My 2014 hosting comparison! Moving away from Hostgator...

[Zaffy]

Hello!
I am also a current owner of a Hostgator reseller in search for an alternative.
My main problems with Hostgator started earlier this year, share hosting has become really slow, downtime was increased and they seem to have a huge problem with forwarding emails to gmail accounts.

My search for reviews, recommendations for hosting brought me to your site.
I thought I should share my experience with some of the hosting companies you also suggest (or not).
Please pardon my english, it is not my first language.

SiteGround.
Overall is the company I had the best pre-sales impression of all.
They give most of the info in their website and their pre-sales chat was really good, with people that seemed to know what they were talking about and not only reading answers from a manual
Unfortunately their reseller plan, charges by cpanel, which per se it is not a problem, the problem is they only give 1 website account per cpanel and adding more is quite expensive.
On the other hand I like this policy of theirs, just not for my wallet.
But they persuaded me to choose them for share hosting for my clients.
They also seem to have the best affiliate program of all. We will soon find out

EuroVps.
Their packages seem really attractive as it does their network location.
The ppl in Pre-sales chat I talked with seemed to really know about their work, I was quite impressed.
Actually it is my first candidate to migrate my reseller (free migrate yoohoo!).
BUT, what makes me hesitate, is the lack of extended info in their otherwise very well designed website.
I need all the technical info I can get. Not the just some basic info and nice description of their features.

I dont get how they think.
There is too much competition out there, give ppl the info they need or they will pass on you like I did the first I time visited their site, I just left after a couple of mins after realizing I couldnt find further info. Only DigitalFaq insisting for their quality made me go back and have a chat with their pre-sales.
If they read this, guys, be more transparent, offer more info for your services, you loose clients this way.

StableHost.
Same problem with Stablehost.
If you go to their reseller page,the info they provide it is even less than EuroVPS.
And they dont even have a live chat so you can have answers to your questions.
If you want to get more info (and you want because they give you almost nothing) you have to either post in their support forum or send them an email.
I decided to do the latter and 6 days after I havent got any reply.
Again, if it wasnt for DigitalFaq I would had left their website the moment I visited their Reseller Page.
It is a shame really, cause it looks like a decent company, plus I like their network.

Veerotech.
These guys give you lot of info in their website.
I really like how they present their features in a very well structured site.
They also replied very fast to my contact email about their affiliate program.
a little minus the lack of the live-chat, but I dunno, the live chat thingy is not always a cure for everything.
Big Plus they have real info on their company not just a generic "choose us cause we are good".
My 2nd in the list of candidates, and 2nd only cause their EU server is located in Uk.

Webhostingbuzz.
Another good site that gives lots of info plus they have a live chat.
That is a strong candidate as well, my only "concern" is the UK based server, but at the end this might not be an obstacle.
I think they provide more info than everyone else in my list and I like they also give a lot of info about their company.

Inmotion Hosting.
This is not a candidate, but since I have many clients that are hosted in their shared or/and VPS servers I thought I should share my experience with them.

I dont want to have a bad opinion about them, there is something that makes them likeable, I like for example how honest their support is.
But they have issues the last 2 years or so.
Their Shared server is often down recently.
And It seems they have some kind of security issues, they are vulnerable to hackers attacks. I have clients in Verio and Hostgator using Joomla or emails with relatively weak password. I know it sounds ridiculous to blame a hosting company for your weak email passwords, but its not always your choice (clients can be stuborn) and only in Inmotion I had this kind of issues, never had a similar problem in Hostgator no matter how EIG has become.

They also dont seem to choose the right ways to protect their servers.
But, for example, I find unacceptable not to be able to setup a simple Wordpress Site because Inmotion is using an insefficient way of preventing WP attacks by blocking the WP login.
Almost everytime I set up a WP account in Inmotion I spent a couple of days with their support trying to unlock the WP admin.

Is it lack of money? lack of experience stuff? I dunno..In any case I dont recommend them anymore, which is a shame, but they do need to check their servers issues, uptime wise and security wise .

Site5
Honorary mention to Site5. I find them a tad expensive and there was another reason I didnt put them in my list (dont remember which though lol, after all this hosting search I lost a few brain cells) but overall they seem to be ok and the info in their site is quite extensive.

I hope my post will be helpful.
Cheers!

[kpmedia]

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Originally Posted by Zaffy

I am also a current owner of a Hostgator reseller in search for an alternative. My main problems with Hostgator started earlier this year, share hosting has become really slow, downtime was increased and they seem to have a huge problem with forwarding emails to gmail accounts. My search for reviews, recommendations for hosting brought me to your site. I thought I should share my experience with some of the hosting companies you also suggest (or not). Please pardon my english, it is not my first language.

Your English is excellent.

Have you seen these as well?
- HostGator Alternatives, Part 1: Who is EIG?
- HostGator Alternatives, Part 2: Who to Use and Why
- HostGator Alternatives, Part 3: The Future of EIG?

Be sure to read those, to understand what happened to Hostgator, and the best alternatives for it.

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SiteGround

To be honest, reseller hosting is too cheap these days because of the CMS revolution (WordPress, Joomla, etc). CMS sites take huge resources. So a single plan for $30 (with 10+ sites each in it) is not smart when the single plans are $5 or more each. The reseller plan loses the host money. It's been steadily going up in price for a year or two now, and some hosts are just dumping reseller hosting altogether.

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EuroVps

What sort of extended info are you looking for?

Too many hosting sites have these ridiculous charts that essentially parrot back cPanel features (unlimited email accounts, FTP, domain parking, etc). And most of it is things you'll never use. Some of them are so silly, that I sometimes wouldn't be surprised if the server "features" listed "Uses electricity!" and "Uses servers!" on those charts.

So, again, what were you looking for? (Please reply, I'd like to know.)

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StableHost

Really?

Stablehost is one of the most transparent hosts that exists. They even tell you things like average server density -- things that most hosts keep hush-hush (because the probably oversell too much).

On their share hosting page, there's a link to a separate page that listed out some 30 or so features (although, again, much of it is useless info).

They have a really good knowledge base as well. Not Linode, LiquidWeb, Media Temple or Site5 good -- but still quite decent.

The thing you need to also consider is that Stablehost (and EuroVPS and several others) gives its existing customers attention first -- not potential customers. I'm often reminded of my cable company here. You get lots of attention and sweetheart deal as a potential customers, but once you're a customer, you're basically treated like crap. No good prices to reward loyal customers, poor tech support, etc. In the hosting world, that's how Godaddy and EIG (Hostgator, Bluehost, etc) operate.

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Veerotech

Yep, Veerotech is an excellent company.

As far as UK vs EU goes -- it's really the same. "Local" is really the same continent -- not country or city. The location myth was started by web hosts trying to vie for customers. The ping myth is much the same -- web hosts feeding consumers BS in hopes that the person would pick them as their new host. This myth is recent, having only appear within the past 3-4 years.

These guys give you lot of info in their website. er is located in Uk.

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Webhostingbuzz

WHB is another good company. See the above for your UK vs. EU concerns.

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Inmotion Hosting

At the end of the day, weak passwords are the client's fault. Although some may try to help, by enforcing harsher password creation rules, thus causing you to like them more, you need to realize that others will complain about it. It's a no-win situation for the host.

Did you ever ask to be migrated to another server? I doubt that all of InMotion had issues, but I can certainly see how some servers can have chronic issues. (Although I'd still consider this to be poor judgment by the host -- move the clients! Don't make them stay on problem hardware.) Of course, this assumes it's server related, not account related.

Most hosts are somewhat clueless when it comes to WordPress security. I agree, that's stupid method of protection, and does nothing in the end aside from annoy the clients.

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Site5

Site5 may be a tad pricier than some hosts, but it's also a really good company. I wouldn't suggest buying hosting based on price alone. That never ends well.

And yes, they have a huge knowledge base. I sometimes search Google for more obscure information, and a Site5 guide or articles is one page 1-2 of Google.

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I hope my post will be helpful.
Cheers!

Thanks much!

[Zaffy]

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So, again, what were you looking for? (Please reply, I'd like to know.)

LOL!! I am feeling like I am doing the work for these companies without even being paid by any of them.

ok.. lets help them get better

I will give you the best (imho of course), you just have to compare them with the others to see how limited info they give or how transparent they are.

1. How to Present your features: like Veerotech and Site5.
   
2. Terms of Uses, so you know the limitations of each hosting: the champ here is Siteground followed by Site5.
   This is such important info and usually it is buried out of sight, if it exists at all in the first place...
   
3. Support Info: (info of what support is offered not the quality of support provided, this you only get to learn after you use a company):
   Webhostingbuzz and Siteground. Site5 is close as well.
   
4. Company Profile/info (because generic blah blah about how good you are is not enough): By far WebHostingBuzz. Followed by Site 5 and SiteGround
   

Of course, these are all pre-sales impressions, you never know what you actually get before you sign with a company. However in such a competitive field pre-sales impressions are very important.

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Stablehost. On their share hosting page, there's a link to a separate page that listed out some 30 or so features (although, again, much of it is useless info).

They are reading us!! And they improve themselves! I give them credits for this.
Cause when I visited them, that link with the features wasnt there.
( http://web.archive.org/web/20140709091056/https://www.stablehost.com/reseller-hosting.php ).

And this features info is not useless, for example, I do want to know which php versions are supported, or how many domains can be hosted per account etc etc.
Good job Stable Host!

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As far as UK vs EU goes -- it's really the same. "Local" is really the same continent -- not country or city. The location myth was started by web hosts trying to vie for customers. The ping myth is much the same -- web hosts feeding consumers BS in hopes that the person would pick them as their new host. This myth is recent, having only appear within the past 3-4 years.

To be honest I can only speak from little personal experience here, Dutch hosting seems to be faster.
I dunno the tech details, maybe it connects better with Greece where I am located.
In any case choosing the right datacenter location has to do with many factors, mostly with your target "audience".

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Inmotion Hosting: At the end of the day, weak passwords are the client's fault.

Absolutely yes. And the stupidity of some of my clients has paid me well so far, even if I warn them again and again.
However I take this as a very strong indication on how much vulnerable a hosting company is.
No weak passwords are forgiven in Inmotion.
Inmotion has been hacked at least once.
I keep finding traces of hack attacks even in sites with static hml only.
I dunno how many share hosting servers they have, I have clients in different ones and they all had problems once.
I've been dealing with hosting since 1999 (we had Verio reseller packages before cpanels and all, when you created accounts using apache and unix commands). I am not an admin, an expert or anything but I have the experience to feel that there is something not good there.

Quote:

To be honest, reseller hosting is too cheap these days because of the CMS revolution (WordPress, Joomla, etc). CMS sites take huge resources. So a single plan for $30 (with 10+ sites each in it) is not smart when the single plans are $5 or more each. The reseller plan loses the host money. It's been steadily going up in price for a year or two now, and some hosts are just dumping reseller hosting altogether.

I am just the typical small developer company that needs decent hosting for its clients for various needs.
I only use the reseller for the clients who dont want to bother at all with the tech side and their sites dont needs many resources.
I usually suggest to my clients to buy their hosting directly from hosting companies, I just do the research and I recommend the solutions.

Trying to find reliable hosting info/reviews online is a pain in the bum, people usually write only when they have complains or other posts are made by the companies themselves and their affiliates.
Thats why I dedicated my precious time to write this post. To help someone who might be lost in cyberspace trying to decide which hosting to choose.

I always tell my clients, "web hosting is a bit like lottery, and I will never put my hand on fire to guarantee you for any web host company out there, no matter how pleased I am with their services.".

That's it really, we will keep observing and trying to know the current good hosting.
Feels like being a member of the "Night Watch" from Games Of Thrones

[kpmedia]

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Dutch hosting seems to be faster.

The AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) is often called "the center of the internet" (or something similar) because of how it peers well to both North America and all over Europe. It's one of the oldest and largest hubs of online traffic -- rivaled only by New York, London and Frankfurt (Germany). That's why.

When you get a good host on one of these hubs, and your site is optimized on a good server, you're as fast as possible.

It's one reason we really like EuroVPS, and use it for our main servers. Our main off-site backup with R1SoftLicenses.com is also on the AMS-IX.

So you're not imagining it.

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Trying to find reliable hosting info/reviews online is a pain in the bum, people usually write only when they have complains or other posts are made by the companies themselves and their affiliates.
Thats why I dedicated my precious time to write this post. To help someone who might be lost in cyberspace trying to decide which hosting to choose.

Yep. Too many "reviews" are fake affiliate BS, and some are even owned by hosts themselves.
It's why we wrote the post 3 years ago (and update it weekly!) -- http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-...web-hosts.html

Thanks for your additions. It will surely help others (maybe even those hosts themselves!)

____________

And for the benefit of others reading this:

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[Zaffy]

Hello Again!

I revive this thread to share with you updated Hosting impressions.

For my reseller, I finally ended up using WEBHOSTINGBUZZ.UK.
I was between Veerotech and WHB, chose the latter mostly cause their package was more affordable and suitable for me.

They had an amazing 90% discount for Black Friday, but I would go with them anyway.
So, just moved there.

I used their free migration service and I am in awe.
I can only have PRAISING HYMNS for their support so far.
We had issues during the migration, it wasnt smooth but expected (different servers different settings, old phps, old sites).
These people have the patience of a Saint. They even reconfigured an old Joomla site for me.
Not to mention their response times are amazingly fast.
I hope this quality of service won't fade away in the coming months.
Webhostingbuzz.uk so far,

For a client of mine, I chose Siteground.
For a quite needy Drupal site, chose their big shared hosting package.
Its now hosted there for two months, so far so good. We had a downtime of 5mins but I dont consider this something to worry about.

Also, if I am allowed to say, Siteground Affiliate program ROCKS.
I am still madly fuming for the commissions Hostgator never paid me, using a bazillion of lame excuses.


I will keep updating this