Hunting for a reliable and affordable web host provider is hard. I’ve been searching for positive and negative reviews about Dreamhost, Bluehost, HostGator and HostMonster because I need to move my blogs and websites again to a new web host. Although I dread moving hosts, I have to face my fear so I can find a reliable and affordable web hosting provider soon if I want to keep my blogs running smoothly.
There are thousands of available resources in the world wide web that provide recommendations based on positive and negative experiences from these hosting companies that it’s hard to determine which reviews to believe. It’s a real jungle out there.
It doesn’t really help that much when some of these reviews are posted by affiliates and not necessarily based on their personal experiences with using the recommended company’s web hosting services. It’s difficult to distinguish which feedback (whether it’s positive or negative) is true. Affiliates tend to praise the products they’re selling because they won’t earn commissions if they scare off prospective buyers with negative reviews.
I started my self-hosted blogs in 2007 and since then I’ve used 3 web hosting companies, namely Jumpline, HostPrestige and WPWebhost. I started with a free hosting promotion from Jumpline until 2008 then moved on to HostPrestige until it closed shop. In April 2009, I posted about hunting for a new web host where I decided to try WPWebhost which was recommended by a fellow blogger.
I’ve been highly satisfied with WPWebhost’s services. They made my move from HostPrestige a breeze by taking care of all file transfers to their servers. I only needed to update and point my domains’ nameservers to WPWebhost. Their technical support representatives have also been very helpful whenever I sent in support tickets when something went wrong with my WordPress blogs.
I love my current Freedom Plan with WPWebhost which I got for a great deal two years ago, however the renewal fee that I have to pay this coming April is beyond my current budget. I can only afford to spend around $100+ for a 2 year hosting plan since I don’t use much space and bandwidth anyway. I need to shell out around $240, which is already their discounted 2 year plan if I want to keep my current hosting. If I transfer my sites to other hosting providers, I can get up to 3 years with almost the same plan features (or even better).
I’m leaning towards HostGator right now; I’m just a little worried about their free transfer policy. I read that they only provide free file transfer for the primary domain being moved. I don’t have much experience in transferring files and databases because all the web host’s I’ve worked with did all the transferring. I only needed to give them the details to access my hosting account and then change the nameservers.
I have several sites that need to be moved, most are WordPress installations but I also have a Phpbb forum and a Piwigo gallery. WPWebhost recently changed from Fantastico software to Softaculous (which carries Piwigo), HostGator on the other hand, uses Fantastico. I will miss some of the scripts available in Softaculous but I can live with manual installations on my hosting as long as my blogs stay up.
I’ll decide and choose which hosting company I’ll move to before the month ends. I’ll give an update once we’ve moved and settled down. 