quote:

Kitka wrote:

I hope you can get it sorted out with their support, it is a pain moving hosts.

quote:

What are your special needs? Maybe someone here can suggest a good host that fits all your criteria?

• CRITICAL:
  
• Linux server. I tried Windows and it just doesn't have too much of what I want.
  
• Live phone support 24/7, as well as email or chat, preferably with a typical waiting time of under 15 minutes. Support people who are intelligent (don't just quote help files at you or state the obvious or answer without even reading what you wrote), friendly, helpful, informative, knowledgeable and able to actually do things if necessary (not just reflexively bump you "to the next tier" for everything). This is especially where I tend to be a "high maintenance customer" because I like quite a bit of intelligent hand-holding, if that makes sense. I often prefer to talk in real time by phone to describe the problem, but if I had to put it in an email or chat, I'd be there all night. And the delay with emails makes me crazy for complex things -- I lose the train of thought and it often takes days to resolve the problem rather than minutes or hours. Also, I can often deal with problems only in the evenings or at odd times, so 24/7 is a must. (My current host is truly excellent in the area of support, but alas, is turning out not so good in other areas.)
  
• Reliable uptime and speed of servers! Alas, I'm finding that the hosts reported by serious professionals to be excellent in this category usually don't have other features I want (like 24/7 phone help or Awstats). It seems to be "pick your poison." With my last host, my site always seemed a bit slower to load. With this one, I've had two significant down-times (lasting hours) within only a month. Not happy...
  
• Awstats please! I love these stats! They're so intuitive, easy to read, give detailed information, and will tell you who's hotlinking to you, if you know what to look for. I missed them terribly when I had to go a year without them (on a Windows server). I think Webalizer is next to useless. I'm going to give Google Analytics a try and it looks like it gives some great info, but not info like hotlinking. But it's hard to find a host with Awstats that also has all the other features I want, so I might have to see if GA will give me enough of what I need that I can withstand the Awstats withdrawal again. Sigh...
  

• VERY IMPORTANT:
  
• Dedicated IP that doesn't cost the Earth and the Moon, to minimize my email being mistaken for spam because I'm stuck on a shared server with others who probably are spammers (which I believe is what happened at my last host and is the main reason why I left).
  
• Able to change and access .htaccess, preferably without a huge amount of hassle.
  
• Price that's no more than around $10/12 max per month; less would of course be better, but I'm willing to pay a bit more if it means getting what I want. It's just hard to fork over a year in advance when they've got my money and now I get to see if I bought a lemon. I'm sorry to say I'm starting to feel that way about my current host. They've got the best support I've found, but not great in other areas that also matter.
  

• IMPORTANT BUT COULD PROBABLY LIVE WITHOUT IT IF ENOUGH OTHER THINGS IN PLACE:
  
• A variety of logs and stats can be nice, though. Raw log access, to be sure. Real-time log of recent errors is very helpful to check after an update in case I messed up something.
  
• Friendly, easy to use, intuitive and reliable control panel to programs, add-ons, etc. My favorite is Cpanel, which typically comes with Awstats and usually vice versa. My current host uses their own access panel, which is cumbersome, awkward, slow and largely unintuitive. It's a minor concern, more of a nuisance, but the little things can add up.
  
• Able to change and access .htaccess easily, and a utility that will generate things like redirects and such would be a great benefit. Saves my poor little brain from exploding.
  
• Flexible email throttling and other restrictions, if any. (My last host restricted to only 200 per hour, which was a major pain sending out a newsletter, since I do this manually.)
  
• Add-ons that include intuitive, easy-to-use, preferably idiot-proof features for things like mailing lists, form scripts (secure ones, please!), surveys, etc. This isn't crucial, since I can theoretically get these elsewhere, but it would be nice to find them available through my host.
  
• Email access via POP3/Outlook access and/or IMAP (although I find IMAP often slow, sporadic or buggy). Also online access (where I don't have to be on my own computer).
  

• DEFINITE PLUS:
  
• Ideally, real-time support would also include going a bit above and beyond the call, like a bit of help setting up features, add-ons, etc., although I find this is usually somewhat rare. But something gentler and more helpful than a strict "we don't support that" or "here's the knowledge base; you're on your own" would be nice.
  
• Other features to experiment with, like CMS, blogware, database, etc. Again, not crucial but definitely a plus, since I would like to learn how to use these features (ya, with all that spare time I have...).
  
• Extended money-back time limit (i.e. more than a mere 30 days, which I find is far too soon to know whether a host performs the way they say they will). And fast return of money if it comes to that. (I waited over 6 weeks after countless emails and phonecalls from both me and a long-time customer of theirs, before I finally got a promised refund from one place.) Of course, if I find my ideal host, I won't need to use this, but knowing the safety net is there would be reassuring.
  

• Enough bandwidth and disk space that I don't have to worry about either. (That's not hard to find with the huge capacities most hosts offer these days. Anything above 20-25GB bandwidth gives me enough headroom that I wouldn't worry about it at all.)
  
• Ability to add subdomains or extra websites would be nice, but not a must.
  

quote:

ORIGINAL: BobbyDouglas

How much space do you actually plan to use/need?