December 31, 1969

STOP! This review has been eclipsed by a new, pithier page, Will's Hosting Recommendations. You'll like the new one better. Really.


I am often asked for Web site hosting company recommendations. Here is my attempt to provide some useful information based on my personal experience. I tend to focus on quality, technology, and reputation. My clients watch the purse strings. Balance is good.

Let me begin by saying that I recommend InfoQuest Technologies with no hesitation and most often recommend its WN-300S plan. For economy hosting, my first choice is HostGator. As of March, 2013, over 80% of my clients host at HostGator (45%), InfoQuest (23%) and GoDaddy(16%).

The rest of this article describes the hosting companies with which I've had experience. Let me spare you the suspense:

Company My Rating Comment
InfoQuest Technologies 4 Stars Business-class hosting, top-notch support.
Canadian Web Hosting 3 Stars Very good; missing a technical feature.
Powweb 2 Stars A bit weird, but no operational problems.
Web Hero 2 Stars Improving.
HostGator 3 Stars Economical hosting, great support.
BlueHost 3 Stars Good performance, good value.
GoDaddy 0 Stars Not recommended.
DreamHost n/a Not recommended.

If you are thinking about a company not listed here, I'll be happy to offer a private opinion.

General Observations

Some hosting plans do not provide support for SSL. I do not recommend such plans, even if SSL is not being used.

Many plans claim to offer "unlimited" bandwidth and storage. None actually do. The terms of service make clear that it remains the sole discretion of the hosting company to determine whether you are using a "reasonable" amount of resources. If you buy a plan that has limits, just make sure they well exceed your likely usage and then enjoy the happy discovery that your site is so popular that you've exceeded them.

I generally rate the email solutions from hosting companies as no better than "Adequate." This is almost always because of limitations on storage. These days many hosting companies are selling managed email solutions, so making the email in hosting accounts too attractive would undercut that business. I thus no longer recommend the email solutions provided as part of hosting plans but suggest that my clients pay (I know!) for a separate service. I most commonly recommend Microsoft Exchange Online, which I use myself. I used to recommend Google Apps because businesses could get a free account for up to 10 users, but that was discontinued in November of 2012.

My SiteCommander™ system works fine at all these hosting companies and, presumably, at any hosting company that has the core technology (PHP 5, MySQL) that SiteCommander requires. The single exception is sub-domains at GoDaddy.

Most hosting companies do not like it if a hosted site sends bulk emails, such as to a mailing list. They are worried that their mail servers will be tagged as spammers. It's an appropriate concern. If you want to do bulk mailing, I recommend services like Constant Contact.

In the tables below, the annual agreement can usually be renewed for the price shown. The exceptions are HostGator and PowWeb, for which an initial price is based on a coupon and subsequent billings are based on the rack rate. This appears to be a general practice of The Endurance Group, parent company to both.

I find it interesting that my highest ratings are for independent hosting companies. Perhaps I need to find more.

InfoQuest Technologies 4 Stars

Criteria Notes
My Experience Over 20% of my clients' sites
Recommended Plan WN-300S
Cost $15/month (annual agreement)
Bandwidth 300GB (2+ million page views)
Storage - Site Total 3GB
Storage - Database 150MB
Databases 3 (paltry but acceptable)
Domains / Sub-Domains 3 / 150
Operating System Windows
Hosting Control Panel Very Good - Plesk
Hosting Performance Superior
Database Performance Excellent
Email Adequate
FTP - General Poor
Backup - Database Poor
Support Consistently Excellent
Support Hours 24/7 email; business day plus Saturday phone
Support Online Chat Business hours (but no official schedule)
Self-Help Weak
Web Site www.infoquest.com
Location Harrisburg, PA USA
Parent Company? No, independent.

I celebrated my tenth anniversary with InfoQuest in 2011. Although not everything is perfect with the hosting plans and there have been some glitches along the way, the combination of high performance and excellent support overcomes other, minor deficiencies.

FTP is poor because it provides only a flat solution. I have several clients who need to exchange larger files, inappropriate for email, but who need to know that the files will be private. This requires individual folders with users isolated to those folders. This used to be a feature of InfoQuest's plans but got lost in the shuffle.

Database backup is poor because by default only one backup is allowed to be present at a time. I consider this silly. At the very least, the system should offer 3 to support a rotation - delete the oldest and create a new one. At the best, the system should allow as many backups as will fit in the site's space allotment.

Although InfoQuest hosts on Windows, its support for PHP and MySQL is excellent. SiteCommander runs very well at InfoQuest.

InfoQuest's price is higher than most other hosts. This is "business class" hosting; you get what you pay for and InfoQuest is worth it.

InfoQuest has a superior preview feature which I have found tremendously helpful when working with my clients.

Canadian Web Hosting 3 Stars

Criteria Notes
My Experience One client
Recommended Plan CA Value
Cost $10/month (annual agreement)
Bandwidth "Unlimited"
Storage - Site Total "Unlimited"
Storage - Database "Unlimited"
Databases No Limit
Domains / Sub-Domains Unlimited / Unlimited
Operating System Linux (CentOS)
Hosting Control Panel Very Good - cPanel
Hosting Performance Very Good
Database Performance Very Good
Email Very Good
FTP - General Very Good
Backup - Database Yes
Support Excellent
Support Hours 24/7
Support Online Chat Yes
Self-Help Fair
Web Site www.canadianwebhosting.com
Location Vancouver, BC CAN
Parent Company? No, independent.

I have a client with an international bent that wanted its site hosted on Canadian soil. After a brief but disastrous flirtation with another Canadian company, I recommended CWH. The result has been good and even with only one client hosted there I feel I can recommend the company.

Update, September, 2011: SiteCommander runs fine at CWH. However, the PHP environment is missing a popular extension that I may use in future versions.

PowWeb 2 Stars

Criteria Notes
My Experience Two clients
Recommended Plan No name, one plan
Cost $8/month (annual agreement)
Bandwidth "Unlimited"
Storage - Site Total "Unlimited"
Storage - Database "Unlimited"
Databases 75
Domains / Sub-Domains Unlimited / Unlimited
Operating System Linux
Hosting Control Panel Very Good - vDeck 4 (proprietary)
Hosting Performance Very Good
Database Performance Very Good
Email Good
FTP - General Good
Backup - Database Very Good
Support Good
Support Hours 24/7
Support Online Chat Yes
Self-Help Fair
Web Site www.powweb.com
Location Burlington, MA USA
Parent Company? Yes, Endurance International Group

The price shown in the table is actually the "regular" price. The PowWeb hosting plan has been on sale for as long as I can remember at $3.88 per month paid annually. It's a bargain, no question.

I've had some concerns about general performance at PowWeb. Some days my clients' sites run well and some days they don't. SiteCommander™ performance is mixed. More recently I have noticed much better performance.

A lot of the marketing and promotional material at PowWeb is dated. For example, the company blog's last entry was 2 years ago and the last press release listed is from 2005. Some of these materials mention Monterey Park, CA as the company's home even though the company is now in Massachusetts. That sort of thing makes me wonder.

Other than performance, which seems better, I've had no trouble with the sites hosted at PowWeb.

WebHero 1 Star

Criteria Notes
My Experience One client
Recommended Plan Plesk Elite
Cost $7/month (annual agreement, Hosting Club)
Bandwidth 500GB
Storage - Site Total 50GB
Storage - Database  
Databases 10
Operating System Linux
Domains / Sub-Domains Unlimited / Unlimited
Hosting Control Panel Very Good - Plesk
Hosting Performance Mixed
Database Performance Mixed (updated July, 2011)
Email Adequate
FTP - General Very Good
Backup - Database  
Support Very Good to Excellent
Support Hours 24/7
Support Online Chat Yes
Self-Help Fair
Web Site www.webhero.com
Location Oklahoma City, OK USA
Parent Company? Yes, Catalog.com

I would not have given you a nickel for WebHero when I first started to work for a client that had already signed up there. In 2010 WebHero began upgrading its own Web site, revamping its services, and tuning up its control panel. It has improved.

Commenting on WebHero is a little different than for the other hosts. My single client has been with WebHero for some time and is signed up for the Premier Unlimited Unix Plan. Although my client's site runs reasonably well, the control panel for this plan remains on the primitive side and only received a facelift in the revamp. Some tasks that other control panels provide must be accomplished by the company's support team. It is substandard compared to any other plan mentioned on this page and as I result I do not recommend it.

WebHero now offers Plesk Hosting, curiously named after the control panel. The Plesk plans all have limits and are based on Linux servers.

So here's the rub. In the table above, I recommend one of the Plesk plans and show its capacities, but in terms of performance and support my comments are based on my past experience supporting my client running the Unlimited Unix plan. Take this all with a grain of salt.

To get the pricing shown in the table, you must join the "Hosting Club." WebHero's site details the "benefits" of such membership.

Special Update, July 2011 - After severe performance problems emerged when using phpMyAdmin to administer the database associated with my one client at WebHero, I relocated the client elsewhere. WebHero was entirely cooperative with the change, the tech support remained very good, and the company said that changes were coming soon.

HostGator 3 Stars

Criteria Notes
My Experience My sites and over 40% of my clients' sites
Recommended Plan Baby
Cost $8/month (annual agreement, price rises after initial term to $10/mo)
Bandwidth "Unlimited"
Storage - Site Total "Unlimited"
Storage - Database "Unlimited"
Databases "Unlimited"
Domains / Sub-Domains Unlimited / Unlimited
Operating System Linux
Hosting Control Panel Very Good - cPanel
Hosting Performance Very Good, but seems degraded in 2013
Database Performance Very Good
Email Very Good, no arbitrary limits on inbox size
FTP - General Very Good
Backup - Database  
Support Very Good
Support Hours 24/7
Support Online Chat Yes
Self-Help Good
Web Site www.hostgator.com
Location Houston, TX USA
Parent Company? Yes, Endurance International Group

I've been placing clients at HostGator since early 2011. It is my top recommendation as an alternative to GoDaddy.

There is one minor problem. Most hosting companies provide a mechanism that allows a site to be previewed even if the desired domain name is not yet available. HostGator makes this incredibly difficult. If they could fix this, I'd give them another star.

Update, December 2013: HostGator's continued data center reliability and performance problems force me to remove it from my recommended list.

BlueHost 3 Stars

Criteria Notes
My Experience Two clients
Recommended Plan Standard Web Hosting
Cost $7/month (annual agreement)
Bandwidth "Unlimited"
Storage - Site Total "Unlimited"
Storage - Database 2GB each
Databases "Unlimited"
Domains / Sub-Domains Unlimited / Unlimited
Operating System Linux
Hosting Control Panel Good - cPanel (with some custom panels)
Hosting Performance Very Good
Database Performance Very Good
Email Very Good
FTP - General Very Good
Backup - Database Extra Cost
Support Good, but not as good as advertised
Support Hours 24/7
Support Online Chat Yes
Self-Help Good
Web Site www.bluehost.com
Location Provo, UT USA
Parent Company? Yes, Endurance International Group

Based on my own experience interacting with BlueHost, the state of my clients with BlueHost, and my sense of the work ethic in Provo, I should have an extremely positive view of the company. The two clients I support at BlueHost are happy with the plan, happy with support and service, and happy with with their sites. The value proposition equals GoDaddy in every respect.

The negative I harbor comes from several years ago and is based on private comments from others I trust that reliability of BlueHost's data center was not good. They complained of long outages and poor communication from the company. Contemporary reports seem better.

More recently I attempted to place a client at BlueHost and failed because of a technical problem with add-on domain configuration. After 24 hours of back and forth with tech support, whose personnel never did seem to grasp the problem, I moved the client to HostGator. But as long as no heavy technical lifting is required, most folks should not have a problem.

Update, December 2013: BlueHost is part of EIG, parent company at HostGator. Both companies are now housed in the same data center, where HostGator has been experiencing terrible performance and reliability problems. I can't recommend BlueHost under these circumstances.

GoDaddy 2 Stars

Criteria Notes
My Experience About 15% of my clients' sites
Recommended Plan Deluxe 4GH (see special note below)
Cost $7/month (annual agreement)
Bandwidth "Unlimited"
Storage - Site Total 150GB
Storage - Database 25GB
Databases 25 (1GB each)
Domains / Sub-Domains Unlimited / 400
Operating System Linux or Windows (not recommended)
Hosting Control Panel Fair - Proprietary & Annoying
Hosting Performance Fair
Database Performance Fair
Email Adequate, stingy limits on inboxes, complicated setup
FTP - General Good
Backup - Database Very Good
Support Excellent but agent quality varies
Support Hours 24/7
Support Online Chat No
Self-Help Good
Web Site www.godaddy.com
Location Scottsdale, AZ USA
Parent Company? No, but now owned by private investors known for flipping technology companies (e.g., Skype)

For my clients, GoDaddy represented the ultimate value proposition because of its low prices (although they have been rising recently). I recommend the Deluxe plan but many clients opt for the lower-priced Economy plan. The bang for the buck is a siren call.

I find that many new clients have already purchased a domain name from GoDaddy, so they come to me with a GoDaddy account and familiarity with the company's services. I always recommend that hosting and domain registration not be purchased from the same company but my clients argue strongly for sticking with a single provider for simplicity.

For me and for my clients who wish to manage their hosting accounts personally, GoDaddy is a terror. Although things are getting better, GoDaddy's control panel is a maze of confusing and conflicting panels that open browser windows willy-nilly and seem determined to make things hard to find and hard to do. Frankly, I hate managing a site at GoDaddy because it takes longer to do any task there than with any of my other hosting company control panels.

Eating up even more time, GoDaddy's control panel never does anything instantly. Everything is queued, so right after you issue an instruction you are notified that the change is "pending." It's an incredible waste of my time. For things that take hours instead of seconds or minutes, there is no way to get a notification that the action is complete; you must log back in to your account and check.

To fulfill a contractual commitment I had with Microsoft, I deployed a site using a GoDaddy Windows plan. It was a disaster in many respects. With the client complaining about performance and some of my software components not working correctly, there was no choice but to switch over to Linux. Happily, GoDaddy handled the transition, which went perfectly and only had the site off the air for a few minutes. I do not recommend Windows hosting plans at GoDaddy.

Finally, since the middle of 2010 I have noticed a fall-off in GoDaddy hosting performance. My complaints to GoDaddy were answered with the suggestion that I upgrade my clients to a 4GH plan and I have passed on that recommendation. It does seem to be an improvement. However, I remain concerned that GoDaddy performance is not as good as other providers. Time will tell.

Special Update, July 2011 - I have discovered that GoDaddy 4GH hosting does not handle sub-domains properly. If your site requires sub-domains and includes PHP code, do not use GoDaddy. Annoyed after several weeks of my pestering, GoDaddy finally acknowledged the issue and said it would not be changed.

Special Update, September 2011 - Due to ongoing performance issues, I no longer recommend GoDaddy. I will not take on new clients who wish to host at GoDaddy.

DreamHost No Stars

I have no clients at DreamHost. I mention it here because I constantly see recommendations that claim it to be a superior company and a superior hosting solution. Some of my clients have mentioned it. Nonetheless, I do not recommend DreamHost for two reasons.

First, it is difficult to determine the pricing of services. If you follow the links on the site, you will eventually come to a point where the site requests information from you before showing the price. There is no obvious way around this but there is a page that will show the prices if you are using browsers other than Internet Explorer (I presume this is a bug that will be fixed; I reported it). I never recommend any company that will not disclose pricing before asking you for information.

Second, the site goes out of its way to cast the owners and staff of the company as friendly people. That contrasts sharply with my experience in chat sessions trying to learn more about the company and its services. I have found the representatives to be arrogant and smug; I was not treated as a prospective customer but more as an annoying interruption.

Best to let these folks dream on.

 

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Updated December, 2013. Article Copyright ©2011-2013 by Will Fastie. All Rights Reserved.
Use the suggestions and recommendations herein at your own risk. No warranty, implied or otherwise, is given.
Technology changes rapidly; information in this article could be outdated quickly.