Where do I host my websites ?

This is a question which I am asked many time and then I give them the name and they forget and ask me again. As part of this conversation, they also ask me queries like

* how many e-mail accounts I can have ?
* How much space
* How much data transfer
* Is the service good
* How long you have been with them and how would you rate them
* and so on

So I thought that I would write a small post.

I host my sites with
Hostmonster and its been almost one and a half years. I was referred this place by someone who has been running a site for a while.

My requirement was very simple. I wanted a host which can allow me to do almost everything by myself. The worse thing which one has to do in this business is call someone and then ask them to publish something or get DB access or whatever. Also, it has to offer a rich set of tools like databases, blogging s/w, billing s/w, e-mail clients, scripting support and so on. I had setup many sites at my work and the most frustrating part is when you can't install a new Perl Run-time because the server belongs to someone else and he would want you to port your code in Php or Python.

Hostmonster has all of this. I pay USD $ 100 every year and as part of that I get unlimited domain hosting, hundreds of e-mail id and so on.

You can also get shell access which is really handy. Though I haven't used that so far since I am able to get everything done through the UI itself.



I have not used any other hosting directly in the past but my experience so far makes me recommend this provider. Click on above link to know more, also if you do sign-up then I get a cut :)