Cheap Web Hosting

All I wanted was to find cheap, but feature rich web hosting that offered enough disk space and bandwidth to meet the needs of my growing web sites now and for some time into the future.

Many times I thought I had found a good web hosting service, then a Google search of the company would reveal multitudes of unhappy former customers. 

Most hosting review web sites were of no help as they seem to push web hosts that offered them the best sales commission, not necessarily the best hosting service for the consumer.

I tried to find unbiased web hosting reviews at several hosting forums. The problem there was that for every person who loved a web host someone else swore they were worst, most corrupt company ever.

I found several web hosting services whose plans sounded good, but each time I started the purchase process I discovered that I would have to transfer my domain name to their domain service, not just change the DNS settings at my current domain registrar.
It is my personal preference to keep my domain name and web hosting seperate (though the free domain name registration offered with many hosting plans is tempting).  Besides, my current domain registration service  offers a good price on domain registration, and as I use their newsletter management system it is required that my domain name stay registered with them.

I eventually chose three different web hosts for my three main web sites. My reasons for this were in part based on the different needs of my web sites (which I discuss below), the cost of the hosting plans, and the features they offered.   Also, I felt that the best way to guarantee uptime of at least one of my sites was to not host them all at the same web hosting service.

Below I’ve listed the three hosting services I am currently using and some of the pros and cons of each one I have discovered so far. 

Web Hosting Service 1 - This is the web hosting service I am currently using for this web site ($6.95 per month w/1 yr sign-up).
The hosting plan offers a huge amount of disk space and bandwidth (so much so that it may be too good to be true). However, I didn’t see any restrictions in the TOS or fine print… If I run into any problems I will let you know here. 
This hosting plan allowed me to keep my current domain registrar. I just had to change my name servers which is a simple process.  My other requirements were Cpanel (Y),  multiple MySQL (Y), cgi-bin, Perl, and PHP support (Y), multi-domain hosting (Y).
I contacted a support person about an incorrect FTP password which he answered incorrectly (and I figured out on my own later). However, I have since uploaded all of my files and have installed my scripts without any problems.
At this point I highly recommend this web hosting service.

Web Hosting Service 2  I chose this hosting service in part because  I needed a large amount of disk space and bandwidth for minimal cost ($3.99 per month 2 yr sign-up).  This web host did not seem to be a fly-by-night operation, so I felt fairly secure signing-up for the two year contract to get the lower monthly price.
There was one problem shortly after I signed up - my site was offline a total of 10 hours.  I thought I had made a mistake signing up with them but they fixed the problem and there hasn’t been an issue since ( I purchased a second account with them several months ago).
This hosting plan offers PHP support and 10 MySQL databases. Their is no Perl support but this was not an issue for me as I only use PHP scripts on this web site. NOTE - During sign-up their is a warning that scripts that put a heavy load on the server are not allowed, include banner rotation scripts and others.   Contact their support personnel about script usage problems before you sign-up long term.
I run a PHPAmazon affiliate store from my account without and problems so far so I recommend this hosting provider to those who don’t need Perl support.

Tag: hosting reviews