Great hosts you recommend

Indeed. The fast/reliable servers and good support come at a premium at LiquidWeb. You get what you pay for...You'll sacrifice extra money going with LiquidWeb, but in return you get a faster and more reliable website with top notch support. It just comes down to which is most important to you.

 

One things for sure: Budget & Reliable DO NOT go together at all...

 

I agree. Liquidweb is one of the best server companies around. I've been with them in the past and I can honestly say that their support team is great.

 

I've never had an issue with Hostmonster and, when I did have some minor problem, they were responsive, helpful, and friendly in correcting it.

 

What type of server do you have with them? I don't use Hostpolar now, and never will use a new host every again. I'm with Knownhost now and its been great with them

 

It's a shared Linux which is fine for right now but would likely need to be upgraded if I could get users on my forum. It's adequate as it is. I have to take a look at Knownhost though....

 

I recommend HostGator for its cheapness, reliability, server uptime, customer service and its features. I have no problems so far with my site with hostgator. Everything is running smooth and perfect. The only downside that I can think of is that you have to call them to verify yourself and the payment you used during the transaction.

 

I've been with HostGator for over 4 years and have nothing but positive things to say about them. It's been great watching them grow over the years. I've toured both their Houston and Austin offices and met with several members of their staff, from front line techs to senior management. Their techs have a lot great resources at their fingertips that help them solve customer problems as well.

One of the common frustrations that customers seem to have is that they expect front line techs to solve complicated problems as soon as they get done typing out what the problem is. It takes time to find out root cause of problems and fix them. Sometimes it takes three minutes, sometimes an hour. A little patience can go a long way.

 

When I was with Hostgator before, my site would lag on certain scripts, while on a dedicated server, and Hostgator would turn off those scripts without talking to my partner or I.

But, I'm very happy with Knownhost

 

I've been with EZP for a good few months now and have been very happy with them. I haven't had to open a ticket since the normal moving in kinks.

 

I'm still a very happy camper with HostDime, and have been since November last year

 

SecuredServers. They offer dedicated servers and VPS'. Brilliant host.

 

I've had my sites hosted by a friend of mine for a few years now, here is his hosting site is anyone is interested.
http://www.hostgrounds.com/
I could get you an affiliate link if you decide to buy

 

from my own experience:

web hosting
Mainly VPS or dedicated servers, I'll list them in order from web host I have been with the longest first

• dedicatednow.com - was with them for 5 1/2 yrs until about 3 months ago I cancelled my server as got a good deal on a new monster fast server for a few bucks more Full Managed provider. But maybe in 5 1/2yrs only used their tech support maybe a dozen times.
• wiredtree.com - my current main host with 2 servers with them for live sites etc. Been with them for 3yrs 9months now and have helped alot of clients over the years move over to wiredtree.com and all are happy folks. Maybe a few Aussie clients not happy with latency in USA versus their local Aussie hosting provider though. Full Managed provider - so there's hand holding which I find helps alot of the clients I move them to as well they're open to custom server setups and usually I can get folks better deals on custom server setup pricing They also offer Litespeed web server licensing too.
• buyvm.net - low end box based VPS provider, been with them since September 2011 so around 10 months now. Have 4x LEB 512MB VPS (3x openvz + 1x kvm based), used mainly to host centminmod.com on a 5x LEB VPS load balanced setup with the chicagovps.net VPS in the load balancer mix = total cost for 5x VPS = US$38/month and combined access to 12 cpu cores, 3GB guaranteed memory and 6GB burstable memory and ~12TB of bandwidth It's cheap because they're unmanaged so you do all the technical stuff yourself. They recently started to upgrade their VPS with SSD caching from Adaptec 5xxx series PCI-E raid controllers and caching software as well.
• chicagovps.net - another lowend box based VPS provider, around 7 months into usage, 1x LEB 1GB OpenVZ VPS which is also apart of centminmod.com load balanced setup. Unmanaged provider.
• databasebydesignllc.com - newest web host, only 4 months into usage but has the most powerful server yet, Intel Xeon E3-1270, 16GB memory, 2x1TB raid 1 and 10TB Unmanaged provider.

As I work with alot of clients and their respective web hosts, I also have a small list of web hosts to avoid, top 2 would be

• 100tb.com
• softlayer.com/theplanet.com

I'm constantly looking for potential new web hosts for my clients as well so get to contact quite a few web hosts asking all my questions that need asking.. a few have made my shortlist at potentials as well based on their sales staff responses.

 

MDD Hosting. Ever since I started hosting with them about a year or so ago, my site is rarely if ever down, usually quick and works pretty much perfectly. Support's pretty good too, I recall they helped move over my site from my past host and have generally fixed any hosting related issues I've ever had. Definitely a fantastic host, can't recommend them enough.

If you want to know who to avoid like the plague, that'd be most big hosts. I remember when I used Lunarpages for instance. Absolutely terrible for medium or large websites, sites kept crashing or throwing up database errors, support was nearly useless and they're more interested in making their forums look neat than helping customers and would ban people who disagree with them. Not to mention, I was apparently being still 'hosted' on a temporary server despite the payment not going through and it took them weeks to figure it out. Avoid at all costs.

 

+1 for MDD. I have a reseller account with them and they're generally awesome. Mike is great to deal with.