Working with the internet is fun. Dealing with bad hosting companies is not. Today we’re going to share what we’ve learned about web hosts over the years, so you can more easily find a headache-free hosting experience. I’ll compare 4 major hosting companies: GoDaddy.com, 1and1.com, NetworkSolutions.com and MediaTemple.com, and impart our personal experience with each one. So, without further delay, let’s get to it.
GoDaddy.com – This company should stick to domain registration. If all you want is a domain name, I like going with GoDaddy, mostly because their TotalDNS control section is pretty easy to use, and propagates across the world pretty quickly.
But let’s talk about their website design. Wowwy wow, that’s a mess! You have to dig through page after cluttered page of advertisements and sales pitches to get to a purchase page, making for a checkout system isn’t that great. As far as their serving speed and quality goes, they are pretty reliable. If you really don’t care who you host it with, and you have your domain name with GoDaddy, then this is probably not your worst choice. Managing your website is just like the rest of GoDaddy though—it’s not pretty. If GoDaddy would clean up their interface they would get more points with us, but for now their best assets are that they are cheap, and do have good customer service over the phone.
3 out of 5 for cheap service and good customer service. Points lost for bad web design and overall clutter.
1and1.com – 1and1 is another company that offers a lot for little cost. Their hosting packages are really cheap, and they offer all of the languages and tools that you could ever want. If you want more control, they have virtual servers that you can rent for less than $30 a month, and they even offer dedicated servers if you don’t want to share a CPU with anyone.
Having never dealt with their customer service, I wouldn’t really know what that’s like. That’s a good thing though, because I’ve never had anything go wrong. The one thing that really isn’t cool, though, is their modified version of phpmyadmin for your database administration. They stripped a lot out to make it easier to use, but lost a lot of functionality as a consequence. When I needed to import a .sql file into a new database, for example, I had to go to a secure shell and run the mysql command manually. Not to say that that was hard, but it was annoying that they took useful stuff out of the GUI. Overall, they are reliable and cheap, and pretty quick—not a bad choice, but nothing really makes them stand out of the crowd.
3 out of 5 for offering crazy prices on dedicated and virtual servers. Points lost due to stripping out functionality and making things more difficult.
NetworkSolutions.com - Network Solutions is simply not worth their prices. Although their prices have come down recently, they are still on the more expensive side of the hosting sites. I really don’t know why, either. I’ve had more trouble with Network Solutions than any other hosting company, and their back end is confusing and weird. Instead of naming their advanced options under their actual names (DNS Controls, Update Records, etc.), they have everything masked under silly names and make you click through warnings about how changing these can break your website, email, whatever. Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to treat all your customers like they are clueless n00bs, then maybe you should also be asking entry level prices, instead of bloated costs for a confusing system. Ugh.
2 out of 5 for their prices and terrible back end. Points given at all because there are some n00bs out there that I’ve talked to that have never had problems with their service. I think they were overpaying, though.
MediaTemple.com - Last but definitely not least is Media Temple. In my opinion, this company is the winner. Prices are higher, in the range of Network Solutions, but unlike Network Solutions they offer a great product. If you are only looking to host a simple static HTML site, then this may be overkill, but if you need to deploy multiple domains and want a clean, well-organized interface to manage it, look no further. Three levels of bandwidth for virtual servers give you an option for each price range, and the service is incredible. They have the best customer service I have ever seen for a tech company.
And while their prices are a little high, I believe that paying for quality is worth it. Check out their list of clients—they have some big names on their list of hosting customers, including ABC, Volkswagon and Adobe, which makes me feel pretty confident that they can handle my slightly lower bandwidth needs.
4.5 out of 5 mostly for being awesome and doing everything right. They would get a full 5 out of 5 if they were a little cheaper, but again, I think their cost is worth it.
Tags: Hosting, Media Temple, web
