Hosting

[Toby]

Can I ask who people have their web and/or email hosting with?

I'm starting to get a bit fed up with my current provider as they don't seem very competitive on price any more and their repeated email outages are starting to annoy me.

[Davey_Pitch]

I think Vidahost is the one most people use, run by our very own Beansprout :)

[Dymetrie]

I use TSOHost, pretty good for me :)

[Haly]

I think Vidahost is the one most people use, run by our very own Beansprout :)

That's the one I'm with :) Can't fault it, always very fast whenever I've had to submit support tickets.

[Daz]

I think Vidahost is the one most people use, run by our very own Beansprout :)

That's the one I'm with :) Can't fault it, always very fast whenever I've had to submit support tickets.
Thirded! Splendid service and quit an agreeable chap :)

[Dymetrie]

*feels outnumbered*

[Mark]

Either will do you well. I have a personal preference for Vidahost because I have more involvement with them, but in the end, while the hosting companies themselves are owned by different people, they're both hosted on servers located in London and owned by the same company. I have a server hosted there too so can attest to their reliability.

[Toby]

What's the uptime like with Vidahost, specifically on the email side?

Also, I notice one domain is included but how much are additional ones as I have three I need to host. Can't seem to see the additional pricing for this anywhere on the site.

[Mark]

I assume you already own the domains. If so, you want add-on domains, which are included as shown. I can't give you uptime beyond what's on their site - though I believe the stats are probably available if you ask.

[Dymetrie]

I have Standard and Lite with TSOHost (http://tsohost.co.uk/). So can run 6 in total.

Not had a problem with the e-mail at all, but for a decent amount (10+) then you need the standard. :)

[Haly]

I don't use the e-mail side of things although iirc Daz does so he'll know :)
Would have thought the uptime on the site is pretty accurate as I can't remember a time either of my hosting packages have been down.

[Toby]

I assume you already own the domains. If so, you want add-on domains, which are included as shown. I can't give you uptime beyond what's on their site - though I believe the stats are probably available if you ask.

Yeah I own them so the registration fees are paid up for the time being, just a question of how much extra Vidahost charge for hosting of the additional two on my account after the one they throw in as standard.

You say "included as shown", what do you mean exactly? Only price I can see is a "transfer cost" on the domains page but it's not clear what this is - a one off fee to transfer the domains over or an annual fee for hosting of said domains.

Ta for your help :)

[leowyatt]

I'm with register1 because I took out my hosting plan before I knew the good man beansprout. I can happily say their service is excellent.

I get 4gigs storage for £33 a year. I bought 3 years together back in 2007.

[Burble]

I do all my hosting myself on a nice meaty Dell PowerEdge 2900 running ESX with a bunch of virtual machines. The box itself lives in a secure data centre and it costs me a grand total of £0.00/year to host :) Well, working for this place has to have some perks.

I'll keep an eye on this thread though as I occasionally get fed up of having to fix problems and like the idea of making it someone elses problem.

[Mark]

You say "included as shown", what do you mean exactly? Only price I can see is a "transfer cost" on the domains page but it's not clear what this is - a one off fee to transfer the domains over or an annual fee for hosting of said domains.
Included means included. You'll have to worry about transfers only if the place you have the domains now doesn't permit you to just hold domains with them, or gives you no domain management options, or you want someone else to sort the domain-related stuff for you.

If you do want to transfer the domains, then you'll need 1x hosting and 3x transfers. You might be able to wrangle a discount especially if you say BD sent you, but I can't negotiate on their behalf. :)

The best policy is just to ask them - you'd have probably had this answered about 8 hours ago if you had. :)

[Wossi]

I'm with http://3dpixel.net/ never had a problem with downtime and any problems they jump on msn and let me know.

[Daz]

I don't use the e-mail side of things although iirc Daz does so he'll know :)
Indeed I do, he's the entry point to my Exchange box :D

Never noticed any unplanned downtime in the 2/3 years I've been with him.

[Toby]

Sounds promising, ta for the info. Quite surprised they don't charge any extra for hosting additional domains as vitually every other host I've looked at includes a set number and charges for more than that on a per-domain basis.

Another question...

On the email side of things, I presume I can fully configure mail forwarding for each domain, i.e. have george@domain, zippy@domain & bungle@domain going to one mailbox whilst bingo@, drooper@, fleagle@ & snorky@ going to a different mailbox?

[Mark]

They, like everyone else, do charge beyond a set number of domains - it'd be open to abuse if they didn't.

And yes, about the emails, of course you can. That's a standard feature of most of the better providers.

[Toby]

Cool, thanks.

Regards the domains & email, what is confusing me greatly is that the site says:

"Special offer: 12 months for the price of 10 and a free domain name with all packages!"

Note the words "a free domain", as in singular, which suggests additional domain hosting is extra.

Also, regards the email, it says the basic account comes with 10 email accounts. I'm confused as to exactly what they mean by this and how it restricts me. Does this mean I can have 10 mailboxes but unlimited addresses or I'm limited to 10 addresses or what? Also, is this per domain hosted?

Tis all so confoosing :)

[loki]

Im currently using Innohosting (http://www.innohosting.com/) for my VPS. Although it looks very American, they have servers in BlueSQ. After using A2B2 and VT6 for my VPS, all I can say is that these are a million times better. Uptime is around the 99.9% mark, service and support is friendly, prompt(even at 10.00 on a Sunday night) and reliable.

Also use Hostgator in America for shared webhosting. Same as above

[Toby]

Free domain name means free registration of a domain, or if you transfer your domain to them you will get a years (i think) renewal free.
Ok cool
10 email accounts means addresses so 10 x whatever@yourdomain.com
Whoa, that's a problem - I need far more "whatevers" than 10. Although I only actually need a few mailboxes, I use shedloads of different addresses on each domain. My current provider allows me an unlimited number of these, surprised that isn't the case here.

[Mark]

'Unlimited' anything in hosting is a fallacy. Try it - you'll soon find out. :evil:

My suggestion stands - rather than spending forever bouncing posts off 3rd parties and getting information that probably is accurate but may not be, go to the source. If you have specific requirements - e.g. 10 email accounts, 100 forwarders, list them and ask for a quote.

PS - you almost certainly want lots of email forwarders, not accounts. Email accounts = inboxes.

PPS - I'm not saying I don't want to help you either - I just think there's a quicker answer that will get you what you want. Vidahost at least will do custom packages to fit your specific requirements. Others may or may not do this.

[Haly]

I'd go with what Mark's saying too, be much quicker and you're bound to get what you want in terms of a custom package then :)

[semi-pro waster]

Vidahost are who I use and I haven't noticed any downtime apart from the scheduled although my use is purely for online storage and email. Queries have been responded to very quickly by Dominic (I don't think he's taken over 15 minutes for any yet) and seems a thoroughly pleasant chap - must remember to email him later though as I'm having issues with Outlook Express picking up my mailbox, probably something I've fouled up rather than Vidahost though.

[Toby]

PS - you almost certainly want lots of email forwarders, not accounts. Email accounts = inboxes.
That was was I originally thought. Only need a few actual accounts/mailboxes, just need as many forwarding rules as I like as some of those mailboxes need 20-30 different addresses, all at the same domain of course.
PPS - I'm not saying I don't want to help you either - I just think there's a quicker answer that will get you what you want. Vidahost at least will do custom packages to fit your specific requirements. Others may or may not do this.
Fair point, I'll drop them a line.

[Toby]

OK well I went with Vidahost in the end and managed to get one of my domains transferred over to them without any problems.

Now I'm looking at moving another domain over but am having some trouble wrapping my head around things.

Support are telling me to use the Addon Domains option in the cPanel which seems to configure the other domain as a kind of "child" of the "main" domain. Is this the only way of configuring multiple domains!?

I have three domains I wish to host which are all totally separate and have no relation to each other at all. Do I have no choice other than to configure two of them as "sub-domains" of the other and what are the implications of this versus the completely discrete hosting afforded by my current provider?

[divine]

Vidahost are who I use and I haven't noticed any downtime apart from the scheduled although my use is purely for online storage and email. Queries have been responded to very quickly by Dominic (I don't think he's taken over 15 minutes for any yet) and seems a thoroughly pleasant chap - must remember to email him later though as I'm having issues with Outlook Express picking up my mailbox, probably something I've fouled up rather than Vidahost though.

Support is brilliant and in the past have even helped me install/setup stuff on my hosting such as shoutcast when I was getting confused and couldn't do it. At about 2am.

edt - you want the 'parked domain' option in cPanel

[Joe 90]

Streamline.net do my web hosting.

love em.

last time i had a problem their CEO contacted me to ensure things were okay and take any comments I had on potential improvements \o/

[Mark]

edt - you want the 'parked domain' option in cPanel
Not for independant domains. That's if you want to link two domains together.

Addon domains is indeed the answer for a standard account. If the domains really must be seperate then you'll need more than one hosting account to do that (I'm sure they'd do you a deal).