Switching web hosting services



  • Yahoo Small Business / Aabaco Small Business / Luminate is finally starting to tic me off... (They're doing away with pop-only email access - you must now tie any pop-only-access to a Yahoo account - and, of course, that is a 1:1 tie - I don't want to create a new yahoo acct for every pop acct I have or might want to have in the future)

    I've had my domains (2) hosted at Yahoo since I got them - it was simple. clickclickclick done. And I give them money on either a quarterly or yearly basis (one domain is a "Web Hosting" account - the other is a "Business Email" account). They take care of everything.

    So, basically, I have no idea what I should look for in a new provider - and am looking for feedback on that. Or some good ideas for where to move. And how to deal with the transition from Yahoo to (new guys) - kind of hoping the (new guys) handle that! I really don't want to have to become a domain-expert to handle this...

    What I need:

    • domain1:
      • web access, it's a simple site (I use PHP just to create a simple consistent layout, it's about 5 pages total, I update by ftp'ing the files up), I host a couple binaries for download, my audience is fairly small (dog agility people)
      • email access, multiple pop accounts
    • domain2:
      • email access (currently I have 1 acct and only check it a couple times a year...)
      • redirect to a subdomain on domain1
      • (really, I'm just parking on this - I thought about this as a more generic business access point, but no idea if I ever actually will...)

  • Notification Spam Recipient

    Yeah, as soon as Email is involved I typically check out. The problem is finding a provider you trust, other than that VPSs are pretty cheap, it's rather easy to set up one to do all your hosting for like, $5/mo for the vm, $15/yr for the domain (which you apparently already have). and whatever for your email provider.

    Domains themselves aren't actually not all that hard, literally all it is is "what IP is www.whatever.com" (for your intents and purposes).


  • FoxDev

    @dcon said in Switching web hosting services:

    Yahoo Small Business / Aabaco Small Business / Luminate is finally starting to tic me off... (They're doing away with pop-only email access - you must now tie any pop-only-access to a Yahoo account - and, of course, that is a 1:1 tie - I don't want to create a new yahoo acct for every pop acct I have or might want to have in the future)

    I've had my domains (2) hosted at Yahoo since I got them - it was simple. clickclickclick done. And I give them money on either a quarterly or yearly basis (one domain is a "Web Hosting" account - the other is a "Business Email" account). They take care of everything.

    So, basically, I have no idea what I should look for in a new provider - and am looking for feedback on that. Or some good ideas for where to move. And how to deal with the transition from Yahoo to (new guys) - kind of hoping the (new guys) handle that! I really don't want to have to become a domain-expert to handle this...

    What I need:

    • domain1:
      • web access, it's a simple site (I use PHP just to create a simple consistent layout, it's about 5 pages total, I update by ftp'ing the files up), I host a couple binaries for download, my audience is fairly small (dog agility people)
      • email access, multiple pop accounts
    • domain2:
      • email access (currently I have 1 acct and only check it a couple times a year...)
      • redirect to a subdomain on domain1
      • (really, I'm just parking on this - I thought about this as a more generic business access point, but no idea if I ever actually will...)

    hmm. you might want to go for something like Namecheap for DNS/Email.

    /me goes and does some research real quick.

    yeah looks like just over $20 US for one year of a .com domain, whois guard, and 1 Email address (additional addresses are $0.25/month on the email plan i selected)

    then find someone to host the sites...let's see here..... oh. look. namecheap has a shared hosting solution for ten bucks a year that looks like it will work just fine.

    so.... let's see that's

    ~20$ for Domain1 per year for DNS, DNS privacy, and email
    ~10$ for Domain1 per year for hosting (with ability to do two more sites on the same plan)
    ~15$ for Domain2 per year for DNS, Homepage redirect, and Email Redirect

    total: < 50$

    not bad actually. not bad at all.



  • @accalia said in Switching web hosting services:

    not bad actually. not bad at all.

    That is pretty nice! I'm currently paying 34.95/yr for the email acct and 35.85/quarterly for the webhosting.


  • :belt_onion:

    @dcon said in Switching web hosting services:

    @accalia said in Switching web hosting services:

    not bad actually. not bad at all.

    That is pretty nice! I'm currently paying 34.95/yr for the email acct and 35.85/quarterly for the webhosting.

    Zoho is free (for like... 525 accounts?) and you can use something like Cloudflare for the DNS.

    I personally use:

    1. Google Domains for domain purchase
    2. Zoho for email, except for my primary domain which has a free Google Apps account (can't get one of those any more, unfortunately).
    3. Cloudflare free for DNS/caching
    4. DO for hosting (usually a $5/mo droplet for most stuff, more expensive if needed)

    Grand total is... $70/year, including DO and domain purchase. It's a little more than @accalia's option, but you get a VPS to yourself rather than shit-class shared hosting (no offense, but shared hosting is almost always terribad so...)

    Also, if you're not sending out oodles of emails, you might be able to get away with using your VPS as an email host. They tend to work if you set up mx records properly and don't send tons of email. You might get blacklisted though, which is a notable risk


  • FoxDev

    @sloosecannon said in Switching web hosting services:

    no offense, but shared hosting is almost always terribad so...)

    none taken. I looked at the shared hosting more as a "it's dirt cheap to throw up what's basically a static website that gets approximately zero traffic other than webcrawlers"

    once you step up beyond that.... well shared hosting's not for you anymore, but if you can get away with the shared hosting for parked pages, well that's just extra cash in your pocket.



  • @sloosecannon said in Switching web hosting services:

    Also, if you're not sending out oodles of emails,

    That varies... I secretary most of our clubs dog agility trials - so that involves sending confirmations (individual) to all entrants. And then mass email just before with the trial particulars. (I've discovered the hard way that I'm currently limited to slightly more than 100 addresses - that was fun with Nationals - I had 300 dogs entered)


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