Thanks for the vote of confidence, though I don't actually resell web hosting by itself. I charge my web design clients a monthly fee for hosting and up to 30 minutes of updates to their site, so the only way to host with me is if I do everything for you. But I'm sure Tom would treat you very well. I think the Philosopher also resells hosting

The Philosopher is Eric English?

I found info on my domain under checkdomain.com (I took note of Tom's mention of "lazy" and decided to google it for myself ) .
My own name is shown under "organisation name" but the organisation address is that of my former hoster, as is the details for "admin name" & "tech name".

IMHO, it's not about trust or ethics. Things happen. If I die tomorrow, the only thing my clients have to worry about is finding another developer.


http://www.internic.net/whois.html

It has everything to do with trust and ethics. Did you read my post at 9:23 where I recounted all the nightmares my clients have had with their previous web developers? I could tell even more stories than that. There are so many web hosters and developers out there that are only in business to get as much money from new customers as they possibly can, once they've been paid, they dissapear. I'm glad to know there are good decent honest ones like you guys out there.

But if you were stating that in the context of death, then yes that's a brilliant plan. Keeping clients in charge of their own hosting so that if you die they aren't stuck, and you're right that part has nothing to do with ethics.

Go Daddy has also been the subject of much debate regarding ethical practices as well.

@Tom,

I contacted my provider to see what their policy was and they also do not accept clients of those who go out of business.

Interesting.

Yes, I am the infamous Eric English.

Chad, I was referring to it boiling down to one very important fact. You can trust someone you know to be ethical all you want. You can be his bestest buddy. He can be your shining star. BUT, if he owns your domain and hosting, and dies tomorrow - you are SOL.

On the other hand, if you own the domain and hosting when your shining star takes the dirt nap, you have control over the domain and hosting. So all you have to do is find another web designer. Your site is not going to disappear and you still have control over the domain name (your brand).

Can you give an example? I'm just curious.

Googling "godaddy sucks" would probably bring up plenty. :p Not that I share the view, but all hosting sites have their version of "I hate *enter host here*" dedicated sites or blogs/forums.

I've been using Hostmonster for several years and am very happy with them, but unfortunately they don't offer reseller accounts. I also have a reseller account with theprimehost.com but the server's been hitting server loads in the 20's-30's in the last few weeks causing the sites to basically fail to load (timeouts & databases down). From what I've read, a server load over 2.00 isn't good, so 20+ is insanely bad. I'll most likely ditch them for Hostgator or go with Chad's idea of switching them to my trusty Hostmonster shared hosting as long as I'm maintaining the sites.

I'm not sure what's standard in pre-paid hosting plans, but the one I'm stuck in does not have any pro-rated refunding after the firstl 30 days of service. So I'm stuck with another 10 months of hosting that I don't trust. Note to self: read the fine print regarding refunds next time.


I'm not competing with that. Ha! Maybe I can be reseller account under your reseller account (master reseller). "If I'm going down, you're going with me!"

Adam have you seen this site? http://hostpeek.com/ One of the FEW unbiased hosting review sites out there, they rate hosts for server performance and a few other things. GoDaddy does offer pro-rated refunds. I actually ended up getting (almost) a free year from Dreamhost. I signed up during their Memorial Day special and got my first 12 months of hosting for under $10.00. Not per month, but under $10.00 TOTAL, so comes to about 75 cents a month I'm paying for hosting for next year :-) GoDaddy does have a negative press out there, but much of it I suspect is being posted by their competitors trying to bring them down. When you're number one there are always a lot of people making up lies about you.

Do you really believe that?

I read all reviews with a grain of salt. They are all biased, no matter the subject.

1and1 has a lot of bad reviews and I have never had a problem with them, and have had nothing but positive experiences with them.