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Ask HN: What is the best (price, speed) web hosting?

7 points by robotchampion ↗ HN
I'm currently using 1&1 but after a spurious charge I want to switch to the fastest and cheapest web host out there. I don't need any website builder programs or that junk. Just hosting (php, sql). Thanks.

15 comments

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AndreiK
bluehost is really cheap however don't expect huge speeds and "unlimited" stuff - it works ok for a company website and 20 emails or so. the have php and sql and web email and IMAP. Drawback is that it's US based so uncle Sam can check your emails whenever they want.
robotchampion
Ok, yeah I want blazing fast, so bluehost is prob out.
aespinoza
I am loving bluehost (http://bluehost.com/) right now.

I tried Netfirms before, it was good but not cheap. I tried Godaddy too, cheap but not good AT ALL.

bluehost has been fast enough for me and cheap.

OpenAlgorithm
Second that, Bluehost is great and support are very helpful. For content based sites like mine it works just fine, haven't had experience running anything major or any major traffic spikes but from my experiences they would be able to handle it.
smallegan
I resell accounts on Rackspace Cloudsites (very reliable and fast). If you e-mail me I could hook you up with some cheap hosting.
noahc
Do you want managed or unmanaged?

I would say webfaction is by far the best managed host bang for the buck.

If you're looking for unmanaged then linode is probably the way to go.

robotchampion
Never used unmanaged. How hard is it for newbs to install, update, patch and all that?
eminkel
If you know how to setup a PHP/SQL development environment you may be able to setup a server. It's not that difficult.
noahc
Just a heads up a LAMP stack on Ubuntu can be done in under an hour and half. I recently setup a LAMP stack and never setup a LAMP stack before in less than two hours.

I have some sys admin and nix experience. If I were you, unless you knew you wanted to learn how to setup and scale apps (sys admin), I'd go with webfaction

azal
Linode is the fastest if you are looking for speed and their plans are pretty cheap comparatively.
DanielGeisler
Like others here I used BlueHost for a couple of years. But for the last few years I have used HostMonster, which is owed by the same folks a BlueHost. Basically companies provide competitive features at first, but don't seriously upgrade what they provide over time. So I liked the feature set provided by the newer HostMonster better that that of BlueHost. Unfortunately HostMonster hasn't upgraded their Ruby on Rails support in a couple of years and so I now have an account with Site5 for RoR, but Site5 doesn't have the sort of reliable up time that HostMonster has.
latch
I use stormondemand.com. Over a year ago I unixbenched it, EC2 and Linode, and it clearly won. Only problem is that they don't innovate...it's where AWS was when it started..no queue, email, s3, ebs, ... At least they have dedicated boxes, so you can build a hybrid solution.

Linode is pretty great too though. I only have 1 box there, but I've had up to 6. Never had a problem.

I never know how to say this without sounding like spam, but http://webhostingtalk.com is a really popular and good community for anything related to hosting. I suggest you check it out.

trussi
Check out the specials listed on WebHostingTalk.com.

I use unmanaged dedicated servers.

Going price for a dedicated Quad Core i7, 12 GB of ECC RAM, 4x2TB is under $150/mo. That's a wicked cheap price for those specs.

Obviously if you are going from $10/mo hosting, you won't bite the bullet on a $150/mo server, but it's the only price point I know.

MattBearman
I'd definitely recommend linode, it may be unmanaged but their user guides are amazing, I've had no problems setting up a LAMP stack with SSL and Hardened PHP.

If you opt for Ubuntu server then the Aptitude package manager makes installing and updating software ridiculously easy.

MatthewPhillips
Prgmr.com is the best bang for your buck, and operated by a HNer.