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GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

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Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#61

Post by davidandgoliath »

macspoofing wrote: post #50
seldo wrote: post #44

I think Marco is overly dismissive of shared hosting; the web should be inclusive and easy to use, and for lots of people with uncomplicated hosting needs shared hosting is a fine choice. See also: Heroku, AWS, any other level of abstraction you care to pick. Many developers outgrow shared hosting, but that doesn't mean the category is intrinsically bad. (My personal site has been on Site5 for over a decade; they hav…

>I think Marco is overly dismissive of shared hosting Is he? It sounds like he's deriding the hosting business (the providers, the prices, the way the customer is passed around, etc.), rather than the idea of shared hosting. >but that doesn't mean the category is intrinsically bad. Again, the category isn't bad, all the major players in that category are crap.

>Again, the category isn't bad, all the major players in >that category are crap.

But, you could state the same thing about bigbox stores, and any large retail experience. You'll never get the boutique experience with an entity doing their best to squish profit out of volume.

All the 'major players' get a bad rap collectively but only because bad news spreads fast, and reputations get destroyed for random instances of bad news.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#62

Post by gaoshan »

smacktoward wrote: post #42

As long as we're sharing hosting anecdotes/recommendations, I'll throw in my two cents: I've dealt with umpty gazillion hosting companies over the last 15+ years, and the only one that has consistently impressed me to the point where I recommend them to clients without any reservations is Rackspace. Both in their dedicated server offerings and the newer Rackspace Cloud stuff. (Rackspace Cloud doesn't have as much ble…

Rackspace is the best that our company has ever used. The expense is a factor, though, and many smaller sites aren't willing to bear that burden and that is where the likes of Media Temple comes in. They host most of the smaller sites we manage and I've been quite happy with them. That said, anytime I've had to deal with GoDaddy it has been a huge pain in the ass and I am not confident that this move is a good one for Media Temple's users.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#63

Post by cmod »

smacktoward wrote: post #42

As long as we're sharing hosting anecdotes/recommendations, I'll throw in my two cents: I've dealt with umpty gazillion hosting companies over the last 15+ years, and the only one that has consistently impressed me to the point where I recommend them to clients without any reservations is Rackspace. Both in their dedicated server offerings and the newer Rackspace Cloud stuff. (Rackspace Cloud doesn't have as much ble…

I've been a delighted Rackspace user for over a decade (!!) now. Recently switching from dedicated server to their cloud service.

They also have a startup program where they'll subsidize $1000 of hosting for six months: http://rackspacestartups.com/

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#64

Post by wwweston »

smacktoward wrote: post #42

As long as we're sharing hosting anecdotes/recommendations, I'll throw in my two cents: I've dealt with umpty gazillion hosting companies over the last 15+ years, and the only one that has consistently impressed me to the point where I recommend them to clients without any reservations is Rackspace. Both in their dedicated server offerings and the newer Rackspace Cloud stuff. (Rackspace Cloud doesn't have as much ble…

> I generally end up recommending Dreamhost too; it's not great, but it's better than what you'd get for the same money anywhere else.

It's notably worse than a number of other commodity experiences I've had.

Dreamhost aggressively oversells. They're hardly unique in this, but they admit and embrace it like nobody else I've seen.

Because of this, DreamHost accounts have two sets of rules: the ones they sell you on, and the other ones they're counting on you adhering to in order for everything to actually work. If you break the unwritten rules (even if you haven't broken the written ones), they will shut you down (sometimes without notice) and accept your cranky departure if you're unhappy about it.

Or maybe before then they'll have a severe service outage that causes you grief, make a funny blog post about it, and despite your amusement, you'll get the sense that something wasn't really addressed and leave.

If I had to recommend any shared hosting I've been on, it'd be Hurricane Electric. Over the decade I kept a small account there, my experience was the opposite of Dreamhost: they may have given less for the price, but they stood totally behind it (and a little further) and were always up.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#65

Post by davidandgoliath »

thwarted wrote: post #57
bobfunk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. The way you host and manage a static website hasn't really changed for more than a decade, and most hosting UI's feel like something out of the 90ies. We're working on solving this for static sites with BitBalloon ( https://www.bitballoon.com ). Both by giving people an instant way to get their site online, but also by making it dead easy to do typical tasks like adding Analytics or getting forms…

Couldn't agree more. The way you host and manage a static website hasn't really changed for more than a decade, and most hosting UI's feel like something out of the 90ies. I think this is partly because of providers like godaddy who have massive up-sell attempts and navigation misdirection to confuse people into purchasing all their value-add services when all you wanted was to purchase a domain or use their DNS serv…

I don't know if I'd go out of my way to blame their horrible panel on upsell attempts, or confusion. I think they honestly hide most advanced features away because they don't want to invite an extra 50,000 phonecalls a day.

The less trouble a user can cause, the better -- particularly at that scale. For more advanced users it merely invites frustration, however.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#66

Post by davidandgoliath »

sterlingross wrote: post #14
SteveGerencser wrote: post #8

In the late 90s i was a partner in a hosting company. To this day every time someone asks me to host a small site on my personal server I get flashbacks and the shakes. Never again. Hosting is not a game for people without very strong nerves. I won't even resell hosting.

Hosting is a pretty stressful and thankless industry. Your services can run flawless for years and your clients wont think twice about you, but as soon as the mail server crashes you are somehow evil and ruining their business. You were smart to get out. I haven't yet.

My condolences! I love the industry :) It can often be a thankless one, but I derive such a massive amount of joy out of serving.

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#67

Post by davidandgoliath »

ericabiz wrote: post #56
mattbee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree - Bytemark have been in business nearly 12 years, thousands of interesting clients, no difficult ones that I've not turned around to my way of thinking :-) We've just built our own data centre ( http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/06/04/bytemark-data-centre-w... ), have launched our own IaaS product ( http://bigv.io ) and we get a lot of recommendations though as we're based in the UK we're not as big on most…

As someone who also ran a hosting company (2001-2007, when I sold it--the acquiring company is still in business and doing fine today), there are some people who are building hosting companies for the long term, and many others who will sell given the right $ amount and timing. Some of the best hosting companies I've been with were run by "lifers" (which is what you sound like to me, too.) You've got a good team, a s…

Congrats again Erica! :)

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#68

Post by thwarted »

davidandgoliath wrote: post #65
thwarted wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. The way you host and manage a static website hasn't really changed for more than a decade, and most hosting UI's feel like something out of the 90ies. I think this is partly because of providers like godaddy who have massive up-sell attempts and navigation misdirection to confuse people into purchasing all their value-add services when all you wanted was to purchase a domain or use their DNS serv…

I don't know if I'd go out of my way to blame their horrible panel on upsell attempts, or confusion. I think they honestly hide most advanced features away because they don't want to invite an extra 50,000 phonecalls a day. The less trouble a user can cause, the better -- particularly at that scale. For more advanced users it merely invites frustration, however.

You may be right... I'm not willing to login to godaddy right now (have to dig up credentials), but their marketing materials on the unloggedin site are much improved over how I remember (six or eight months ago?). The services are differentiated better and the value-adds for each service are actually related to that service (rather than the aggressive cross-pollination of service offerings).

Re: GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting

#70

Post by MatthewPhillips »

bobfunk wrote: post #53
larrys wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took a look that looks really good. I assume people can also drag a .html etc or a .jpg and it will replace an existing file after verifying (and/or rename)? Good luck!

Thanks! So far updates are done by just dragging the whole folder unto the site dashboard again. We'll figure out what files have changes and just upload those. There's also a version history so people can always roll back changes or see how the site looked like before.

Don't take this the wrong way but $5/month for a single static site is crazy expensive. I understand wanting to have a sustainable business but for $5 you should give customers 20-30 sites IMO.
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