Experiences with webhosts? And my unhappy experience

[Sushidragon]

My site is hosted on Siteground, and as you all know I recently got the Samanayrs their own webspace. Although they loudly toot their own horn about their unlimited space and bandwidth for shared hosting, there's other restrictions and limitations, such as "CPU time usage" and "account executions" which are most definitely not unlimited.

We're limited to 800 'account executions,' or page views, per hour. samanayrs.com is regularly going over and Siteground is being very unhelpful when it comes to fixing this problem, or even explaining how it's happening, since these stats don't seem to make any sense. The only real solution they've given me so far is to upgrade to dedicated webhosting, which, at $100/month, I definitely can't afford. Although the site and forum have gotten busier recently, this isn't exactly a high traffic site.

So! I'm thinking of canceling my subscription with Siteground and finding a new webspace provider, and I'd love to hear who everyone else is using and their experiences with them XD It'd be nice to find a company that's up front about all of their limitations and that has options to upgrade services without going from one extreme to another (eg shared webhosting to dedicated webhosting only, like Siteground). Unfortunately if samanayrs.com is going to stick around, and if it grows, like I'd like it to, I'm going to have to start looking for alternatives o_x

[Orasteele]

Well we all want to see the Samanayrs grow! I'll see if I can get Brit to give you a recommendation as we just got new hosting.

[Britain]

Not new hosting, exactly, we just got a new website with the same host. We've been with Dreamhost for probably....5-6 years now (myself and Ogre, two seperate experiences). Both of us have been more than pleased with their service and hosting. Their tech support is very helpful and responds in pretty good time (maybe I'll wait a day, sometimes).

Dreamhost can be a little bit more expensive than some, but definitely not $100 a month!! We pay about $120 a year, usually. I'm not sure where they stand on the specific issues you have to deal with, but I am sure that you'll be able to get answers when you ask questions.

They also have VERY good specials sometimes, if you can catch them. Ogre spotted a special on July 4th, and we got our lovely unlimited hosting/domain registration for a year for $10! Very cool.

[Sushidragon]

Thank you! I've definitely heard of Dreamhost before, I just sent them an email outlining my issues and requirements, so hopefully they'll get back to me soon XD

[Sushidragon]

Wow, Dreamhost got back to me already and is very helpful XD Their dedicated server hosting prices are a lot more reasonable too, starting at $20/month instead of $100/month!

I've been looking into transferring over there, and unfortunately the samanayrs.com domain isn't 60 days old yet, and I'd need to cancel my hosting account with Siteground before August 2nd if I wanted any kind of refund XD I've asked them if I still keep the samanayrs.com domain, otherwise we might have to try samanayrs.net or something XD

[Jennalyn]

I also use dreamhost and have been extremely satisfied with their service for several years. I'm not quite sure how long... maybe four or five? I've never had a problem with them and I pay about $120 a year.

[Orasteele]

Glad they got back to you quick!

[Sushidragon]

I do believe that Dreamhost is the host for me We've already had several emails back and forth and they've even given me the steps I'll need to transfer my domain over when it's unlocked, and how I can point my domain to Dreamhost in the meantime.

It looks like I will be able to transfer everything over, including the domain! This means I'll have to shut the forum down again for a bit, but I'm going to try to do it all tonight or tomorrow night so that there won't be too much disruption XD They said that the 'account executions' thing is an extremely ineffective and old-school way of limiting a shared hosting account, so they definitely won't be a problem over there!

[Orasteele]

Yay!!! I'm so glad we were able to steer you in the right direction! And the transfer will be just in time for the start of breeding season too! *crosses fingers for a lack of hiccups*

[Sushidragon]

Pst, PM me the email address you have your account registered with and it looks like I can put you down as a referrer - maybe you get something cool XD

[Britain]

Oh, cool. XD!! Wow, I looked it up on my web panel and the rewards are pretty damn awesome. SWEET. Shall PM.

I'm so glad they're working out for you, they've been so good to us. *higfives Jenn!*

[Sushidragon]

There, my account's all registered and I also got the domain samanayrs.net, although it's not yet up XD I'll be transferring everything over to the new webhost over the next week, and you should still be able to access everything through samanayrs.com when it's all finished!

[Orasteele]

Yay!!

[Bright Promise]

I love dreamhost... especially since they give you that first domain for free. :-p However, I will probably have to get a dedicated hosting plan once my website opens because ruby on rails doesn't play well on shared servers. I can't see how your website would be generating that many connections and transfers for a few databases and some php and html coding. That seems grossly exaggerated. Well, at least you got it all sorted out. ^-^

[silvermoondragon]

Hopefully you won't have any more problems... I have only really used free web-hosting servers so I can't really offer much, but at least if I ever need better web-hosting I know who to go to.

[Sushidragon]

Went and cancelled my SiteGround account today, that was an experience XD To cancel they made me go into a live chat with a sales rep who tried to convince me to stay. He offered another solution to the 'account executions' problem, which was to register a new account, which was what samanayrs.com was supposed to be XD Sigh.

So everything is now on Dreamhost! Tonight or tomorrow night I'm going to transfer everything back from .net to .com and then that should be the end of moving stuff around. When the transfer is done I'll get .net to automatically redirect to .com. Thanks for your patience with all of this moving around!

[Britain]

I always hate those 'exit interviews,' I already made my decision guys...Don't try and guilt/bribe me into changing my mind!!

But yay, it'll soon be over. XD

[Sushidragon]

If their customer support is anything like the web-based customer support I worked at my last job, they should also have access to all of the support tickets I've submitted and know exactly why I'm leaving already XD

[Bright Promise]

Eh, they just want to keep you as a customer and get your money... but if they would have had good service before that they wouldn't lose you as a customer. :-p Companies are so backwards thinking sometimes.

[Sushidragon]

I know they were just trying to keep me as a customer, but the over the top 'we're so sorry to see you go, Lindsay's just got a bit much after a while.. especially since I do still have another site hosted with them under the same account (sushi-dragon.com) XD

[silvermoondragon]

maybe they are afraid that you will cancel that one as well...

[Britain]

They should be, with that kind of BS. >.o

[SunBlind]

This reply is kind of late, but I've been using Powweb.com for some time now and they've been pretty good to me. I've never been reluctant to recommend them. The pricing seems reasonable and everything is unlimited (though I don't know about this page view thing, I don't recall ever hitting such a thing, but then my site is much lower traffic than yours).

They've got all kinds of goodies, and their customer support has so far been awesome the few times I had a problem.

[Sushidragon]

I'm quite happy with Dreamhost so far There's been none of the restrictions SiteGround had, even though the forum and site are seeing more traffic than when the site was on SiteGround. Whoo!