Hi.

I am now looking for a company that can host pcats.co.uk, because of the outages that have plagued the current host, the 'Australia-doesn't-exist' issues, and the fact that now mail redirection is apparently taking up to 4 or 5 days to transfer incoming email.

Can anyone point me at a company that can supply me with cost-effective hosting, mail facilities, etc? I'd prefer it to be in the UK, but it's not essential. I would need about 50MB minimum webspace, and probably not more than a couple of gig a month bandwidth, but this last is a bit of a guess. It may well be much less than that at the moment.

It needs to be reliable, inexpensive, and not prone to long unexplained disappearances.

On a similar note, I'm looking for a large amount of cheap webspace, mainly to host photos and video. This is for personal use, and isn't as important, but needs to be cheap. I seem to recall a similar thread here some while back, but I can't remember who asked the question or what the outcome was.

pca

This has been on the hosting forums lately:1and1.com

I am not sure what the restrictions as far as being out of the coutry are, but it's worth a look for 500MB of free ad-less space.

I can also host you if you want. I'd be willing to contribute 200MB and 3GB transfer to PCATS. Here is my awesome hosting site.

My server is at The Planet.

How much would you charge? Could you supply mail redirection?

pca

Wow, that 1and1 deal is amazing. Might give them a shot and maybe dump my current $5/year hosting deal. Not that it's been bad, but it's limited to 1GB/mo, and 1and1 seems to be offering 5GB/mo.

Cool!

You've got PM.

my current $5/year hosting deal

Is that with RippleHost? I know the price is now $9.99 a year, but I think they had a half-price sale a couple months back. If so, how has their service been?

Is that with RippleHost? I know the price is now $9.99 a year, but I think they had a half-price sale a couple months back. If so, how has their service been?

Yeah, RippleHost, for about 5 or 6 months now. Service has been flawless for me, and hosts the site in my sig. The support is almost nonexistent though, I've seen people on the support forums (only way to get support) waiting for a few days while a guy addresses their problems. For me, that's not much of a problem.

The only reason I'm considering 1and1 is to get more space and bandwidth for a site I have plans to develop, but haven't gotten to yet. The 1GB limit on RippleHost is a little low for what I'm planning...

But for what I've done so far, RippleHost has been great. The CPanel's really easy to use.

Maybe read this thread before switching over your website.

Most of the comments seem positive... The only real negative thing I saw was the notion that this is "dumping" (selling below cost to drive out competiiton) to which I'd say "phooey" since everyone on the Internet has been giving away free service to attract new business for a long time.

Is there some particular concern or problem in that thread that I'm not seeing?

No, it just seems to be the largest thread on the topic with a good mix of opinions. Most of the negative ones are not that bad and are being made by other hosting companies, so that is something to consider.

On the whole, it seems like a good deal. Someone mentioned not being asked for a domain name on signup, and got some long cryptic subdomain of onlinehome.us. While he can now add his real domain to the account, his email address is only allowed to be the .us account. That seems like the worst thing I read about the deal.

On the whole, it seems like a good deal. Someone mentioned not being asked for a domain name on signup, and got some long cryptic subdomain of onlinehome.us. While he can now add his real domain to the account, his email address is only allowed to be the .us account. That seems like the worst thing I read about the deal.

Hm, that is actually pretty lame. I don't want to necessarily move my tonyc.org domain over when I create the account (I wanna make sure the service is good first) but if I do move it over, I'd want to be able to add my email accounts to that domain. I'll dig through that thread to see if they resolved that problem or not.

www.compila.com

From the thread:

I signed up, too. I haven't poked around much yet, but you can make whatever-email@your-domain addresses for any domains that you add.

Hmm.. conflicting reports. I guess I'll sign up and see how it is.

Hmm.. conflicting reports.

I would just assume people don't know what they're doing.

I would just assume people don't know what they're doing.

Always a good assumption.

The thing I really like about this is that they do an automatic callback, which will significantly reduce the number of w4r3z and hacker sites that abuse the service.

Oh yeah, and this data center presentation is pretty kick-ass.

Depends what you mean my cheap. In the UK I would recommend http://www.gradwell.com/hosting/, but you might not think they are cheap. I think you get what you pay for.

I have set up a few clients with Gradwell - they are not the cheapest but the service is excellent. The customers were the sort that I did NOT want coming to me complaining that their email was down! Websites I can deal with, but email is much more important to most people.

1 & 1 are also pretty good - we were looking for a dedicated server on a different IP address from our existing system (for Google purposes, ahem) and have got one of their W2K3 £80/month deals and they are pretty good. A colleague has one of the £60/month systems (Celery processor and less memory) and it also seems good. It is hosted in Germany and is IDE only with no backup service as standard, but you get Terminal Services login and a [censored] (darned) fast connection.

Gareth

Andrews & Arnold do colocation as well. If you don't mind using a VIA 1GHz then they've got a 50GBP a month thing going. You have to buy the server up front for 500GBP however but it does mean you keep the thing if you ever decide to stop. It's got 512MB RAM and a 180GB drive and you're allowed about 300GB a month transfer.

As usual, I've nothing to do with A&A apart from I use their services.

If you haven't decided yet, I've been using Wiserhosting for two years for my own site. They're based in Cambridge. I asked them if they had heard of empeg They hadn't

This is a company I'm involved in: http://www.pepperfish.net We're very geek friendly.