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Web Hosting Company Comparisons

Top Rated:

 

 

Second choice:


 

Third choice:

Top Rated and Tested Hosting Companies

We recommend any of these top 5.  Which one to chose?

Hands down, LunarPages is our top pick.  We've been testing them for 8 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.

If you prototype many new sites, go with Hostony. 

Then there are the rest, of which there are many.  These are the "best of the rest", but we'd stick with Lunarpages or Hostony.

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 February 16, 2008

Host

LunarPages 

Hostony

BlueHost 

PowWeb

Gate.com (formerly Host Save)

Rating 1 2 3 4 5

Effective cost/month (annual prepay)

$6.95

$6.95

$???
(You have to request a quote now)

$5.77

$9.99

Storage

1,500 GB

600 GB

1500 GB

1500 GB

5 GB

Bandwidth/month

15,000 GB

6,000 GB

15,000 GB

15,000 GB
(500+ GB/day)

 200 GB

PHP

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

MySQL dbs

unlimited

unlimited

10

75

100 MB

CGI bin YES YES YES YES YES

FP extensions

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

Phone support

YES

NO

YES

YES 877- 4powweb

24x7

Web chat support

YES

24x7

YES

YES

YES

Email support

YES

YES

YES

YES - 24x7

YES

Forum support

YES

YES

YES

YES - 16000 members

YES

Fantastico

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

Web control panel

cpanel

cpanel

cpanel

YES

YES

Webstats

YES

Webalizer

YES

Webalizer and Awstats

YES

SSL

YES

Optional

YES shared

YES

YES - Shared

SSH

NO

YES

YES

NO

 

Email accounts

unlimited

unlimited

2,500

unlimited

500 / 1000

Autoresponders

unlimited

unlimited

unlimited

 

YES - 1

Catchall

YES

YES

YES

 

YES

Forwarding

unlimited

unlimited

YES

Yes

unlimited

Mailing lists

YES

5 / 20

YES

Yes

NO

Anti-Spam   YES Spam Assassin    

Shopping cart

Agora

YES

OS Commerce, Agora

OS Commerce

NO

Domains

1 (and 3 parked)

1 / 10

5

 

1

Subdomains

15

unlimited

20

 

0

SSI

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

Cron

 

YES

YES

YES

NO

Raw and error logs

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

Scripts

YES

YES

YES

 

NO

Website currently hosted there:
Christmas Tree.org

 

Security Resources.com     pumpkin patches and more.org
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

 

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

 

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

 

MySQL dbs

1 / 10

unlimited

unlimited

YES

unlimited

YES

20

unlimited

 
CGI bin NO / YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES  

FP extensions

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

 

Phone support

24x7

YES toll free

NO

 

YES

   

 

 

Web Live Chat support

24x7

 

YES

 

24x7

   

 

 

Email support

24x7

YES

YES

 

24x7

YES

 

 

 

Forum support

NO

YES

NO

 

 

   

 

 

Fantastico

YES

YES

NO

NO

YES

NO

 

YES

 

Web control panel

unknown

 

homegrown

YES

cpanel

YES

cpanel

 

 

Webstats

Yes, And a site traffic analyzer is available for  $1.95/month extra

Awstats, Webalizer

AWstats

YES

YES

YES

Webalizer

YES

 

SSL

with certificate: $29.95/yr

YES (free installation)

NO / YES / YES

 

YES

YES

YES

YES shared

 

SSH

 

NO

NO

 

YES

YES

 

YES

 

Email accounts

100 / 500

unlimited

unlimited

500

unlimited

unlimited

500

unlimited

 

Auto responders

unknown

YES

???

unlimited

unlimited

unlimited

500

unlimited

 

Catchall

unknown

 

???

 

 

YES

 

unlimited