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Web Hosting Company Comparisons
Top Rated and Tested Hosting CompaniesWe 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
Web Hosting Companies That Have Good Packages,
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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 |
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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 |
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PHP |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
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MySQL dbs |
1 / 10 |
unlimited |
unlimited |
YES |
unlimited |
YES |
20 |
unlimited |
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| CGI bin | NO / YES | YES | YES | YES | YES | YES | YES | YES | |
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FP extensions |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
YES |
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Phone support |
24x7 |
YES toll free |
NO |
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YES |
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Web Live Chat support |
24x7 |
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YES |
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24x7 |
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Email support |
24x7 |
YES |
YES |
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24x7 |
YES |
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Forum support |
NO |
YES |
NO |
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Fantastico |
YES |
YES |
NO |
NO |
YES |
NO |
YES |
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Web control panel |
unknown |
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homegrown |
YES |
cpanel |
YES |
cpanel |
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Webstats |
Yes, And a site traffic analyzer is available for $1.95/month extra |
Awstats, Webalizer |
AWstats |
YES |
YES |
YES |
Webalizer |
YES |
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SSL |
with certificate: $29.95/yr |
YES (free installation) |
NO / YES / YES |
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YES |
YES |
YES |
YES shared |
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SSH |
NO |
NO |
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YES |
YES |
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YES |
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Email accounts |
100 / 500 |
unlimited |
unlimited |
500 |
unlimited |
unlimited |
500 |
unlimited |
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Auto responders |
unknown |
YES |
??? |
unlimited |
unlimited |
unlimited |
500 |
unlimited |
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Catchall |
unknown |
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??? |
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YES |
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unlimited |