I have hosted websites on A LOT of ISPs. Sadly, my favorite ISPs either don’t have some of the features I want or don’t have as competitive of a rate/plan as I need.
For example, ICDSoft.com is one of the BEST ISPs I’ve EVER dealt with (and who hosts this site). Their support team is amazingly fast. Their servers are fast and reliable. They don’t have Fantastico (which is REALLY nice to have on an ISP – especially if you like to play around with lots of the fun PHP stuff) and their service plan is a good deal, assuming you don’t need a lot of disk space or a crazy amount of bandwidth – most of my other sites require at least one of these.
I also really like the guys at SuperWebHost.com. They have a sort of no-nonsense business going on there and they hosted one of my biggest sites for a long time. Unfortunately, the performance (speed) wasn’t as great as I needed it to be once the site really grew. Most people won’t have a problem with this (for personal or family sites and such). I still have moments where I wish I still had a plan with them, because its really a nice company.
A company called DH2.net is the company I love to hate. Their plans are great. The bandwidth is good and they have some nice tools. I host one of my sites there and am generally happy with them. Their support area limits you to something like 200 characters or less – try explaining any IT problem with that limitation. I used to host my biggest site there, which always seemed to be on the server that had the most problems, so it ended up being down more than I could tolerate. It must have been a mutual thing because one day they told me I had 30 days to move that site somewhere else. That’s one of the most frustrating things to do … and yet, I still have a site there because its a great deal and works well most of the time.
I’ve avoided moving to the huge ISPs for no apparent reason. People like GoDaddy and such. They seem to be slightly higher than other things you can find if you look around, but I assume they are slightly more reliable as well. — I’ve also using using a company called ANHosting.com. Its too early to tell for sure, but so far they look promising and have a nice set of plans that are a good deal. I like that they have a widget for your computer that reports on their service … although it draws attention to normal server issues that any server room would have. Being in IT, its not a big deal because I know they are, in fact, normal. Still … I wonder what the average person thinks.
I KNOW someone reading this has a great ISP or two that they love. What are they!? (Oh, and if you have a Domino ISP, be SURE to speak up … especially if they’re a good deal, ’cause most of the services I’ve seen that do Domino carry a big premium.)
What people here are saying…