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Ask HN: What is the best hosting service for personal use?
10 points by TechNewb on Dec 23, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments
I'm tired of GoDaddy's politics, lack of respect towards their customers, their never ending up-selling, and their (non)designed user interfaces.

Could we build a list of alternatives that are Hacker News YC in spirit?

Edit: And from reading a recent PG comment, GoDaddy is not even owned by a tech company, they are owned by KKR. All the more reason for me to leave.



Domains, dns:

http://Namecheap.com * http://Nearlyfreespeech.net (hosting too)

Hosting, DNS, PostgreSQL:

http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/zerigo_dns

VPS Hosting:

http://linode.com * http://intoVPS.com * https://securedragon.net/


That's like asking "what is the best car for driving". There are so many answers. Here are mine...

Hostgator - $10 a month or less, 'unlimited' everything, SSH access. This is super-cheap hosting and for the most part you get what you pay for, but in general the tech support has been outstanding, for me at least.

Amazon AWS... you really can't beat the learning value of booting up an EC2 instance and configuring your own server from scratch. Same goes for linode.

Don't rule out a cheap laptop loaded with Linux, and a business internet connection. It's not exactly a cheap solution, but it's great for learning, plus you have a dedicated physical server that you can do _anything_ you want with.

Just, whatever you do, don't buy your domain names at the same place you get your hosting!!!


Thanks for the tips!

>>Just, whatever you do, don't buy your domain names at the same place you get your hosting!!!

Why is this?


Because,if you have a dispute with them its easy to move your hosting, but they can make it as hard as they want to.move your domain name, which is essentially your identity. If you got the domain name for "free" with your hosting, you might not.even own it.


I have recently switched to uberspace.de (German based, and German speaking website). But, in my opinion, it really is the best service, if you have a slight technical understanding, when it comes to servers.

having my own full ssh capabilities, cronjobs, php, python, ruby, et al support, databases, being able to make my own spam-filter, et al, is just great.

the price? the price is, what you want to pay. it is a minimum of 1 euro/month for space and 0,50Euro per month and domain. moving a domain cost 5 euro once.

you can pay more, if you are happy with these guys (and a lot of people do), but that iss the minimum.


VPS and Root server http://www.hetzner.de

also http://www.intovps.com - but it very seldom is working slow


Webfaction (http://www.webfaction.com) is a pretty good hosting company. They're developer-focused as you can pretty much use whatever stack you want (and if it's not on their list there's probably a way to get it to work anyways, they'll work with you). They have great service and, at least in my opinion, are one of the most hacker-friendly hosting companies out there (at least for personal use).


Get a VPS (http://www.linode.com). It's worth it as a learning experience if you don't already know how to manage a server, and you suddenly realize that all the "features" of shared hosting plans (how many domains you can host, how many mailboxes you get, what languages are supported, etc) are entirely artificial limits.


If you are looking for a cheap shared hosting service, I've used Bluehost for years and would recommend them. Alternatively, Amazon Web Services offer a free micro instance for 1 year for new accounts. It's a bit limiting but good enough for small stuff until you need to scale out.


I have been using Dreamhost for years and I am very happy. And it is against SOPA http://blog.dreamhost.com/2011/11/22/dont-drop-the-soap-drop...


I can second this. Especially if you get a coupon/referral code. I'm in the process of moving the last of my stuff to Linode but I never had any problems with Dreamhost and the one time I needed support, they were quick and helpful.


http://rackspace.com

Using them now after switching from mediatemple. They seem pretty decent, their support is great, 24/7 live chat support.


If you use rackspace, make sure to call up a sales person and make a deal... you should never pay the list price for Rackspace servers.




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