Who have you had your forum hosted with?

What web hosts have you used?

What do you think of them?



I'll start off. I was first with Lunarpages. They were pretty good. Initial customer service was very good, and I almost never saw a probelm with the site being down or sluggish.

However. I started having problems as I began adding sites. First of all, they charge for each domain you add to your hosting account. 2.50 a month per additional domain I believe. (I believe you get the first add on domain for free) There was also a monthly charge for additional MYSQL databases I believe.

But what really became a problem was that I was using vBulletin. As my site grew a little, I received an email one day form Lunarpages support. The email told me that my site was too resource intensive and had been moved to an unsupported production server. Further, I had 10 days to move my vBulletin to another host, or convert it to a more acceptable forum software. They recommended PHPbb.

Even in their support forums, they make claims about vBulletin.

Yes, you can upgrade at anytime, however VBulletin is not allowed on LunarPages' servers due to it being resource intensive. There are some board converters located at http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php#converters (http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php#converters) to convert the VBulletin board to PHPBB.-- the conversion from vbulletin to phpbb is a thing that quite a few people do, it's a small price to pay to get a really good reliable host,

They do allow vBulletin on their servers now, but the attitude doesnt seem to ahve changed. I was forced to move. They did promptly refund all money I had paid that I had not used. (they charge 1 year at a time)

I did some research and a newer company kept coming up on the radar. ASmallOrange.com. Unfortunately they were not accepting new customers at that point. I emailed the owner, Tim Dorr and explained my problem with Lunapages.

Tim immediately jumped on things and 'made' room for me. He took care of the whole transfer process and helped me move nameservers and everything else. (I was new and quite inexperienced with these things back then)

ASO has had many great reviews over the last few years and has grown substantially. I am now on their largest VPS server package and preparing to make the jump to dedicated.

My experience with ASO has been very good overall. There have been a few glitches along the way, but ASO has always tended to them quickly. They are experiencing some growing pains right now, support is not as great as it once was since they have hired alot of new support staff to handle all the business. This support staff is a bit less experienced and needs time to become better. I expect this to be resolved in the near future. They (ASO) are a host I would absolutely recommend.

I host at www.shinysolutions.com. Why? Because the owner is a former employee, now good friend of mine! And no, he's not the cute girl on the page.

I've got a pair of VPSs from PowerVPS. No issues whatsoever so far. They're fast, tech support is responsive (when I've used them) and reasonably priced.

www.islandnet.com

mainly because the owner is a good friend of mine. NEVER experienced down time. :)

www.powweb.com

$7.77 a month... lots of good specs. There were some issues around the beginning of the year, but those have been all worked out.

Still using dreamhost here... Other than the griping me out for burning 4x more CPU cycles than allotted for a shared hosting type account (which I never recall seeing disclosed) they have been good to me. 20G+ diskspace with an impossible to use 1.5TB monthly xfer rate (both of which grow by some amount weekly for the life of the accounts).. Tech support seems about par. Unlimited full and subdomains. Overall, my grade would be an A-.

However I'm looking for a cheaper quality dedicated or VPS solution to consolidate all of my accounts/domains into just for the ease of maintenance/backups.

My host has been great to me. At one point they were having server trouble and I was looking for another host. Found one that offered quite a bit more storage and b/w than they did, and they matched it to keep me.
I find their hosting packages pretty competitive, they're very lenient on adult content which is a good thing for me ;). They offer email, IM, ticket AND telephone tech support.

Hostww.net (http://hostww.net)

x10hosting.com - I am using one of there paid hosting packages. At the moment they seem very good. They respond fast and the staff are fairly nice. And if I need help with installing vBulletin components they'll help me. Also they have a place called the market place, where you can get anything installed on your forum for almost free (using points i.e. vbbux) I have the owners msn addy, which he is on 24Hours of the day, and forum support, where you make a thread in support, which I quite like in a host. But if I do get my site big enough Il have to move to a VPS which they do not provide, maybe in future they will. But there quite cheap, and there hosting is Instant if you pay.

http://www.ev1servers.net/ is king for dedicated servers. You just have to learn how to run a server, at least learn how to restart stuff like apache, mYSQL, and restarting the server. Optimizing apache is a big plus. And of course back-up!!!!

At first, I was using Valcato Hosting.com (http://www.valcatohosting.com) until I decided to buy my own dedicated server.

They get an A++ from me.

After trying a few including ASO I ended up with PowerVPS.com and have been happy since day one. :)

Back when I was just building websites and creating graphics, no forums, I hosted with yahoo business hosting.

We won't go there... ;)

I have my servers and VPS's via powervps they are AWESOME.

my vb site is on dataflame.co.uk - we've just recently transferred to them and have only signed up for 3 months to see how we go. so far so good. decent price, and good support so far. they don't allow adult content, but that's fine by us.

before that we were with geekhosting.com and they started out ok, but soon became slow and the performance was just rubbish. their tech support was either slow or non-existent.

the site i've created for the choir i'm in (just a plain old website - not a vb board) is hosted with 123-reg.co.uk and i've had NO complaints with them at all.

My host has been great to me. At one point they were having server trouble and I was looking for another host. Found one that offered quite a bit more storage and b/w than they did, and they matched it to keep me.
I find their hosting packages pretty competitive, they're very lenient on adult content which is a good thing for me ;). They offer email, IM, ticket AND telephone tech support.

Hostww.net (http://hostww.net)


I host with Hostww.net (http://hostww.net/) very satisfied with their service and had no single problem for the past 4 months...

And this host was recommended by Ohiosweetheart :D

I used a company called Web Mania, www.web-mania.com (http://www.web-mania.com) which was okay for a very, very short while and using a YABB forum. It kept going off line and then back on with a fresh install. Upgraded to vBulletin and wow, they couldn't handle it. Most of the time it was off line with them saying it was a server upgrades, backups, etc.... Also had trouble with e-mails not coming through with small sites with no forums, just plain old HTML: www.dkpaccountancyservices.com (http://www.dkpaccountancyservices.com) > I made it, not bad for a noobie (Shame how it loads funny in FF and IE7).

I then moved to www.firmedge.com (http://www.firmedge.com) which was very good as it was someone I knew and they had a massive vBulletin forum so it worked well, until he had to give it up.

Now using www.asmallorange.com (http://www.asmallorange.com) and apart from the slow funtions at times, it was worth the money for a medium hosting account. All my sites and ones I will be building for others will be hosted with them. I love hosts with CPANEL, love it so easy to use.

When I started my site I had a shared hosting account with www.3-95.com, which then changed to www.dixiesys.com while with them I went through all of their reseller accounts. About 5-6 months after that I moved to www.alphaomegahosting.com and also went through all of their shared hosting reseller packages from there I tried www.ServInt.com and tried two of their VPS's which started off really good but then it got to the point where it made more sense to go with a dedicated machine so I then moved all my sites to www.ThePlanet.com which I've had for the last 5-6 months now with out a problem.

All and all I've been extremely lucky with all my hosts considering all the horror stories I read online about terrible hosts. Every host I've been with has been top notch and has been very helpful in their support and uptime. I'd recommend any of them to anyone.



-Michael

I have been with ASO from the beginning and have only had minor fluffs happen, but they were completely taken care of in a timely manner. I am staying with them for as long as I can :D

Been with ASO for several years with very little problems.

Started off with shared on CIHost and now a dedicated server with Servstra (used to be called ResellerWorkz). A few sites that I'm staff with are also on ResellerWorkz and at the time they had some great deals. Under Servstra their pricing plans have all changed though so fortunately I'm grand-fathered in with the older package pricing.

Started off with shared on CIHost and now a dedicated server with Servstra (used to be called ResellerWorkz). A few sites that I'm staff with are also on ResellerWorkz and at the time they had some great deals. Under Servstra their pricing plans have all changed though so fortunately I'm grand-fathered in with the older package pricing.

you lucked out with that

Started out with GoDaddy.. I won't even go there. What a crock.. truely the Wal-Mart of the webhosting business.

Went to 1and1 and was very satisifed with them until I realized that mySQL was capped @ 100 MB unless I moved to a dedicated server. While my DB was nowhere near that size I wanted to get my vB forum moved over to a new host before I starting do work and promoting it.

I asked around a bit, ASO came up time and time again with great reviews but an online buddy of mine who runs like 10 sites recommended dreamhost and I signed up. I paid ~$240 for the year, unlimited domains/subdomains a crazy amount of bandwith, ssh, etc, etc. I cannot think of everything right now but I've been with them about a month and so far everything is going great! Support is very friendly & easy to deal with. I current have about 15 domains pointed into my DH account and I'm not stopping anytime soon. ;)

I may have to check DreamHost out. Although I am with Site5 and they are working out just fine for me. Good to look ahead and keep your options open though. ;)

I really have no complaints about DH other than they cannot get email right. The mail servers have trouble frequently which doesn't bother me because it stays queued on the server anyhow, plus anything critical goes to my ISP and gmail accounts. DH also keeps changing the rules for catchall email addresses which is being a real PITA especially when you have 15 + domains to change.

According to their status blog, they have a fair amount of problems but almost none have affected me. http://www.dreamhoststatus.com

Anyhow, if you do want to try out DH, drop me a line let me know what plan you want and for how long. I'll give you a referal link for a discount.

I really have no complaints about DH other than they cannot get email right. The mail servers have trouble frequently which doesn't bother me because it stays queued on the server anyhow, plus anything critical goes to my ISP and gmail accounts. DH also keeps changing the rules for catchall email addresses which is being a real PITA especially when you have 15 + domains to change.

According to their status blog, they have a fair amount of problems but almost none have affected me. http://www.dreamhoststatus.com

Anyhow, if you do want to try out DH, drop me a line let me know what plan you want and for how long. I'll give you a referal link for a discount.


I appreciate it, but it will be awhile in any event as I have about 7 months left with Site5.

Thanks, though.

Started off with F5 hosting and then Michael sold the company, I used to get personalized service and after he sold, the customer service went downhill.

I recently moved to A Small Orange and have had no problems.

Started with www.solidinternet.com (http://www.solidinternet.com). Warning!! avoid them like the plague. Trust me, you do not want to know. I'm not alone on this. If you could view their forum you will see nothing but problems and complaints. . :mad: . Over 2 years with them and it got worse and worse. I ditched them with 8 months left on a plan.
Just use the space for testing and storage now.

Now with www.krystalhosting.co.uk (http://www.krystalhosting.co.uk), three months and so far everything has been fine. No issues. . :)