Huddled Masses
August 23rd, 2006 | 
Author: So, for nearly three years this site has been hosted on a free promotional account from 1&1, but that account expires sometime in October, and I’ve been looking around at the usual places trying to figure out what my best option is. It’s really hard to decide to spend even $7 a month on something that I’ve been getting for free, but the account this is hosted on is really minimal by today’s standards, so some of the extras are catching my interest.
The baseline account that I usually compare to is the $7 hosting from BlueHost which currently offers 30GB of storage and 750GB of bandwidth … but of course, I don’t need a quarter of that (actually, right now I have only 500MB of storage, and I use less than 2GB of transfer on this domain). So I started wondering if there’s anyone cutting them up smaller than that.
Here’s my table. Note: I assume that every host has PHP, Perl and Python (ASP.NET for MS hosting), a database, and email accounts with some version of spam protection. There’s two price columns because nearly everyone offers a huge discount if you sign up for several years, so I’ve listed the monthly price for the long-term and short-term prices, not including the setup fee that some charge (although I’ve listed setup fees as bummers). Note: I can’t recommend these, since I’ve never used them 
.
| ISP | $$ | $$$ | Disc | Net | Extras | Bummers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .5 | $4 (2) | $8 | 20GB | 500GB | Ruby, Cronjobs, SSL | |
| iP | $4 (2) | $7 | 3GB | 50GB | $10 setup without commitment, no Python or perl | |
| RH | $3 (1) | $6 | 0.75GB | 20GB | Fantastico, SSH | no Python, charges for extra domains |
| RH | $5 (1) | $8 | 1.5GB | 40GB | above + extra domain | same as above |
| SS | $2 | 0.1GB | 2GB | Free domain, Crontab, Windows option (ASP.NET, Java) | ||
| SS | $3 | 0.2GB | 5GB | +10 subdomains, MSSQL (on windows), Tomcat | ||
| SS | $5 | 0.5GB | 10GB | Unlimited subdomains, Shared SSL cert | ||
| 1&1 | $2.25 | $3 | 5GB | 250GB | Free Domain, Software, Windows option | No Python or Perl (no .NET on Windows) |
| 1&1 | $3.75 | $5 | 50GB | 500GB | 2 Free Domains | (no .NET on Windows) |
| 1&1 | $7.50 | $10 | 100GB | 1000GB | 3 Free Domains, Cron, SSH, Shared SSL |
Here’s my usual high ends, they have huge ammounts of everything, you know, dozens of databases and hundreds of email accounts … the idea is that you can run big commercial sites or sublease …
| ISP | $$ | $$$ | Disc | Net | Extras | Bummers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iP | $7 | $10 | 10GB | 250GB | $30 without commitment, no Python | |
| BH | $7 (2yrs) | 30GB | 750GB | Free Domain, subdomains, Ruby, Fantastico | No upgrades possible, they only offer this one package. | |
| PW | $8 (1yr) | $18 | 20GB | 400GB | PHP5, Shared SSL | No Python, No upgrades possible, they only offer this one package. |
| DH | $8 (2yr) | $10 | 20GB | 1000GB | Free Domain, SSH with compilers, Cron, PHP5, Ruby, WebDAV, Subversion, Jabber ($30 coupon code: GEOSHELL) | $50 setup fee (waived for long-term signups) |
So anyway. The Dreamhost thing still appeals to me because of the extras, by which I mean Jabber and SVN and WebDAV, and they do have a 3 month money-back guarantee, but on the other hand…. I’m already on 1&1, and you just can’t beat their-low cost plans for price/performance, and lets face it, I don’t really use python, ruby, or even my shell account — I’ve got my own Linux box, thanks.
Anyone have any other thoughts or suggestions?
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Hi, have you checked NearlyFreeSpeech? Only thing is that NFS I think will appeal more to small sites.
Here’s the link to prices:
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/hosting.php#pricing
I was in the exact same boat as you last year. My 3 years was a couple months from ending and I knew I would start having to pay soon. I looked around in a very similar search to what you are doing and decided to go with Asmallorange because there was no discount for signing up for 3 years vs 1 month. In addition, they answered emails very promptly and had a very good reputation for the customer service. I’m still with them a year later and happy. One thing I noticed in the switch from 1&1 to Asmallorange is the speed, my site is a lot faster now. Good luck in your search.
Well, six months ago I had to take this decidion and It was for DreamHost. They offer lots, you DO get lots, and I had no problems at all. They’re not cheap. But they’re the best I got the in last 4 years.