.com

Jim

The vast majority of hosting sites out there are resellers, who potentially are clients of other resellers. No big deal if you're just doing a personal site, but if it's a business or you rely on the email services you don't have a lot of recourse if these guys decide to close up shop. Service is also generally poor in these types of situations.

There's also different types of hosting... You have dedicated servers, where you essentially rent a physical machine hosted in a datacenter. Sometimes this is from the data center's operator or someone who leases space within the data center. Both of these are very reliable options. In some cases co-location is actually a better option because you might be able to choose which data center you're located in, giving you better performance. And, larger data-centers can be more reliable than small ones. I've personally known hosting companies that claim their own 'data-center' to have nothing more than several PC's piled in a back office somewhere. A quality data center will be staffed 24/7, have AC and fire systems, hooks into multiple network backbones, etc.

Next you have VPS hosting, where you have multiple virtual servers (individual instances of an OS are run on one physical box). You essentially have your own private machine in this situation. There's different levels of service here, some providers do oversell, you have to be careful what you get. With most of these services you are guaranteed a specific amount of RAM, Disk, processor time. If the RAM is ambiguous or they claim to offer unlimited anything, be very wary, as they're probably overselling.

Both dedicated and VPS hosting generally offer two levels of service. Managed and Unmanaged. A Managed plan would mean that they handle software installs/upgrades, day-to-day problems, etc. Unmanaged means you're responsible for the server. Short of needing reboots or major problems it's up to you.

Finally you have shared hosting. This is the simplest solution for most people as you don't have to worry about managing your own server, but it's also the place most fly-by-night type operations setup. Anyone with just a little ability can setup a shared hosting provider in a few minutes. Unless you're going with a very reputable company I don't recommend these for anything but hobby sites.

What I use is an unamanged VPS plan, through a company called rimuhosting.com, they're located in NZ, but co-located in data centers in the US and UK along with Oceania. They've probably never seen their servers in person, but take customer service very seriously in my experience. There service is targeted towards technical users though, so i can't really recommend it to anyone who doesn't know how to manage their own server.

Up until recently I ran my own email server, but with google offering gmail for domains it made more sense for me to use that service. their free service gives your 50-100 (I forget which) accounts with 2GB storage each. It's a good service if you're looking to provide email for a small group or office of people and don't want all the hassle of running your own, plus the impact on your own disk space filling up with attachments people keep hanging around. http://www.google.com/a/

wow, plenty of info...thanks!

We have a small interoffice dedicated file server that we have set up, we would just need to move the DNS over to a new host. Reliability and uptime are the main objectives. Boss absolutely goes apeshit if the mail goes down for even 5 minutes. right now our mail has been down since last night, and we can't get our admin on the horn, so I'm getting an earful.

We have three users, a very small page, although I would like to upgrade that. Need no more, really, than 10mb inbox storage to be downloaded locally, so don't need any server storage options like Exchange. Access to a file server with about 10mb of storage space would be nice, too, b/c many times I have to send photos and whatnot to clients and it's much easier to upload a .zip and send them a link.

I've had wonderful success with
http://icdsoft.com/index.php

MGJ

I've used IPOWERWEB for the past 5 or 6 years and have had good success with them. Great customer service. Very little downtime over the years.

Godaddy.com - But I'm a little biased there!

Pow Web Been with them for 5 years. No problems with their service or support.

Check your PMs - can you shoot me an email?

I checked my PMs - I have none from you!

I use WBWS.net for all my hosting needs. Its like $10 a month, but overall, I get unlimited number of domains on the package, 350MB storage adn like 3GB transfer.

Using the cPanel interface, I can do almost anything I need to, and have only had to contact them like twice in the last 5 years, and that is only cuz I forget to renew my domains on time

If this is for a personal site, you're getting ripped off compared to Dreamhost.

$10 gets you 170 GIGABytes storage, 1.7 TERAbytes of transfer, unlimited domains, etc.

www.Siteground.com

$4.95/mo

* FREE Domain
* 40,000 MB Web space
* 900 GB Traffic
* 99.9% Server Uptime
* 15 min Response Time
* 24/7 Top Customer Care
* CPanel and Fantastico
* Immediate Activation

* FREE SiteBuilder (save $99)
* Unlimited MySQL DB
* Unlimited Email accounts
* Unlimited Subdomains
* Unlimited FTP Accounts
* FREE Blog Installation
* E-commerce Pack