Web hosting reviews list? (discussion thread)
 

Note:
This is the discussion thread for: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-...ts-2013-a.html
Also the updates log.

______________________

Updated first post with more details --- why good hosts are good for you, and why bad hosts are a bad choice for your websites. Note that some preliminary reviews of these hosts, plus others, can be found by searching or browsing our forums. If any reader of this page has questions, feel free to reply to this post. We'll answer you honestly. Thanks.

-- merged --

I've expanded the first post to include a table, which lists out the available services for the suggested hosts, as well as starting prices. The new table really helps to show what each host has available. Several more hosts need to be added to that list in the near future: Linode, Wiredtree, ServInt, HostGator, Server Intellect. If anybody has more suggestions on good hosts, feel free to reply to this post, or simply create your own new thread in the Web/Print Publishing Technology subforum, and give us a good DETAILED review of your current/past webhost. (Be aware that we will remove spam, or may remove posts that recommend known-crappy hosts and look spammy. This is for honest suggestions, backed by experience.) We're always on the lookout for quality web hosts.

Thanks. :cool:

I made more improvements to the list.
- Expanded from 10 to 15 top hosts, adding some high end cloud and VPS hosting options.
- Added direct links to coupons (when available).
- Cut down on some clutter, to make it read easier, able to skim it faster now.

I know this list has helped thousands of people in the past few months, and we hope it helps many more. :)

If you find this thread useful, share it with friends, family and colleagues.
Share a link to this page on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Google +1, etc. That will be a big help in spreading the word.

Thanks. :)

I've been most impressed with the integrity shown in this post, and like you I have seen many of these affiliate-commission driven review sites.

So I am very keen to read your understanding about SEO hosting. I used to think that having your sites on multiple IPs was a plus, with links out from these sites to my clients' sites all being counted by Google to help the clients' sites all climb up in Google. And that seems to be working in my experience.

But while doing the research that led me here, I found several well expressed views that suggested this is all wrong... and that Google knows all the IPs that belong to any multi-IP web hosting service, so they say dont bother using "seo hosting". They see it as a marketing ploy by hosting firms to sell more.

What, sir, is your take on all this?

Thanks.

Thanks very much for recognizing what we're trying to do here.

While it would be easy to jump on the fake review bandwagon, in hopes of landing those $100/account sign-up commissions by awful hosts, it would be deceitful, unethical, and against the philosophy of this site (providing information on the best high-quality methods to create and work with digital media, which includes website content/tech). We'd rather take a $0/account or $10-25/account commission, and have the satisfaction of knowing that we're supporting quality companies, and doling out good advice to people that want a quality host.

Rather than clutter this thread with a slightly off-topic reply, I've created a new post in the Myth/Misinformation forum.
Read it here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/myth...ting-work.html

Again, thanks for your kind words. Feel free to ask more questions -- in the appropriate forum, and usually in a new thread -- if there's something you'd like to know. It's also worth mentioning that we go over some more advanced concepts in the Premium Member forum, both with past posts, or via new posts our members would like answers to. So a currently-$20 premium membership may be something for you to consider. (Premium Membership also removes many of the ads.)

Thanks for your post. :cool:

Hi,
It's great to look at the list of top web hosting providers and their hosting plans. It seems to be good and those who are in search of finding their hosting providers can refer with this list. It would be better if your list had sorted according to the users reviews and ratings. I had chosen my web hosting provider on referring to <url removed>, one of the web hosting directory that lists top web hosting companies comprised with the user ratings and reviews. And this has made my task of finding the reliable service providers at a minimal time.

Well written.
Fianally I could see some list with out Fat cow/BlueHost/Godaddy recommendations. That itself explains your honest review on hosting. All I can say is "Yes I bookmarked your posting". Just now signed up Stable host for their US servers with Blackfriday coupon code ($10 pyr).
One of my colleague was having his site on Stablehost europe host cp09.eu . Because he was not having RVsite builder when his site was on cp09.eu; when he requested for it, they have moved him to eu01 server. But this server cp01-eu is showing almost 190 domains on reverse lookup using http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/we...on-web-server/ including a an adult site. Does this have any effect on performance/search engine ranking/email filtering. Can he ask them for again change in server back to cp09.eu? If so, what reason he should quote in his ticket to move it back?
I am sorry if I am seeking more from forums like this.

Hi MrTM, welcome to the site. :)

Thank you. Our goal at The Digital FAQ is to help others with digital media, and that includes the digital publishing platforms (which includes hosting). Our determinations on what is best are not influenced by bribery, and high affiliate pay offered by lousy hosts is little more than bribery. Maybe if those companies would spent their income on quality hosting and support techs, instead of ads and affiliate payouts, they'd have a product worth recommending.

Excellent! There's a lot of new how-to guides, in-depth reviews and editorials coming later this year and early next year, which will focus on helping website owners run successful sites. Topics will include

• Heavy tech: How to setup an unmanaged VPS, how to secure a server, etc,
• Lightweight tech: How to optimize WordPress, How to secure WordPress, etc,
• And non-tech: How SEO actually works (vs myths), Why templates are a bad idea, Interviews/Q&A's with hosts, etc

Folks like yourself will find quite a bit of useful information here over the course of the next 6-12 months. (And hopefully beyond.)
Most new web-related content will start in early January.

They started early! I thought the new price took effect at midnight, some 6+ hours from now. I wasn't going to announce it early (per Stablehost's rules), but I saw some people who were discussing it in forums anyway. Given that the Black Friday is only good for the first 500 accounts, I wonder if it will even last through Friday morning.

But it's good for you -- glad to see you got the deal. :thumb:

I split your other Stablehost question into a new thread: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-...rformance.html

Speaking of lousy companies .... this spammer (rakshana) was from Hiox India.

Hiox India appears to own at least one fake "review" site online that conveniently lists themself as the #1 best host, and then proceeds to list out various affiliates (mostly high-paying affiliates) for the 2-10 spots. They list themself as the #1 for every single category, which is a farce. ---- Even our own #1 suggestion of EuroVPS has some stiff competition for categories like shared Linux hosting (Stablehost barely edges them out due to price), or extreme budget hosting (lowendbox type deals vs EcoVPS). No host is #1 at everything; good hosts have concentrations and excel at 2-3 specific areas.

Hiox India is a shill, a spammer, and this makes them nothing more than a scam in my eyes.

Note to hosts: Don't spam here. :mad:

If you'd like to advertise on The Digital FAQ, please use the Contact Us form. (Ad rates for the sponsorship banner can be found here. Note that being an advertiser/sponsor does not buy a spot on our reviews, buyer guides or lists. There is a separation of advertising and editorial content at this site. Also understand that we may reject ads from known-bad hosts; i.e., does not respond to support tickets.)

Some attached screen caps of the fake site, at the time of spamming:

Dear Kpmedia,

Nice article and nice comments.

keep updating. I personally tried working with godaddy, blue host, reseller club earlier stages of hosting and found lots and lots of hidden fixes. And finally ended up with hostgator and now have around 3 dedicated box with them hosted by theplanet and managed by hostgator. But still i dont have remote restart or shutdown option in hostgator.

Your article have a value in it. As said earlier when you have not used godaddy, blue host etc... I have bookmarked the forum for future reference. :cool:

For the above spammer, i use Stop Forum Spam in my forum. Like you i dont only stop just blocking and responding to the spammer, i will also mark him a spammer at Stop Forum Spam to let others know about this spammers. :P

Thanks for your kind comments sudhakar. And welcome to the site, if I didn't mention it already. :)

I'm not sure if this is a typo, and you actually meant "hidden fees". What's amusing, however, is that both phrases would equally apply. Godaddy, 1&1 and EIG hosts, for example, don't use off-the-shelf panels and controls, like most hosts do. They've create in-house tools that benefit themselves, and not really the customers. As such, many common tasks possible at other hosts are either impossible or require workarounds. Some are undocumented, or as you've said: hidden fixes.

They're also guilty of hidden fees and upsells. Godaddy is especially bad in this area.

If your hosting is managed, then that task is part of what you pay them for. Just tell them to reboot/shutdown. Given the size of HostGator, they probably have staff on-site in Dallas anyway. Or contracted with the datacenter. While I'm very much a do-it-yourself hosting customer, sometimes it's best to use your management. For example, during reboots, a host can monitor for on-boot hardware alerts or other non-obvious problems you cannot see remotely.

Again, I think this is just a typo on your part. I've used many, many, many hosts in the past 15+ years, and have acted as admin to accounts on behalf of myself, family, friends, clients and employers. Godaddy and EIG hosts are definitely on that list, because somebody always falls for their marketing: "I saw them on TV during the Super Bowl, and they promise unlimited, and the price seems good. I think I'll use them!" Generally speaking, I do what I can to get people I know away from bad hosts, but some people (mostly past clients) are just too stubborn for their own good. As of 2011, in fact, I refuse to admin a Goddady account, because their wait-based interface is a massive time-waster.

Excellent. Be sure to let others know about it, too. :thumb:

Shortcut URL: http://dFAQ.us/webhosts

Excellent. For things like this to succeed, people have to join together for the common cause. :thumb:

Hi guys, I'm glad to have found this forum!

Kpmedia - thanks for the great review and chart!

I just found it somehow through Google about a week ago and already have started shared hosting service with HawkHost. I like it there so far, communications are smooth, staff seems to be knowledgeable and definitely helpful - we'll see how it goes on. Anyways, thanks again - if nothing else, it looks like your research helped me find good (and inexpensive - sadly, it matters these days too) hosting.

I also wanted to try tonight another candidate from your list, NinjaLion - confused, if not to say alarmed. The thing is, I went to their "Community Forum", which as I read here is often a good indication of working team at the would-be-my-next-hosting... No useful info whatsoever. Instead, many threads in strange encoding (seems Russian, but I'm not sure completely) from only few posters... Some thread headings that are readable, have words like "porn" in them...
Of course, it could be just a test/start of a new forum... Or it could be an attack of a competitor or simply angry customer/advertizer... Yet, it gives some doubts on the ability of the hoster to take care of your site when they cannot/don't want to take care of parts of their own site, moreover the part of it that supposed to be helping to make a decision on purchasing their service...

So, I wrote an e-mail noting that to support@ with a copy to sales@ninjalion. Ended up receiving the following back from both:
Really, to get your sales question answered, you need to register first?!

Yes, I understand that this is the bottom part of your list - still it is the list of "the best". Maybe I simply get wrong impression of the service on NinjaLion's bad day... still, it is a bad impression and I'll probably pass on them for StableHost, which would actually be my first choice (based on my "internal criteria" :) but all of the sudden at the last moment overcome by HawkHost.

I know this is old thread, but maybe you can make any good of my info.

Thanks again - can't say that I am very active at hosting services field but would gladly bring into this forum that little I can

And we're glad to have you. :D

Hawkhost is definitely one of the good ones -- a medium-sized low-cost Linux shared hosting company. As long as you're not trying to do anything bad (spam, scam, phishing, hacking, etc), then you'll very likely have a long-term pleasant experience. The owners of Hawkhost are professional and courteous, and the quality of their hosting is excellent.

I've brought this to the attention of the owner 2-3 times now. Each time it gets cleaned, but it takes a lot of effort to maintain a forum. I actually think they need to just take it down, because it does make them look bad.

I'm about to redo the list on this page, and turn it into several separate lists on dedicated pages. The list up top will be chopped down to a list of about 5-7 multi-talented type hosts (shared to VPS/dedicated), and then further specify by hosting type: shared, VPS, dedicated; low-cost, premium; Windows, Linux; newbie-friendly, experts only, etc. Additionally, everything is going to fall into our 4-tier ranking system as already found on our DVD guides.

All that said, Ninjalion is a 2nd Class host (that's still good), with support that can be a bit slow. But the price really reflects that already -- it's about $25 per year. Based on the new listing criteria (which will be explained in depth on the new pages), it doesn't really earn a 1st Class rank like Hawkhost, Stablehost, Stream101 or SpeedySparrow.

Ninjalion is a budget-brand subsidiary of Downtownhost, which does rank as 1st Class. Update: Downgraded to 2nd class.

I think you'd be most pleased with Stablehost -- I've been pleased for 2+ years now.

The only real issue I have with Stablehost is that recently they're trying to be strict about customers (who use WordPress) always using the latest version of WordPress immediately after it's released, and you get nag emails continuously until you do. One recent email even threatens to suspend people using too-old versions. That's a great policy for your average low-knowledge user, but it aggravates developers like myself who have customized WordPress to the point that it's really only loosely based on WordPress. Sometimes advanced integrations lock you into a specific WP version -- especially forums and e-commerce apps. If I knew where to strip out versioning info that alerts them to the original code base, beyond what's already gone, I'd do it. A lot of the updates aren't even important for people who have taken proper precautions at locking down WP, are not using unnecessary plugins, and have not downloaded shady/nulled themes.

I know SpeedySparrow isn't taking that heavy-handed stance, based on conversations I've had with the owner.

Neither is JaguarPC, Stream101 or HostGator, based on observations to date.

Not old -- not at all. :cool:

Yes, please do stay and post about your experiences, questions you have, etc -- be it on web hosting and other publishing tech, web design, or even our other media areas: video, audio, digital photography. I'm forever posting tips in the forum, because of an issue I run into either on my servers/hosting or with a customer server. Based on the traffic results for the site, others are reading it. Some even post, as you done. (Thanks for not being another silent passerby!)

Take care.

@ Anybody reading this page: If you're wondering why all the names of hosts are linked -- I've implemented a keywording tool. It's helping us link software, products -- or in this case, hosting services -- directly to the entity's website. No more Googling or guessing. This is important because some underhanded persons have created fake sites, or name-alike sites, trying to cash in on another company's good name. By linking directly to these sites, we're removing guesswork and potential issues for you.

Thanks. :)

KPMedia,

How often do you update your information?

This page and/or related pages (coupons) are monitored weekly, and updated when needed.

Right now I'm working on a far more advanced review model, as well as editorials and guides related to hosting. Once that gets implemented, it'll be useful to myself, to hosts, and to potential hosting customers trying to find a quality host. It's just taking time to do properly. We're not trying to make a fake review site, or simply find a way to monetize/affiliate with hosts, but to actually provide a useful tool online. It's being modeled after our successful blank DVD media reviews and blank media guides.

I know we've been in contact before, and I've just not been ready yet.

Just to give an update...

The first post of this thread received a major overhaul this weekend, and rankings were updated at the same time. :)

Also take notice that it now exists in a dedicated Web Hosting subforum here on digitalFAQ.com

The ultimate goal for this list is to have 20-25 solid hosts that meet each of the criteria of being "excellent" -- and then shuffle ranks (or even add/remove) as becomes necessary. The updated criteria (i.e., upgrade paths) did bump a few hosts from the list, however those good hosts will still be found on soon-to-be-added niche hosting lists (Windows shared, Xen VPS, etc) on the main part of the site. Adding a proper reviewing, testing, and presentation system to this site has taken a long time, but hosts and hosting customers alike should find it useful -- far more useful than all the fake "top 10" lists out there, which are (as we all know) biased by the amount being paid to the list maker. We can do better, we have done better, and we'll continue to do better.

Anybody with questions regarding this list should reply here.
If you have questions about a specific host, however, please start a new thread in the hosting subforum.

Thanks.

This page received a massive update today!
We've begun to rank hosts by type: shared, unlimited, reseller, and VPS. And each has ample information.

More to come.

Thanks. :congrats:

is the any way you acn add DTS-NET to your reviews for Web Hosting

Hi bro,

Maybe you can include the "semi-dedicate" / "enterprise" / "business" plans in your Top 10 list. I'm sure a lot would be interested in this as well.

My 2 cents.

DTS.NET leaves itself fake positive feedback or various sites. So no, that disqualifies it. Legitimate companies don't need to leave itself fake feedback to fool would-be customers.

And a good :2cents: it is.

The back half of this year will be us setting up some detailed reviews and lists on various hosts, on the main part of this site. The forum-only list you see now will eventually become *my* suggestions, while the site will potentially deviate (some) from that list to create many more. For example, not just semi-dedicated, but semi-dedicated options that are best for Asia! Or Europe, USA, etc.

Quite a bit of good stuff is coming to this site this year. :cool:

Hi,

Great list you have made.

Are there any special/serious reason to not include Crocweb on the list anymore?

Thanks
Kim

Thanks. :)

Crocweb had a lot of minor issues in 2014 and 2015. It was more than other host on our lists had. It was mostly downtime, and it was sometimes blamed on DDoS even through they supposedly had DDoS protections in place. They are not a bad host, and they were never at the top of our lists anyway. They merely fell off due to others being better.

We let our account recently lapse with them, and do not plan to monitor them anymore.

In that price range, for small/medium hosts, Stablehost, MDD Hosting, Veerotech, and Squidix are doing much better.
Larger hosts like Siteground and InMotion are doing better to.

I've been in contact with some vendors on the Managed VPS Hosts list. I was looking for Windows hosting, but found out that Veerotech does not offer that. Here is the response they sent me:
"In regards to Windows hosting, we currently offer Linux services only at this time."

Correct, Veerotech does not offer Windows.

However, LiquidWeb, EuroVPS, and Godaddy all offer Windows.

Note that Godaddy had some internal changes in 2014 and 2015, and is actually quite decent now in 2016. Times have changed. The old "ew, yuck, Godaddy!" days are over. We have a managed Windows 2012 R2 dev VPS with them, and it's been a great experience for the past 6 months.

We have Windows VPS and dedicated servers (both 2008 R2 and 2012 R2) with LiquidWeb and EuroVPS as well.

Dreamhost
 

Hello from Berlin,

This is my first posting; I apologize for starting off with what may be viewed as a "negative comment".

Your "Web Hosting Reviews" page says, "... Dreamhost and 1&1 are other examples of large well-known hosts that have a terrible reputation for quality of service and tech support."

From the outset, I'm not in any way, shape, or form related to Dreamhost; I'm just a customer there and have been for at least a decade.

I have three VERY simple sites hosted there. Before I retired, I used one of them intensively to run the various English classes I taught at two universities here in Berlin.

As far as I can remember, my site has never been down for more than an hour in all the time I've been with Dreamhost, and the outages happened no more than 5-6 times.

As mentioned, my sites are VERY primitive, which perhaps makes fixing things easier, but whenever I've had a problem, Dreamhost's email-based customer support has been quick (within 6 hours) and to the point.

I am well aware that people have had issues with Dreamhost; maybe I've just been fortunate.

That is essentially what has happened to you. As the saying goes, "even a broken clock is correct twice per day". Even the worst business has to eventually treat a customer well, though it's usually do to accident. In this case, you probably never contacting support, had no billing issues, with a small simple site hosted, etc.

Understand that it'd be great if all hosts were good, and it was a simple matter of choosing price and preference. And I wish Dreamhost was a good hosting option. Godaddy, for example, was a terrible host that has turned itself around in the past 3+ years.

This comment is only valid is you were monitoring the site with tools such as Pingdom. If you only noticed downtime 5-6 times, then rest assured it was probably far more prevalent. And even with monitoring, known-bad companies often have micro-downtimes that slip by monitoring. Falls into the monitors windows.

Somehow, it doesn't feel like an updated list any longer
 

I've been subscribed to this tread for about 10 years.
Used few hosts off it back then till came to stay with HawkHost, for almost 10 years now...
and am thinking of leaving - everything is so connected these days, probably even this forum. I'll explain.

HawkHost is still "an OK" host - what is it now on the list? #10? #11? - and they deserve to be at the very bottom.. but NameCheap?..
I had couple of dormant domains with them for 2-3 years (again, based of this tread on the forum) and kinda didn't have any problems... but then again, DORMANT domains, one of which got the same dormant hosting...

Today, I tried to transfer a working domain from HawkHost - lucky me, semi-working - and went to their "support"...
The guy I got on the chat, a Ukrainian or something, was so much in upsell that it became obvious that good'ol NameCheap is still a data-mining/domain seizing operations.
Screw them! But, they are in top-5 of this used-to-be-so-trusted (by me, anyway) "forum".

I think everyone has their price after all.
I'm outa'here guys

I think the hosting model as we know it will fade (not vanish, but fade) in the next few years.

I'm slowly migrating everything into lambda/S3 and my current web application is now built entirely serverless, it's better value, infinitely (!) scalable and when running large DBs or data throughput it's becoming a no-brainer. I'm now fully converted to the AWS model, although obviously there are similar alternatives I'm sure are every bit as able, if not better in some aspects.

I use load-balancing, IPs I can flex to be whatever I want, VPNs between my servers, deep archival for a few pence for TBs of storage a month....

My days of messing about with MySQL updates, WP etc are long gone. I've had to learn Node over the last year to accommodate (don't laugh, I was a PHP guy for about twenty years) but I'm certainly convinced by the model.

It won't work for hobbiests or those with established projects, but if you're starting a web-application now I would certainly recommend going serverless.

YMMV.

That's nothing more than a xenophobic comment. We live in a global community. That was a basic fundamental aspect of the internet, after all. Connecting the world. Not just connecting your city, state, country, continent, whatever.

Yes, Namecheap has some extremely talented employees in Ukraine.
And elsewhere in Europe.
And North America (including USA).
And Asia.
See also: https://www.namecheap.com/careers/

Quality of a host has little do with where it operates, and everything to do with the quality of the operations.

I'd also suggest that some people don't understand what "upsell" means. Some folks get their panties in a twist when an employee makes a suggestion, or asks a question.

It already has, and mostly for the better. It's something I'd like to write about soon.

S3 really isn't hosting in the traditional sense. It's good for the intended use, and has downsides like everything else.

I started writing ASP about 25 years ago, and didn't really become a PHP convert until about 15 years ago. Not by choice, but necessity. Languages start to blur together after a while. I was writing code 30 years ago, and have seen languages come and go. The younger programmers always claim "this is different!" but it never really is. Few new features, different interface, slight variation in approach, faster, etc, but essentially does the same things. Load, run task, end session.

Hosting is just a reliable place to put it online. The exact specific will vary, but the main difference is the quality of hardware and the people running it.

You seem somewhat savvy with running sites, so welcome. :)

It's certainly is something interesting, the severless model is a bit of a brainbender at first and it's not the way to handle small or simple sites, but once you add login, or in our case client portals, video streaming, CMS, archival, basic video editing functions online etc it's the only realistic way of doing it in 2021. I stress though, for basic static sites it's overkill.

I should have clarified this, clients stream their videos by S3 storage through lambda/elastic transcoder, the actual site code is a Github repository. You can host statically on S3 though, we do a bit of it.

I've never touched ASP as I've always been a bit mean with these things and played in the FOSS pool - it looks powerful but I would say I see less-and-less of it on the general web. I can't write a line of it, and I do love PHP, I truly do, but as I once heard it referred to as "the Swiss Army Chainsaw" which I think sums it up quite nicely. PHP8 looks like it has brought some substantial improvements but I fear it may be a bit too late for PHP, it'll be a large part of the web for a long time, but I think finally its days are numbered.

PHP syntax is terrible, function names are inconsistent and a joke, there's plenty of glue within the language itself (let us never forget the 'REAL_ESCAPE_STRING' debacle from years ago) functions can behave in bizarre ways and the documentation is like reading a programming manual from a PDP-11: but I still love it, I still 'think' in it, and it's an easy lanugage to fall in love with, it's simple to read once you understand it and I dunno.. I just love its quirkiness.

It's also the only language where:
TRUE [BOOL] == "foobar" [STRING]
"foobar" [STRING] == [INT] 0
[INT] 0 != TRUE [BOOL]

Yeah, that's the mess of the comparator operators, PHP8 even boasts "sane" comparators, the PHP consortium's term, not mine. It's the only language where seemingly things can be simultaneously TRUE and FALSE.... It's taken from the famous "Why PHP Sucks" post, it's very witty and worth a read if you've never read it. It goes on to explain even equality/type comparisons ('===') is also broken and randomly does and doesn't obey standard universal logic.

That said, I still adore it, quirks and all.

Languages certainly go through phases, I felt left behind five years ago when I didn't pick up Ruby/Rails as it was "the future" five years later and it's a dead language, similarly the rush for JQuery (a language for this casual conversation), Node seems pretty settled though, it's very, very powerful and fairly easy to pick up if you have JS experience. I personally couple it with React & Express front ends. I'm sure there's an Angular & " " pairing that's equally good. I'm not a React 'fanboy' it's just the one that made the most sense to me as a casual onlooker for my projects - I'm sure it sucks as some stuff compared to Angular or full-hardcore JS/TS.

Thanks, I'm not a professional (amateur hour here) but I've built some big projects - I "know what I know" but my opinions should only be taken as the ramblings of a bar-fly, not genuine advice from an expert. I'm routinely trawling StackOverflow for some very simple things.

It's quite cute though, that I was told only yesterday I couldn't fathom the complexities of this forum and some blog-posts.... No, I'm confident I've worked on more technical projects.

Thanks for the kind words, let me know if you want any input on a AWS/Serverless article, I'll be glad to provide my experiences as an amateur dabbling with it.

I would normally look for in below order:
Support (Technical support is very important), Value for Price (you will get what you pay for), Uptime, Reliability!