Web Hosting

[Dan Jenkins]

> Subject: Web Hosting
> From: "Greg Bonnette" <gbonnett at coe.neu.edu>
> Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 00:52:08 -0400
> To: <gnhlug-discuss at gnhlug.org>
> 
> I’m looking for a new hosting service as I don’t have the time or 
> bandwidth to support my current setup anymore (and it’s only a matter of 
> time until Comcast realizes I’m operating a high traffic commercial 
> website from my basement). I naturally Googled and came up with 
> Dotservant.com
> 
> http://www.dotservant.com/webhosting/compareplans.shtml
> 
> Their plans seem fair. I am currently using enom.com for 
> registrar/dns/pop3 services, but it looks like I can consolidate much of 
> that in a dot servant plan and save money. Has anyone had experience 
> with them? I like the fact that they offer up raw log files, and I do 
> need php/MySQL support. Any feedback or alternatives would be greatly 
> appreciated. I am in the market for something comparable to their 
> standard plan: $118/yr 150MB Storage / 10GB Monthly Transfer.

I've had excellent service with icdsoft.com. There are a Hong-Kong based 
web host. Zero downtime so far, during the 1 year I've hosted with them.

$60/year, 300MB storage, not sure of monthly transfer, access to raw log 
files, SSL is available fairly cheap.

php & MySQL are strong points of theirs. They provide a php web-based 
interface to MySQL which is adequate to manage databases and a fair web 
interface to manage the site. They run Linux, IIRC. No shell access, but 
that's not unusual.

No remote access to MySQL database except through web interface and - 
annoying, but reasonable for security. Of course, your pages can access 
MySQL through php&perl locally. Bulk upload is a bit more complicated 
than it ought to be. Again for security reasons. Just a minor annoyance 
for me.

I chose them for a client of mine because they had an excellent tech 
support reputation. (And, to be honest, they were cheap.) It's a 
web-based support interface. The LONGEST time to wait for an answer was 
23 minutes, when an earthquake in Algiers knocked out some of their 
telecomm circuits. The average is 4.5 minutes, 24x7. Their answers have 
always been correct and appropriate. They've also gone out of their way 
to resolve a domain name dispute for my client which was none of their 
concern.

I strongly recommend them.

-- 
Dan Jenkins (dan at rastech.com)
Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-624-7272
*** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century