I have been checking out most of the web hosting services for the past week trying to find the one that won't cause me to get a second mortgage or rip me off in some way (beeh there done that!!).

I have finally settled on 1and1.com as recommended by Tom. For you basic web package (they call it beginner) which is comprised of more than what most other hosts give, it is only $3.99 per month with a minimum sign up of 6 months. So your total cost is $23.94 for 6 months. This includes your domain name. It is the simplest and cheapest of their services, but should do me fine for a simple 9 page website with less that 50 products.

I asked the salesman on the phone if I would have any trouble transferring the domain if I needed to and he said no. I will be curious to see if this is true. It is really my only concern.

Wish me luck!! I swear this is worse than buying a new car.

Wish me luck!! I swear this is worse than buying a new car.

Not sure which causes more of a headache when it crashes,,

It is a good deal and will serve you well.

Remember to unlock the domain and turn off private registration, before you authorize the transfer. And make sure the new registrar has obtained control of the domain (5 days) before you cancel your 1and1 hosting package because the domain is a part of the package and will be gone if you cancel the package without transferring first.

I don't want you in here cussing at me in six months.

Thank you Tom.
I printed your info and put in my "Info to Know" folder for future reference.

Based on what experience I had with them (though admittedly limited), I don't like them.



That is fine, Steven, but you should consider that some opinions may be worth more than others. I don't mean that in a derogatory way towards anyone, but some of your positive reviews will be from individuals who've been with a web host for one month and not tried to do anything except upload a couple of web sites, while other reviews will be from users that have decades of experience using different web hosts and have also done very thorough research.

You have to consider, when selecting a web host, than each offers different numbers of concurrent connections; in other words, how many users can download information from your site at the same time before your visitors start getting 404 errors? Personally, my top two web hosts that I recommend have always been hostgator, because they allow 400 concurrent connections for shared accounts, and Dreamhost because they allow 300. Godaddy only offers 50 with their economy hosting plan, but even their best plan (the "unlimited" plan) isn't nearly as "unlimited" as it seems: they allow only 200 concurrent connections before they start refusing access to your site's visitors.

1and1's shared hosting plans allow fewer concurrent connections than ANY other host on the market (that I know of): 20 connections for Linux hosting and 18 for Windows hosting plans. No, that is NOT a typo. I didn't intend to write "200". It's 20. Two-Zero, twenty.

To be fair, I have a few friends that use 1and1 and they love it. Also, 1and1 scores very high at http://hostpeek.com/ which is one of the VERY FEW unbiased hosting review sites out there. 1and1 was the second best host overall (hostgator, of course, was number one). That being said, I'm not trying to turn you away from 1and1, but there are reasons I recommend the hosts that I recommend and don't recommend that hosts that I don't recommend. My recommendations are based on experience and hard facts about those companies, many of whom I have done business with.

Nothwithstanding, as long as your site doesn't get much traffic, you'll do just fine with 1and1.

Thanks Chad, very good info.

At the present time, my main concern was getting a good price for less than one year. 1and1 is the only one I could find that had it.

Scott is pushing this S-Drive and hopefully it will be a good deal and I would not want to be tied in with a 1 year contract and not be able to switch to S-Drive.

Right now I would be happy with 20 visits per day let alone at the same time!!

LOL!

By the way I can get you shared hosting on Dreamhost for $1.45/month for your first year :-)

http://www.dreamhost.com/

This is not a deal that is available for the general public, but I've got the goods lol.

Chad, you're talking about mysql concurrent connections, not total website visitor connections. Don't confuse the uninitiated with scary stories. Most folks have static html pages or scripts, so this is not a concern. I guarantee you nobody here is going to get 404's for a static website.

Most websites will never be affected by mysql connection limitations. Even those that do use scripts to query a mysql database can have more visitors online at a time than the max connection limit because the connection is not persistent. The code runs, queries the database, and the connection closes again, all in a fraction of a second, unless poorly coded - and even then, how many visitors are going to click that link at the same time?. So you can have a hundred unique visitors online even with a 20 max limit.

And if you are running a heavy database driven website like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc, and experience heavy traffic spikes, the host is going to want you on a VPS or dedicated server because you are also hogging other system resources like CPU and RAM. So mysql connections aren't your only worry. This Includes Hostgator, whom would be my top choice for $10 hosting.

Do I agree with you that this can be problematic on a popular database driven website, yes. But don't go chasing around the boogie man when it clearly isn't warranted for most websites.

According to my stats my average unique visitors by ip address is around 900 per month

there will be a big spike next month usually about 30000 for Christmas (just my main site in signature)

No real sign of any issues regarding visitors getting 404 messages, they seem very infrequent

Good luck with that. More visitors = More Money.

I just confirmed with HostGator concerning http connection limitations, just in case I was mistaken. This is what was said in the chat session.



There is one other limitation on the shared hosting that I did not account for and that is the inode limitation, which is crazy high (like 250,000) and has no bearing on the discussion.

Of course level one support has been known to be wrong at times, too.