I have been involved with managing web hosting of my clients since 2005. In those days, I was managing a dedicated server with a hosting provider named Apollohosting, based in the US. The Linux dedicated server had 80GB of disc space and approx. 80 small website clients on this dedicated server. I had a dedicated support manager who was a specialist and I would contact him for any support issues or any additional requirements. This went on for some time but then the web space and email load of clients increased. Also, the number of clients hosting on this server also increased.
This caused frequent server load performance issues, hence I needed to reduce the load on the dedicated server. I decided to move some hosted sites to a shared provider. After some research I decided to go with EasyCGi, I had seen some good reviews about this provider and also our experience with one hosting account with EasyCGI was good. Hence, I moved around 30 hosting accounts to the shared hosting of EasyCgi.
In 2006, for some large websites I selected theplanet.com as a dedicated server hosting provider. They provided attractive pricing for the dedicated servers. This was a windows dedicated server. On this server, I had hosted 10 websites. Later I that their offering was more like what they call Bare Metal servers. Many performance issues started arising mainly because of limited support provided for hardware and software.
At that time, I was new to web hosting and this was a learning curve for me, slowly I realized that I needed to categorize my clients according to their specific requirements. Like for some clients, it was fine if there was a downtime of 2-3 hours in a couple of months while some clients could not afford this kind of downtime. I segregated the clients according to their requirements. The ones which did not have any high uptime requirements I moved them to a good shared provider and the ones which had critical requirements I moved them to a Managed Dedicated hosting provider. This improved the way we handled our clients, in turn it increased our reliability and we also managed to get more customers.
The hosting industry is dynamic, hence a provider which was good earlier might not be the same today. Let me explain this. The hosting services of EasyCgi were very good till 2009 when it was acquired by EIG hosting. The EIG hosting is a large group which purchases many small hosting companies. Easycgi, the provider which was a no issue provider suddenly started having issues time and again, their hosting infrastructure changed and server migration started happening. The net result was that the ongoing performance of the service provider degraded. The same was the case with Apollohosting, it was bought by EIG, but luckily we had already moved away from this provider some time back. So I suggest you to stay away from any hosting provider which is from the EIG group. There a good post which provides list of EIG group of hosting providers, its http://researchasahobby.com/full-list-eig-hosting-companies-brands/. A quick note, if you are looking for my detailed list of recommended web hosting providers please visit my earlier post https://alldigitaltalk.com/what-are-different-types-of-web-hosting/. Below are the reliable web hosting companies reviews
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Rackspace Review
After ample research, I identified Rackspace as Managed provider for the majority of our business critical clients. It was a good choice and till date we are having 3 servers with Rackspace. One is a Red hat a Linux server and there are two other servers for a Sharepoint portal (One web server and another one was a database server). Especially their support is one of the best in the industry. Rackspace provides you with an account manager and a support team which provide you 24×7 support, they are available via chat, phone and ticket support. Their support is branded as Fanatical support and it lives to the expectation. They will also give you a call back in case you request one.
I have also used the services of their hosted messaging solution named Rackspace email. This is a cloud solution and you get many options starting from 1GB mailbox to 10GB or 25GB for the hosted exchange mailbox. This is a reliable mail solution used by leading corporates and I have recommended to many of my clients. You can visit their website here Rackspace.com
Softlayer Review
I have been using this provider since many years till now. Earlier the providers name was thePlanet, currently it is known as Soft layer it’s an IBM company. The service of this dedicated hosting provider has been reliable overall and it has become even better after it has become an IBM company.
I have used 3-4 dedicated servers from this hosting provider. I have used bare metal dedicated servers and was quite satisfied with them. Now they are even providing managed and cloud hosting solutions. Their network uptime is one of the best in the industry. Softlayer provides ticket, phone and chat support hence they are always reachable in case you face any issues. Hence, here you have an option of going for either bare metal dedicated server or a managed dedicated server. You can visit their website at Softlayer.com.
Nettigritty Review
Nettigritty is an Indian hosting, provider. If you are just starting out and require an Indian host try this one and you won’t regret. Nettigritty is top Indian hosting provider among other Indian service providers. The thing I like about this provider is that lets you start with very small packages ie 100MB disk space and it lets you scale up from there without any migration or any issues. It does not provide any unlimited disk space or bandwidth. The pricing is starting from $14.5 approx per year for the smallest package.
Nettigritty provides ticket support which have response times of 15min and they also have telephone support. You can visit their website at nettigritty.com
Discountasp.net Review
DiscountAsp is one provider whose service has and support has remained consistent since more than 10 years now. This is one of the best asp.net hosting providers. They have data centers in USA and Europe. I have hosted some semi-government and corporate clients with the discountasp.net hosting.
Discountasp offers three main types of hosting services ie Shared hosting, Shared TFS hosting and Everleap cloud hosting. They are a Microsoft gold partner for hosting. They have .net certified professionals to support the hosting and they are the first ones to provide hosting support for latest .net and sql server products from Microsoft. If you are planning to purchase a hosting from them then you can get 3 months free. You can visit the provider at discountasp.net
Hope you find this article useful. Let me know which hosting providers you have found useful and your experiences. Thank you for reading this article and if you have found it useful, kindly share it among your friends.
