Slightly off-topic, but what website host do you use..? Care to compare?

News & General Discussion
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Hey guys, I’ve used tons of services for web hosting, and I’m wondering what the Unity community uses.

A long time ago I started with 1&1 and godaddy, but I /ragequit them long ago, as they sorta treat you like Comcast customers.

Then I went to Wix.com , just because I didn’t have much time to make a site and could do it really fast. They doubled their prices since I started and realized I needed more flexibility (no ftp, no server side stuff, no anything dynamic really, no exporting/viewing code, can’t even edit header code). NO EMAIL FORWARDS OR DOMAIN TRANSFERS! They force you to use $5-10 full google apps email paid monthly , ugh -__-

I tried fatcow, and they were the best bang for the buck (although shoddy customer service and suspicious features – their serverside support was VERY strange… hard to explain, but it wasn’t 100% supportive, let alone 50%. Always a “you cannot do this” sort of deal)

Currently, I’m at Webflow.com (cheap with 1 site, but since last year, their prices are starting to sky rocket, limiting features unless you are “1 more tier higher”; really annoying). However, you can export your code, edit header code, SUPER CUSTOMIZE with visual css (live results), but you can’t edit the code directly … no serverside… no ftp… slow customer service (forum style)… no plugins… They even charge you monthly if you already own a domain host and just want to connect the domain (greedy, right? No one else does this).

For 2016, I want to switch to something more advanced. I want to be able to edit the code, have FTP, and allow for server-side (PHP, CGI, REST/DB stuff)… what’s the best bang for the buck for this one? I’m leaning towards AWS (Amazon web services), but it’s really overwhelming looking (they use weird acronyms and pricing for everything - I don’t know where to begin).

As for domain name hosts, just sharing my fav: I’ve been LOVING www.domainmonster.com – unlimited email forwards, like 10 bucks a year, changes are almost instant, can do anything and everything.

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been using hostgator & exabytes for many years, quite happy with them.

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I switched to NameCheap shared hosting Ultimate plan (https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/shared.aspx) a few months back from Bluehost and have really liked it.

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Byethost is good and their free tier is pretty generous as well.

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https://www.lowendtalk.com/categories/offers

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I’ve used Yahoo and HostGator for the past 15 years or so.
They both have databases that I had a lot of fun doing perl and php dynamic pages with. I think their prices are reasonable. Yahoo’s recently changed name but is still Yahoo in the end. Didn’t need to change my ftp logins or anything else best as I remember.

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WHOA!!! They are amazing!!! $20 for a year of 10 websites and more storage than I’ll ever use, and found a 20% off coupon that stacks with it from retailmenot FEBHOST(assuming this month only, from the name) … then $2 for a year of https…

I’m signing up as I type this :stuck_out_tongue:

That lowendtalk is a pretty cool site btw

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I use dreamhost.com. Low cost, full suite of tools, one-click installs of almost everything. It enables backend servers, SQL, and of course, all the easy wordpress, ftp, subversion, etc. No nickle and dime - unlimited bandwidth, perfect uptime.

Gigi

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God can we keep this thread going, i’m drooling over all the options i have :slight_smile:

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I personally got tired of shared hosting quite some time ago. Your resources are limited and somewhat of a crap shoot, you’re lumped into app pools (or Linux equivalent) with other sites and you don’t know how many resources they are consuming or even when they may crash the shared service, and resources are never great. Load times aren’t what they could / should be, etc.

I’ve since moved on to a VPS (virtual private server). I get to install whatever I want as long as I have licensing for it, and use it however I want. I secure, configure and administrate it. I can run as many sites as I want, and I have several Terabytes of monthly transfer. I use HMail to handle mail relays local to the server and push through whatever I want (currently a mix of standard Gmail and Google Apps for Business). I currently use two VPS’s and I have some cloud services and a virtual sitting out in Azure for testing purposes.

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I use digital pacific. They are a local hosting company. I’m paying for a lot more then I need. But the price point is such that I’m fine with it. I’ll get around to playing with all the features eventually.

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At a previous job, the other devs and I would groan whenever a new client was found to be using “DreamHose”. They’ve gotten a lot better in recent years, however.

As long as it’s a premium service, VPS is a great way to go.

I, on the other hand, went with a bargain-barrel VPS host for my personal sites. ChicagoVPS was dirt cheap with the rock-bottom price of $12/year for a fairly average setup.

Their business plan, as it turns out, is to oversell the machines and load thousands of instances onto a single box. Performance was all over the board… sometimes good, regularly horrible. It also proved to be an unsustainable business model and they adjusted their prices to what are currently more standard rates.

Still thinking with my wallet, I switched to another bargain outlet, We Love Servers. This has easily been the worst VPS host I’ve ever dealt with. Cutting out all the details: constant outtages and server shutdowns and useless support, and I was just about ready to cancel my account when I received notice that Hostwinds purchased all of their assets and would honor the remainder of my contract.

So far, Hostwinds has given me nothing to complain about. They explained why We Love Servers had such terrible service and why it was always failing. Their prices will be higher than WLS’s for sure, but if the quality is there, I’ll stick with them anyway.

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Ironically I use GoDaddy. I pay $60 / month so it’s not cheap, but the performance and uptime have been rock solid. Click the link in my signature, browse around my blog (http://www.dustinhorne.com) or my product site (http://www.parentelement.com), the former being an ASP .NET blog, the latter being a standard MVC / WebAPI driven site both backed by MSSQL Backend. It’s pretty lightening fast. Their concierge service has also been great. I accidently locked myself out of my VPS by blocking RDP at the firewall level (I reconfigure my servers to use non-standard RDP ports) and they were able to get it unlocked for me at no charge.

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Looks like I need to give them a call and upgrade my plan. The same plan now has more disk space and unlimited bandwidth, and it’s Windows Server 2012 with IIS 8 so it supports Websockets natively.
https://www.godaddy.com/pro/windows-vps

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I buy all my domains through GoDaddy and never knew they even offered hosting, much less VPS hosting. Go figure!

And I do have to say, especially for being .NET, both sites are very performant. Quality stuff, there.

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Thanks, the blog is not home grown, it’s BlogEngine (and needs updated), but the other site I built myself. I wanted to point them out though and also point out that the VPS does make a difference. I started out on an older VPS (2008 R2) that only had 2 GB of RAM, and performance was just ok. Upgrading had a significant impact.

I linked only to Windows, but if you’re a Linux guru, they also do Linux VPS’s and also Cloud Servers which I know nothing about.

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I use Azure for the sole reason that it’s free (BizSpark). It is quite good though, reliable and very scalable. Before that I used Vidahost, and would highly recommend them. Cheap(ish), and great support.

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Yes, they most definitely have improved. I’ve had a DreamHost account now for over a decade and early on there were quite a number of problems with uptime (I noticed because my gaming group’s Ventrilo/TeamSpeak server would go offline quite a bit) but those problems seem to have almost entirely vanished.

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I use goDaddy because I have promo codes to get hosting and domain for £9.00 PA

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I use WebHostingPad ( http://www.webhostingpad.com/ ). They are ridiculously cheap, as cheap as $1.99 per month with basically unlimited everything (or so they say). I’m sure if you’re running some mega-traffic site there may be issues, but for a personal portfolio site with little traffic it’s fine.