Finding the right web hosting service provider for you can be overwhelming and frustrating. Maybe you’re not sure how much space and bandwidth you need. Maybe you don’t even know what bandwidth is! I am here to help by reviewing some of the service providers I have used for the past few years.

Host Gator

 Host Gator is my current hosting provider for all of my sites. The unlimited websites option is what attracted me.

Their regular hosting plans start at $4.95 per month for one domain. You can bump that up easily to unlimited domains for only $7.95 per month. Still a reasonable price for a valuable service.

The business account starts at $12.95 per month. Host Gator offers a number of extra perks for their business customers: Free SSL certificate on the primary domain. Also you can get a free toll free number for your business.

Reliability has been very good. I have not had any experience with customer service yet. I will soon when I install the SSL on my domain. I’ll post an update on customer service when I can!

My only complaint is I wish I could put the free SSL certificate on a different domain. I don’t need it on my primary domain. I can still get one, but I have to pay for it.

Host Nine

I first learned about Host Nine through my employer at my part time job. The experience I have with Host Nine is with their reseller account.

The reseller account is an excellent program where for a very reasonable monthly fee, you can sell hosting accounts under your own name. The profits are yours to keep. Host Nine is not only a reliable host, they also offer one of the best reseller plans.

They’re offering an unlimited hosting plan for $6.95 a month. There is no contract to sign. You can host unlimited domains and have unlimited bandwidth and storage.

Up time has been 100% since we joined Host Nine. Customer service is fairly prompt by email or phone.

My only complaint with Host Nine is the occasional technical glitch when I create more than one new account at a time. The positive in this is customer service takes care of it right away for me.

With the reseller plan, since it’s shared hosting, there are times when I can’t create an account in a certain area because that location is full. I’m forced to create it on a server elsewhere. That’s only a slight inconvenience as long as the customer doesn’t care whether his site is hosted in New York or Texas.

Godaddy.com

My first hosting provider was Godaddy. Godaddy.com is a great place to start for several reasons:

• They are affordable.
• Set-up is easy.
• Customer service is fast and effective.
• They offer a variety of service levels to fit your needs.

Here is some basic information regarding the hosting packages they offer:

Website hosting:
As low as $4.24 per month. There is no setup fee. They offer 24/7 support. You can purchase plans with up to unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Virtual Dedicated Servers:
With a virtual dedicated server, you have full control over your server space. Up to 50GB in storage and 2000GB in bandwidth.

Prices for virtual dedicated servers start at $23.99 a month.

Dedicated Servers:
With a dedicated server, you can customize and configure your own server. A dedicated server is great for high traffic applications like gaming and multimedia websites.

Prices for dedicated servers start at $63.99 a month.

Click for more info on any of these packages.

My experience with them was a mostly positive one. While I have been testing the waters with other hosting providers, I still use Godaddy as my primary registrar.

My only complaints with Godaddy are what I think are overly aggressive sales tactics and the customer service number is not toll free. Since I use my cell phone for calls anyway, toll free doesn’t really matter to me.

More recently, I’ve seen issues with running scripts. Not all of their hosting plans allow scripts, which severely limits what I can do with a website. I’m not familiar with their higher level plans to know if and when scripts become available. This is a definite drawback to their service, especially when I can run scripts with other hosting companies for the same low prices.