Hi,

I had a bad host and now I'm searching for a good one, reliable and not expensive.

I searched a while and bumped onto:
www.polurnet.com of www.lunarpages.com etc...

If I verify different rankings in top10: http://www.webhostingstuff.com/ or http://webhostinggeeks.com/
Then I see stuff like www.lypha.com who give 1 TB storage and 5 TB traffic
Every host gives more and more! All lost gigabytes!

I verified 2 sorths of hosts from the same pricecategory: 50-60 euro annual:
www.hostmonster.com or www.startlogic.com
they serve 300 gig storage and 3000 gig traffic ? wtf...
when you look to sites like: www.speedpacket.be etc...
they give 100 meg storage and 3 gig traffic.

The difference is énormous, why? Are they reliable?

And what's the difference between Linux, Unix and Windows hosting?

Greets,
Bulevardi

I've been extremely happy with GoDaddy.com hosting -- lost of options, great prices, add-ons, etc.

As for the difference, I can help between Linux and Windows -- I took Windows the first time I used them (inadvertantly) and discovered real quick the difference -- you can't use PHP scripts and such on Windows, you can only use ASP, or anything compatible with windows. I usually go with the Linux because I prefer PHP scripts so that would largely depend on what you use the most. If you don't use either much, I would still go with the Linux.

The Unix issue ... well, must defer to someone else on that one!

Can I just say that these features are probably overkill. Most users need up to 1GB storage and about 5GB bandwidth max. Unless you have a very very busy site, you will not need 3000GB (3TB) of bandwidth!!!!!

Most users don't even need that much. A well-built, highly-trafficked site in most cases can use maybe 50-100 MB (notice how that said megabytes) of storage space and maybe 1-2 GB of bandwidth. As whym said, 1 TB of anything is overkill, unless it's for a dedicated server.

Some hosts have a habit of overselling their services in an attempt to land more customers, and these are the hosts to avoid. Anyone offering 1 TB of anything that isn't in a VPN or dedicated server environment is just looking for a quick score or trying to oversell.

I don't know if any of these are true...these are just things I found. But others have reviewed some of the hosts you're looking at.

As far as hostmonster is concerned, you may want to read this:

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/web-ho...stmonster.html

"Startlogic Sucks!"

http://www.startlogicsucks.com/

I haven't heard or seen anything about speedpacket.be before.

Originally Posted by whym

Can I just say that these features are probably overkill. Most users need up to 1GB storage and about 5GB bandwidth max. Unless you have a very very busy site, you will not need 3000GB (3TB) of bandwidth!!!!!

That's what I thought too...
My website is max 100 MB and traffic is not so much.
I guess they're just making lots of publicity for too high quantities of gigs etc...
But in rankingwebsites they are good, 'they' say.

"Startlogic Sucks!"

http://www.startlogicsucks.com/

WOW -- a whole site for this?? That's a hoot! I just moved my largest site from them because it went down 3 times in as many months -- once for over 3 full days. Talk about steamed -- that's my largest revenue generator. Who knows how much I lost on that. however, a different site I host on there never goes down. Go figure.

Thnx for the advice.

I guess things like http://www.one.com/ are good?

Originally Posted by Bulevardi

Thnx for the advice.

I guess things like http://www.one.com/ are good?

Anything that offers unlimited bandwidth is overselling extremely! At those very low prices, I wouldn't trust that site for good support or reliability. You get what you pay for!

What whym said. Any host that offers "unlimited" bandwidth usually ends up being craptacular and quite often shuts users' sites down for 'excessive CPU usage' (which is quite often caused by high levels of bandwidth).

lunarpages hosting is bit slow. Using them now.

hostmonster will be much better server in term of reliability and speed.

look at bluehost and hostgator as well.

bluehost/hostgator are the same (company) aren't they?

As others have said already - be sensible about what you go for... providers offering unlimited this and that are lying (nothing about hosting is unlimited - disks, network connections etc. are all limited by the laws of physics, and even intangible things like mailboxes can have a high overhead - particularly due to spam/AV filtering).

You should look at your current usage, and select a hosting plan that suits that (e.g. if you're using 1.5GB transfer at the moment, you won't need more than say 5GB or so - so don't get a hosting plan offering 500GB!).

Regarding Linux, Unix and Windows: You can consider Linux/Unix to be the same.

The significant difference is that Windows hosts tend to offer ASP / ASP.NET which are not available on Linux/Unix services. Most things available on Linux/Unix can be offered on Windows, although (arguably) not as good - e.g. PHP, MySQL, Python, Perl etc.

You are probably best using what you have already - but if possible then Linux/Unix is probably the best option for you as it will be cheaper, and you'll have more choice of providers (way more Linux/Unix providers than Windows providers).

Originally Posted by whym

You get what you pay for!

And, where hosting is concerned;

You will always pay for what you get.

Always be wary of host offering unbeleavable amounts of bandwidth and space. Servers are not unlimited in their capacity. Some one always loses sooner or later.

Pick a resonable offer for your needs from a provider that will give you quality support & uptime.

Originally Posted by bfarrell

Always be wary of host offering unbeleavable amounts of bandwidth and space. Servers are not unlimited in their capacity. Some one always loses sooner or later.

Right you are. Nothing can be unlimited.