Web Hosting Company Comparisons - Find the best quality and best prices web host for your website
Top Rated: |
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Second Choice |
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Third choice: |
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Top Rated and Tested Hosting Companies - 2010-2011
We recommend any of these top 5. Which one to chose?
Hands down, LunarPages is our top pick. We've been testing and using them for 10 years. Lunarpages has lots of support, including 24x7 toll-free phone support (usually a 10 to 15 minute wait), and is very reliable. Plus they have both dedicated and virtual servers to grow into if/when you outgrow a shared hosting environment. You can start out with an inexpensive $4/month plan and grow to a dedicated server if you need it.
If you prototype many new sites, go with Bluehost
Then there are the rest, of which there are many. These are the "best of the rest", but we'd stick with Lunarpages or Bluehost. 1and1.com is cheap but does not scale well, so if your traffic grows, you'd have to leave them.
BlueHost is easy enough for beginners, but is feature-rich enough to keep you. Their only problem is less than stellar up time.
If you just need high bandwidth, evenly, no more than 5 GB per day, PowWeb. If you need high bandwidth, and it varies from day to day, that you could exceed 5 GB in one day, Gate.com might work, but since they were bought out (they used to be HostSave) they haven't remained competitive.
Updated November 2010
Click on the name of each hosting company for more current information!
Note about bandwidth: Why isn't "unlimited bandwidth" always best? Because the fine print gives them the right to cut you off any time you actually use too much bandwidth, in their opinion! If you consistently use a lot of bandwidth, they will cut you off! In reality, 5 GB of bandwidth is a huge amount that you likely never exceed!
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Host |
BlueHost | 1and1.com | |||
| Rating | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
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Effective cost/month (annual prepay) |
$3.95 |
$6.95 |
3.99 |
$3.88 |
$4.98 |
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Storage (disk space) |
5 GB |
unlimited |
10 GB |
unlimited |
unlimited |
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Bandwidth/month |
50 GB |
unlimited |
unlimited |
unlimited |
Unlimited Data Transfer |
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PHP |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
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MySQL dbs |
unlimited |
10 |
unlimited |
75 |
unlimited |
| CGI bin |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES | YES |
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FP extensions |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
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Phone support |
YES |
YES |
NO |
YES 877- 4powweb |
24x7 |
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Web chat support |
YES |
YES |
24x7 |
YES |
YES |
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Email support |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES - 24x7 |
YES |
|
Forum support |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES - 16000 members |
YES |
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Fantastico |
YES |
YES |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Web control panel |
cpanel |
cpanel |
cpanel |
YES |
YES |
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Webstats |
YES |
YES |
Webalizer |
Webalizer and Awstats |
YES |
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SSL |
YES |
YES shared |
Optional |
YES |
YES - Shared |
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SSH |
NO |
YES |
YES |
NO |
|
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Email accounts |
unlimited |
2,500 |
unlimited |
unlimited |
500 / 1000 |
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Autoresponders |
unlimited |
unlimited |
|
|
YES - 1 |
|
Catchall |
YES |
YES |
YES |
|
YES |
|
Forwarding |
unlimited |
YES |
unlimited |
Yes |
unlimited |
|
Mailing lists |
YES |
YES |
5 / 20 |
Yes |
NO |
| Anti-Spam | Spam Assassin | YES | |||
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Shopping cart |
Agora |
OS Commerce, Agora |
YES |
OS Commerce |
NO |
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Domains |
unlimited |
unlimited |
1 / 10 |
|
1 |
|
Subdomains |
unlimited |
unlimited |
unlimited |
|
0 |
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SSI |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Cron |
|
YES |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Raw and error logs |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Scripts |
YES |
YES |
YES |
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NO |
| Website currently hosted there: |
Christmas Tree.org since 2005 |
jbslemmer.com since 2002 |
None at present |
pumpkin patches and more.org since 2004 |
|
| Other | Flash and Shockwave, Real Media audio and video | Also PostGre databases, streraming audio and video, Real audio, video, flash, ShockwaveMIME, MIDI | Also has virtual (VPS) and dedicated servers |
Web Hosting Companies That Have Good Packages,
But We Have Not Yet Tested.
|
Host |
GoDaddy |
Midphase |
Globat |
Ipower /Ipower-web |
Web hosting buzz |
Start Logic |
ePow Host |
eMax Hosting |
NZ WebIT .com |
| Rating | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
|
Effective cost/month (annual prepay) |
$3.16 / or $7.96 |
$7.95 / $9.95 / $11.95 plus $30 setup fee (often waived) |
$4.95 or $9.95 or $14.95 |
$7.95 |
$3 / $4 / $5 / $7 |
$14.95 |
$7.95 |
$8.95 |
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Storage |
500 MB / 2 GB |
2.2 / 2.6 / 2.9 GB |
5 / 7.5 / 10 GB |
2 GB |
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 GB |
5 GB |
1 GB |
1 GB |
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Bandwidth |
25 GB / 100 GB |
unlimited or 60/65/75 |
75 / 100 / 150 GB |
50 GB |
25 / 35 / 45 / 65 GB |
100 GB |
40 GB |
60 GB |
|
|
PHP |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
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MySQL dbs |
1 / 10 |
unlimited |
unlimited |
YES |
unlimited |
YES |
20 |
unlimited |
Other Sources of Reviews and Information About Web Hosting Companies
| Website | Strengths | Weaknesses |
| Upperhost | pretty good, lots of detail, and background information. | Not a very complete l;ist, and doesn't include some very good companies |
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http://top10cheapwebhosting.com/
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http://www.site5.com/shared/comparison.php
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http://www.hosting-comparison.com/
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Nice chart | |
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http://www.hostingconsumerreport.org/topunixhosts.htm
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| Specialized Web Hosting - Comparisons |
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