What Are the Best Web and Email Hosts? 183
GreyPoopon asks: "My wife has been running a small business for a couple years now. She is currently paying for web hosting services for a domain, but has elected not to put up a web site (she doesn't need more business), instead using the service only for sending and receiving email. Recently, the hosting service has become less and less responsive, and attempts to switch monthly bills to a different credit card have been completely ignored, and she's now looking for a new provider. She's interested in both hosting service providers as well as email-only providers that will allow her to use her existing domain name with up to five mailboxes. What are the best choices, these days?"
Fastmail (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with hosting (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, many people don't realize how web hosting companies work and how they're able to offer dirt-cheap hosting. Most of the very cheap hosts are a kind of a ponzi scheme - they run an unsustainable business, but because people prepay for a year of service, they get pretty good revenue for as long as new customers are signing up.
Thus it's in their interest to get you to pay upfront, then they could not care less about you. Most of these companies are operated by similar type of people who send spam - the make-a-quick-buck-on-the-internet crowd.
Back when I used to work for a large ISP, we had a few customers that simply dissapeared - they were running these cheap hosting companies, and when they felt they had enough money in the bank they just abandoned their colocated servers in the racks, stopped paying the bills, disconnected their phone, etc. Which is probably what happened to the original poster's hosting service.
Re:The problem with hosting (Score:4, Interesting)
The most you should ever pay is first/last, and no setup fee for webhost. And if co-locating a server, look at normal prices, ive seen anywhere from 99 on up. Be careful.
My experience (and a great email host) (Score:2, Interesting)
I've used Dreamhost for over a year now, and have been consistently impressed with them, especially for webhosting. They actively work to upgrade their services, and they've increased space and transfer amounts several times over the year (often doubling).
If you want a plain email only hoster, though, I'd definitely check out 1and1.com. They offer an email hosting package for $0.99/month (yes, 99 cents) that includes 5 mailboxes with 1GB space each and IMAP or POP access. Definitely one of the best deals around for email only.
I've used Everyone.net, they're OK for email hosting, but they're quite expensive comparatively and weren't real fast with support requests.