
This page provides the web hosting
experiences of Malcolm Graham
Also see Getting on the Web
History
1996-1999. Originally, writedoc.com
and writeweb.com were hosted for over 3 years by magma.ca
in Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada at a cost of us$480/year.
I still maintain a dial-in account with magma.ca and recommend
them to local clients who don't need their own domain name. Magma provides
excellent support
but at a premium cost and lack of what I consider standard hosting features
(for example, subdomains and auto-responders).
In December 1998, I went in search
of a Web hosting company offering more features at a lower cost. I
ended
up with cihost.com in
Texas at a cost of us$200/year (a 58% reduction from magma.ca
with more hosting features). Because of problems with cihost.com,
in January 2000 I initiated a search for another Web hosting company
offering
similiar features at a lower cost; I changed to below10host.com.
In August 2002, because of lack of disk space, I initiated a search
for
a new web host offering more disk space at the same or a lower cost;
I changed to page-zone.com.
In October 2003, again largely because of my growing need for more disk
space, I changed to aussiehosts.com.
In November 2006, because of a significant price increase by aussiehosts,
I changed to ixwebhosting.com.
IXwebhosting host
November 2006. Changed to ixwebhosting because
aussiehosts increased their hosting charges from us$6.59 to $11.64 (a
77% increase). The writedoc.com, writeweb.com,
plus 5 personal domains are now hosted by ixwebhosting on
a yearly basis for
us$7.95/month. This is a 21% increase from
the aussiehosts cost but with the following
main additional features: hosting for up to 8 domains (compared to 2),
each with their own dedicated IP
address;
300GB of disk storage (600MB before); 1500GB of data transfer (6GB
before); a price-freeze guarantee and 3 free domain registrations
for as long as I stay with ixwebhosting (this
alone will more than recoup the increased cost, indeed I estimate an
overall 18% reduction in cost);
an attractive affiliate program; and finally 99.9% uptime and
30-day
and anytime
money-back guarantees.
IXwebhosting experience
- IXwebhosting has
been around since 1999 and it is a subsidiary of Ecommerce
Corporation located
in Hopkinsville, Ohio, USA
- Account setup and availability completed within a few hours. I encountered
no problems when transferring my web site files to any of the domain
host accounts I created.
- Each domain get their own dedicated IP address,
sub-folder, email account, and login id; each subdomain
also get their own subfolder, email account, and login id.
- No need to use mydomains.com to redirect my personal domains,
they now get their own domain host accounts with their own login credentials
and email
accounts; this is a significant improvement over what I had at aussiehosts and
I also expect that it will lead to better web site performance (because
of no redirects and the associated delays).
- IXwebhosting provides 24/7 support by toll-free telephone,
live chat, and a ticket system; a good user manual is also provided
(HTML
and PDF versions). I used live chat while setting up my web site and
email accounts; I found it very responsive and helpful. There is also
a 1-hour support quarantee, for one support
ticket I did not get a response within 1-hour; it took over 12-hours,
but if I needed a faster response I could have used live chat (where
the response is within minutes).
- Discovered that you can not use ping and tracert with ixwebhosting;
so for web site uptime checking you have to use the HTTP protocol.
I don't think that blocking ping and tracert responses
is a good approach to improve security (see Common
ISP Mistakes) because
I believe it introduces
other performance problems especially for mail servers (which is why
I've added monitoring to my mail servers).
- A mailbox is created with a specific email address. Discovered
that you can not use aliases to a mailbox if the mailbox email address
is forwarded; the aliased
emails
stay in
the
mailbox
and
only
the mailbox email address itself is forwarded.
- Performance?
My FTP transfer speed and reliability are very good and my
web
site
responses
are also very good. Initially, the transfer speed and server
communication when using Dreamweaver was sluggish, it was
caused by a conflict with the CyberArmor firewall
which was resolved after disabling CyberArmor.
- Set up free accounts with Uptime to
check all my web sites every 15 minutes; SiteUptime to
monitor my marnie.ca mail account every 30 minutes; and
ServiceUptime to
monitor my writedoc.com and writeweb.com mail
accounts every 30 minutes.

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Aussiehosts host
2003-2006. The writedoc.com and writeweb.com domains
were hosted by aussiehosts on a month-to-month basis
for a cost of us$5.25/month ($63.00/year, a 6.1% increase from Page-Zone but
with 3 times the disk space and 6 times the traffic allowance)
with
two accounts (writedoc.com and writeweb.com) each
with 300MB disk space and 6GB data transfer, unlimited subdomains and
user accounts, unlimited POP email accounts, catchall email address,
email forwarding, web-based email (Horde), IMAP email
support, unlimited mailing lists, unlimited auto-responders, password-protected
directories, anonymous FTP server, 5 MySQL databases/account,
frontpage extensions support, PHP/Perl/CGI/SSI support, web-based control
panel (Plesk
7), no setup fee.
Aussiehosts experience
- Gary
and Marita Meadows, Enhanced
Design and Information Technology Group, 532 Lutwyche Road, Lutwyche, Queensland, Australia
- Setup and availability of site
completed within 24 hours
- Email and online support
- According to aussiehosts parked
domains are not supported in order to ensure better server performance.
So I used mydomains.com to redirect my subsidiary domains
(for example,
diabetestype2.ca) to subdomains
on writedoc.com and writeweb.com
- Host Ping / Tracert response
time for writedoc.com & writeweb.com? Averages 84ms.
- NetMechanic server
performance rating for writedoc.com & writeweb.com?
Rated as Good with no dropouts.
- NetMechanic server
performance of domains parked and redirected from mydomains.com,
during the same time period as the writedoc.com and writeweb.com ratings,
rated as Good with no dropouts.
- Uptime checked
my sites every 15 minutes. WebSitePulse monitored
my sites every hour.
- November 2006:
price increased from au$8.50 to $15.00/month
(a 76.5% increase!)
- Over the 3 years I was with aussiehosts I was very pleased with their services and I highly recommend them
if their services and prices meet your needs.
Page-Zone host
August 2002-October 2003.
The writedoc.com and writeweb.com domains were hosted
by Page-Zone on
a month-to-month basis for a cost of US$4.95/month ($59.40/year,
a 29% reduction from below10host) with 200MB space, 2GB
data transfer, 2 domains supported, 10 parked domains, 100 subdomains,
200 POP email accounts, catchall email addresses, 200 mailing lists,
200 auto-responders, password-protected directories, anonymous FTP
server, 100 directory-specific FTP accounts, 100 MySQL databases, FrontPage
extensions, own cgi-bin, FormMail-clone in cgi-sys, PHP, Perl,
web-based control panel (CPanel),
and no setup fee.
Page-Zone experience
- Jim Snape, Page-Zone
Web Hosting, 840 Pine Street, Wauseon, Ohio 43567, USA
- Setup and availability of site
completed within 2 hours
- Unable to get FormMail-clone to
work with complex forms; installed FormMail and
it worked flawlessly. In January 2003, without warning Page-Zone disabled
the use of FormMail on all servers and then notified me
of their action; while I appreciated notice of their action, I would
have preferred some notice before they took action! After some research,
I changed to SouperMail and
then to my own PHP-based form processor writedocMail
- Email, phone, and online support
- Host Ping / Tracert response
time for writedoc.com & writeweb.com? Averaged 81ms.
- NetMechanic server
performance rating for writedoc.com & writeweb.com?
Rated as Fair to Good with no dropouts. I would prefer Good all
the time, but I received excellent value for what I paid.
- NetMechanic server
performance of domains parked and redirected from mydomains.com,
during the same time period as the writedoc.com and writeweb.com ratings,
rated as Poor to Fair with no dropouts. After changing
and parking the other domains on the same server as writedoc.com & writeweb.com (Page-Zone allows
up to 10 parked domains at no additional cost, but note that directing
these domains to subdomains is not officially supported)
the ratings changed to Fair to Good with
no dropouts.
- Uptime checked
my site every 15 minutes and reported, over a 3 month period, that
my site had been down, on average, 11 times/month for less than 20
minutes each time; however, apart from two occasions, whenever I
checked I was able to access my site immediately after receiving
the uptime report. WebSitePulse also
monitored my site every hour and reported that my worst server uptime
during the same 3 months was 97.62% for one day, 99.4% over one week,
and 98.79% over one month. I would have preferred over 99% uptime,
but it was close enough and I believed I received excellent value
for what I paid.
- In September 2003 I was unable
to receive email from writedoc.com or related subdomains;
it took Page-Zone almost a month to resolve the problem!
In addition, I was told that the way my account was setup (using
multiple parked domains pointing to multiple subdomains) was unreliable
when using CPanel and that Page-Zone didn't
officially support doing this. Strange!
I had been using my account with parked domains pointing to subdomains
for over 12 months with no major problems with email or
anything else at Page-Zone. I received the impression that Page-Zone would
now prefer to handle my account using one of their newer, and more
expensive,
web hosting offerings. I could have changed the way my account was
set up to avoid the indicated problems with CPanel and subdomains,
but I was also looking for more disk space. I decided that aussiehosts met
my current needs better and changed to them in October 2003.
- Page-Zone offers
excellent value and I recommend them to anyone who needs a very good
web host.
Below10host
February 2000 to August 2002.
The writedoc.com and writeweb.com domains were hosted by
below10host.com
on a month-to-month basis for a cost of US$6.95/month ($83.40/year,
a 58% reduction from cihost) with 100MB space, 3GB data
transfer, 25 POP email accounts, catchall email address, 10 mailing lists,
25 auto-responders, password-protected directories, static IP address,
anonymous FTP server, MySQL database, FrontPage extensions, own cgi-bin
with FormMail support in the system cgi-bin, PHP, Perl, web-based control
panel, and no setup fee.
Below10host.com experience
- Owned by AMS Computer Services,
299 Midway Rd, Murray, Kentucky
- Setup and initiation of domain
transfer form took under 10 minutes
- Support is by email only, but
resolution and response time is very good
- Some initial problems transferring
large or multiple files via FTP
- Host Ping / Tracert
response time averaged 80ms
-
NetMechanic server performance rating ranges from Poor to
Very Good with occasional dropouts (I'd prefer at least
Good all the time and no dropouts, but I believe I received
good value)
- Excellent reliability and service
throughout my time with below10host
Hosts to consider
Based on my research, for personal
and small businesses who need to establish, on a budget, a Web presence;
I recommend, in order of personal preference, the following Web hosting
companies.
- http://www.ixwebhosting.com/
- http://www.hostexcellence.com/
- http://www.bluehost.com/
- http://www.aussiehosts.com/
- http://www.page-zone.com/
- http://www.below10host.com/
- http://www.astrahosting.com/
I also use and highly recommend
Trend Micro
Internet Security,
Norton
Internet Security, AVG
Free Edition (on my home PCs), Spybot-Search
& Destroy, and Spywareblaster
to minimize the reception of unwanted emails and spyware. I also recommend
that you don't include your email on any web sites or
newsgroup
postings
(I use a feedback form powered
by my PHP-based form processor writedocMail,
feel free to use it).
Hosts to avoid
August 8-13, 2002. In early
August I noticed an excellent price for web hosting in a local computer
paper, 250MB for C$60/year. The advertiser was Linuxmotor; they
offered a 30-day full refund trial period, so I decided to try their service.
After repeated attempts by both myself and their support staff, I was
unable to get FormMail
to work on their server, I also had repeated problems trying to access
my site, and even when I did response time was very slow; so I cancelled
my account with them. After 5 months of trying, Linuxmotor had
still not honored their refund promise; I reported them to the Better
Business Bureau, Federal
Trade Commission, and WebAssured.
Because of my personal experience, I consider Linuxmotor a bad
host choice and do not recommend the use of any of their services. February
13, 2003: Received $60 adjustment on my Amex account.
March 29, 2003: Marc-Frederic
Gomez, CEO, declared that Linux
Motor is out of business.
Based on my personal experience,
I recommend you avoid the following Web hosting companies.
- linuxmotor.com, linuxmotor.net, or any company associated with Marc-Frederic
Gomez
- cihost.com
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