Need an <independent> review of hosting companies

[songdog]

Can someone point me to an independent site that reviews web hosts (or has forums where people from different hosts comment on the service they get)?

Specifically, I'm looking for the site(s) that like and/or praise FQ the most.

Thanks.

[Jeff]

WHT of course - www.webhostingtalk.com

[cjcox]

I don't have a link... but can you tell me of another hosting company that PUBLICALLY airs their dirty laundry (support issues)?? I think this is an EXCELLENT reason for choosing FQ. I'm serious, who else does this?

The superior support at FQ can be seen PUBLICALLY through their community forum. I don't know why anyone would go anywhere else. When there are REAL flaws, it's nice to see how FQ addresses them. Who else does this??

[Wassercrats]

I remember a free web host that has a forum, and probably some others. I don't know if I'd have the guts to have a public forum if I were a web host. People looking for a host would look up all the problems people were having, and even if the uptime and everything else was better than average, I wouldn't want potential customers reading about problems. Actually, there's usually a bunch of compliments about how quickly scheduled (and occasional non-scheduled) maintenance went, but even those compliments get annoying sometimes. Then there's Randall with his Beatles. I don't know about this forum thing.

[Terra]

but even those compliments get annoying sometimes.
That is unfortunately a double-edged sword, but I do hear what you are saying...

If there were not positive posts, then these forums would devolve into a sea of negativity where site owners only post when things are broken... ~#

We've seen this happen on other web hosts forums and it is not pretty at all... Mostly when this happens, unhappy clients that cannot get satisfaction by private emails to the service department will flock to the forums to air their grievances... :shocked:

Overall, I think we have a very nice balance between the positive and negative posts - one that is extremely hard to earn/achieve (reputation) and doubly hard to maintain (through attentiveness and hard work)...

--
Terra
--without GoodThings, how would we know what BadThings are?--
FutureQuest

[squillo]

Last fall, I spent quite a bit of time researching other hosts for a project that didn't fit FQ exactly. A few of the hosts I looked at were:

ccwebhost.com, focalhosting.com, weberz.com, datapipe.net, rackshack.net, site5.com, mediatemple.com, fluidhosting.com, dv2.com, mtxis.com, hostingplex.com, myacen.com, pair.com, sitepoint.com, hostingplex.com, simpli.biz, interland.com, venturesonline.com, wizardshosting.com, jumpline.net, ilonhosting.com, affordablehost.com, server4you.com, addaction.net, elysiumnetworks.com, hypermart.net, askwebhosting.com, dataflame.com, Servint, Apollohosting, Lunarpages, Idologic, Intermedia, Onestop, Top-site, etc.

I thought Pair looked okay (even more restrictions than FQ however), and I actually received email responses on some basic questions from site5, servint, and apollohosting.

In the end, however, I decided it was better to alter the project to fit FQ rather than change hosts.

good luck,
squillo

[Juan G]

Originally posted by songdog:
Can someone point me to an independent site that reviews web hosts (or has forums where people from different hosts comment on the service they get)?

Specifically, I'm looking for the site(s) that like and/or praise FQ the most.

Thanks.
One classic that influenced me to come to FutureQuest:

Forumhosts.com - Finding a Web Host: Host Directory and Host Review Sites
http://www.forumhosts.com/hosts.htm

For instance, on one of its pages:

Hosts that people frequently recommend but with which we do not have any personal experience include FutureQuest (by far the most popular)...

Forumhosts.com - Good Hosts and Bad Hosts: Other Webmasters' Complaints and Kudos
http://www.forumhosts.com/hosts5.htm
And about forums, a well-known newsgroup including threads on this topic is:

Google Groups: Newsgroup alt.www.webmaster
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=alt.www.webmaster

[Chipmunk]

Juan, that was the same place I first found out about FQ! It brought a smile to my face to re-read that classic description. :)

One major warning about the newsgroup alt.www.webmaster :
There is a very high incidence of trolls, so read very carefully with much caution. When my site's second webhost committed professional suicide (they performed a disastrous, unannounced downgrade to a technology with serious security and incompatibility issues), I largely based my replacement decision on some newsgroup postings. That host's tech knowledge was so dangerously bad that I switched after much less than a month.

[Randall]

Mostly when this happens, unhappy clients that cannot get satisfaction by private emails to the service department will flock to the forums to air their grievances... I think you only have to worry about that if your service department sucks, to put it diplomatically. While we do get some of that spillage here from time to time, the overwhelming silence of the community tells you that this is no seething pit of paranoid hotheads. With the possible exception of Wassercrats, of course.

Not to mention that the aggrieved party frequently comes back around by the end of the thread. Now that tells you something. :) Originally posted by Wassercrats:
Then there's Randall with his Beatles. I don't know about this forum thing. I heard that, Adolf (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=114345#post114345).

Randall

[mromero]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by songdog:
Can someone point me to an independent site that reviews web hosts (or has forums where people from different hosts comment on the service they get)?
[/QUOTE

http://webhostmagazine.com is a good place to start. FutureQuest is ranked #1 in the Unix shared hosting section the last time I checked.

[Webmarm]

A site I'd found helpful when comparing webhosts and weighing FQ as the choice back in late 2000 or early 2001 was http://www.hostsearch.com/showcomment.asp?companycode=693 (HostSearch.com) .

Not sure just how independant they are. You can try searching for different companies on the name/location search page http://www.hostsearch.com/specialty_zone.asp .

One thing that has become important in my eyes is whether a host owns their own data center.

And if I can avoid having to look at Cpanel, that's points for the host.

[PaulKroll]

People looking for a host would look up all the problems people were having
I think I've mentioned this before, but that's precisely what I did when I first checked out FutureQuest. Having come from two different hosts that were from totally useless (and now, a dotcom history) or trying to do right but er, heading somewhere different from where my employer was heading at the time (they're still around), what I was concerned about wasn't what features they supplied. That was about the same, as far as I could tell it, as every other of the billion services out there. What I wanted to know was, what did they do when something went wrong.

The fact that FutureQuest would let their customer complaints sit there in the open air, gave me a lot of confidence that they actually knew what they were doing and were trying to Do Right by their customers.
- Puts hand behind back, waits for Terra or Deb to put the $20 in there... I'm from Chicago, after all...

[MichaelC]

Yes, this forum was very helpful when I was looking to switch hosts for the fourth time in three years. Comparing hosts is tricky, tricky business, and I tore through three "highly rated" hosts very quickly:

- One where I got into a literal shouting match with a support tech (and having been a support tech myself, I'm inclined to treat support people better than most "angry customers");

- One whose legendary outages (at the time they were the talk of the 'net) and too-little, too-late response drove me quickly away;

- One too-big-too-fast telephony provider/ISP with rock-solid uptime, due to their system created to hobble anyone who wanted to implement "advanced features" such as CGI.

After that, I cast around very carefully, including searches at www.webmaster and webhostingtalk.com, and lurked in these very forums for a great deal of time before making the switch, which I've never for a minute regretted.

Even though my primary site here has failed (long story, includes best writers being hired away and severe confluence of time-sucking technical events and life changes...it's all good, though), I'm just a discount-host outage away from moving one or two of my personal sites here.

MC