The hosts with the most

September 24, 2007

As much as I like to do business locally, I am purchasing Web hosting elsewhere. I am also a hosting service reseller. This enables me to manage multiple clients from a single Web Host Manager control panel. The time I save is time spent on checking client’s Web sites and server data routinely, as well as responding to problems (very few, usually having to do with client configuration of email accounts or email quotas) which is what they get for their money when they buy a hosting package through me instead of vendor-direct. I don’t expect clients to use my hosting service, and for non-profits or folks who want to do business with thoughtful companies, I’ve recommended AcornHost.com.

I am a reseller with InMotionHosting.com. I have had positive experiences with them and like how they handle support issues and questions. My clients have hosted directly with them, or have purchased an account from me. I also have clients hosted on LunarPages.com, as well as a reseller account with them, but after a couple of bad experiences, I am no longer recommending them. I might have hit them at a bad time, or engaged with the worst of their tech support people, but their interface for adding new accounts completely broke down at a time when I was trying to ‘go live’ with a client site, tech support took quite long time to get things working, and the original problem was their fault.

So, for now, I like InMotionHosting.com for businesses and AcornHost.com for non-profits and small businesses. I think AcornHost can handle any sort of organization’s Web site, but as I am a reseller with InMotionHosting, I tend to use InMo for business sites and Acorn for non-profits. Another service has recently come to my attention through blog conversation: Garlic D’zign. As I migrate clients away from LunarPages, I might give those folks a try. Both AcornHost and Garlic D’zign are companies with a conscience.

While I prefer to work with and support a local business, clients and I have had enough bad experiences to warrant mentioning that the customer service at WISPwest.net has been inferior in the past, and the server administration interface undesirable. On a national level, Network Solutions and GoDaddy seem to have captured the attention of folks who are not Web savvy, but their server admin interfaces are not good. In the case of Network Solutions, the interface is dreadful. On my own servers, I can add an email, redirect a domain, backup a database, see site traffic logs, and much more from a single page with one or two clicks down in each area. It takes going through many more screens, and many more clicks (plus a whole lot of ‘what the devil does that do’ questioning) to accomplish the same in Network Solutions’ interface. They also do not support some standard server tools that I expect. The overall impression with NS is that they really don’t want you doing much on their server. And there are ads and offers at every turn. When I am in my control panel, I do not want to see ads.

Anyway, if you expect to do anything on your own server (uploading files is a common one), then look around for a vendor with a friendly control panel, and steer away from Network Solutions and GoDaddy.com. Ask what is on the control panel before you sign up. Can you create a database? update your own email quota? have access to a lot of other tools via Fantastico (surveys, content management systems, blogs, guestbooks)? You might not need them or want to install them today, but if you extend your site’s capabilities, you or your Webmaster/designer might miss having those things down the road.

I always support any client who wants to carry on themselves after the design is done, so the usability of the server interface is paramount to me.

Update: Over last weekend Network Solutions made some changes to their admin interface (the notice of the changes arrived today, however, well after I used it and made my way through the new). This is not enough. What a good control panel dishes up in one page, the very first one, NS takes a dozen pages to deliver. And key information is missing. For example, just try to redirect a domain! When a client asked NS support about it, and why she couldn’t designate a domain name as the primary one and simply point the other names to it , and why they were on different domain name servers (DNS), tech support told her to “Google ‘301 redirect’”! Apart from the shoddy service, how about the fact that nowhere on the redirect page does the word “redirect” appear, and nowhere is there a place to point one domain to another. You can only point all domains to the same directory, which doesn’t take the alternate names out of search results. There is no way to specify that a redirect be permanent (301) versus temporary (302). In their own user guide, a search for ‘301 redirect’ yields zero results. And every page of the many that you have to go to to accomplish a simple task, there are ads for more NS services.

The bottom line on NS: If you are thinking about using Network Solutions for domain registration or Web hosting, take a page from their tech support book and Google “network solutions sucks”. You’ll see why I never host a client with them, and why I am even considering not taking on server administration if a client is using Network Solutions.

Posted by Lynn | Filed Under Web Tips |