

Ask YC: Shared hosting providers that don't suck? - rms

Looking for something under $10/month:<p>Can this get me shared hosting with decent latency and reasonable uptime?
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crystalarchives
I use WebFaction and am very pleased with them. They support hosting multiple
sites on one account, PHP, Rails, and Django while having extremely fast and
helpful customer service. The latency is good, although not blazing, and I've
had perfect uptime so far since I signed up six months ago. My plan is
$9.50/month and allows shell access (the clincher for me), 80 MB RAM, 10 GB
HD, and 600 GB bandwidth. I definitely recommend them.

<http://www.webfaction.com/?affiliate=pillarofeden>

* Disclaimer - this is an affiliate link.

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rms
How do they define application memory? This sounds like a partially managed
VPS, or at least is metered similary. Does Apache count as memory use?

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crystalarchives
I don't think so, I think it's for Rails and Django pretty much. I've never
had an issue although I only run Rails.

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rms
Dreamhost seems popular and cheap, but people also like complaining about
them.

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markbao
On DreamHost right now. Went down a few times, but not a big deal - uptime for
my server has been crystal the past few months.

You'll hear that "DreamHost sucks" all the time. Keep in mind that they host
around 700,000 domains, and operate thousands of servers, so there will be an
inevidably huge amount of people complaining. (Of course, people don't usually
rant about how great the service is, so that gets lost in the noise.)

The fact that they're a lot more transparent
(<http://www.dreamhoststatus.com>) than a lot of providers is good, but only
makes people complain more (The thinking is: 'It went down! I must complain
about the service being terrible.' rather than with traditional hosting
providers, where you probably weren't aware of the downtime, unless if you
personally experienced it.)

My suggestion: if it's not mission-critical, DreamHost is a good, very
reasonably priced choice.

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jakewolf
A recent gem from [http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/05/21/blingy-
problems/al...](http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/05/21/blingy-problems/all-
comments/#comments)

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avinashv
Holy crap, that's been over a week. I pity the fool who put something mission-
critical on there.

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kilowatt
NearlyFreeSpeech has been pretty kickass so far--no downtime that I've
noticed. I don't exactly move any traffic, but since you only pay for the
bandwidth you use, it's perfect.

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ComputerGuru
I highly recommend LunarPages. Best thing is their low latency and modern
systems. They're one of the few with a lot of clients yet almost universally
positive reviews.

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natch
he.net is wonderful, and has very, very low latency connectivity. No fancy GUI
control panel (at least not that I've noticed), just plain ssh access to a
good shell and you're on your way. They answer the phone on the second or
third ring, a real human, maybe because most of their users are good enough
not to need any support. That being said, I'm now looking for a new provider
too, because they host only one domain for the cheap accounts.

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pragmatic
What type of hosting are you looking for? PHP, ASP.NET, Python, it really
depends.

I've had different experiences with each. For plain old php, bluehost seems
alright.

However, may I suggest that if this hosting provides your sole source of
income you look at a virtual host. I've used <http://www.servint.net/> for a
ton of wordpress blogs and it's pretty good.

I've also "moved up" from plain jain asp.net hosting to dedicated hosting.

If you're depending on this as a source of income I recommend you get a
dedicated host. In the long run it will pay for itself.

Good Luck!

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technoguyrob
I use Lypha for my PHP/Perl hosting. They have the most featured, spaceous,
and bandwidth-plenty service I've ever seen for a price like $4/month, and I
haven't seen a downtime in months (not to mention the support is great). Get
Dreamhost if you want Python/Ruby. Otherwise, get Lypha.

<http://lypha.com/hosting_plans.shtml>

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uruzseven
I've been using <http://www.websitesource.com> for several years now. Uptime
is good for a shared host. I would actually recommend hosting your mail
elsewhere though. I use the free version of Google Apps which works perfectly.

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dkokelley
I've been using hostmonster.com - $6.95/month (2y contract)

They offer "unlimited" hosting and bandwidth now, which means until it's not
worth hosting you anymore.

I have about 7 domains with them and they've been pretty reliable.

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alexk
Agree. I was with hostmonster for a year and was pretty satisfied with their
support and services.

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nreece
JaguarPC.com for PHP/MySQL ... been with them for over 7 years

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tpimental
I've been using 1and1.com for a while now and am still happy.

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wave
I think <http://www.hostgator.com> has a reasonable service and good customer
service.

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jshen
you get what you pay for generally. I'm not sure what you mean by "suck". Most
hosts I've used had very little downtime, but you aren't going to get a lot of
cpu/memory resources for under $10.

I personally would never get a host that doesn't give me shell access, not
sure if you care about such things. I can only guess what you mean by "suck".

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rms
Low latency is what I am looking for mainly, since it seems like most places
have acceptable downtime.

I was on Media Temple grid host at one point and it was just slow. I don't
want that in a host.

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jshen
I use slicehost. I haven't payed attention to the latency, but I've never
noticed my site loading slowly.

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rbarooah
GeekIsp has been very solid for me. Reasonably priced, communicative, and
modern.

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jakewolf
asmallorange.com

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crystalarchives
Asmallorange is also extremely good, I used to use them but I couldn't find a
way to host multiple sites, which was crucial for me.

~~~
jakewolf
You must have been with them a long time ago.
<http://asmallorange.com/services/hosting/features.php>

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pistoriusp
Webfaction.com

