For years I rented a dedicated server until I revised what it was costing me versus what advantages it brought me. It was not that expensive, under a hundred dollars a month, but it was hard to justify spending over 1100 USD a year when I could actually spend less than 16 percent of that for shared hosting and lose very little in terms of flexibility.
I considered three of the biggest discount hosting services: GoDaddy, 1and1, and Hostgator. I ignored Yahoo hosting because what they offer is great for Joe Schmoe, but just not what a serious programmer needs. I chose HostGator because it was the only one that accepted PayPal as payment. I elected to go with their business hosting package, which allows me to host an unlimited number of sites and Mysql databases for about fifteen dollars a month. The web-based control panel has pretty much everything you need, including an easy way to add new domains and email addresses. I also have Linux shell access via ssh/sftp, which they grant you if you ask for it, and although I cannot do anything that requires root access, I have my familiar command line interface whenever I need it!
It has been almost a year and there have not been any outages. Their customer service was fairly quick to respond via email, but not always with the right answers, although eventually I hit someone who was knowledgeable. I signed-up for their affiliate program, but so far it has not yielded a single cent in commissions. Generally, it is better to join affiliate programs where you get paid per click rather than per sale, but they do not offer that option. Another criticism I might make is that they use a third party service for domain purchases instead of their own as GoDaddy and 1and1 do. 1and1 wins on that count, with discounted first year charges and low annual fees after that. Note that you can still use that part of their service even if you are hosted at the competition.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with HostGator and not planning to move anytime soon! Click here to visit their website.
