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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

#141

Post by d23 »

ohashi wrote: post #71
cylinder wrote: post #6

Hosting is like commercial airlines. Everyone wants excellent service, but they shop on price, and expect it to be low. Those who can actually spend a lot, do it themselves anyways (private jets). This could be the beginning of a consolidation phase in the hosting industry just like what took place with airlines.

If you think this is the beginning of that phase you haven't been paying any attention at all. Just look up Endurance International Group. They own many (most?) of the major consumer brands and snag up new ones regularly. I can think of two big purchases this year already: DirectI ($110m) and A Small Orange (not sure on sale price)

Wait, A Small Orange was bought? This would explain a slight shift I've noticed with them in the last year...

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

#142

Post by ebbv »

I work in the web hosting industry and this is a pretty good analysis, and fairly accurate.

I would say that usually the hosts that are trying the hardest are the smaller ones that are not "household names" yet. Once they break out and start growing really fast, that's when the people who made it happen tend to check out and let things fall apart.

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

#143

Post by andrewaylett »

porker wrote: post #118
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…

It's good to hear from you Matt, I've had Bytemark/BigV recommended to me half a dozen times, as well as seeing you sponsoring conferences since ~2007. I guess your life is made easier than many of the hosting companies by not offering shared hosting, and (from the impression I've got) generally working with larger clients. So none of those issues of upgrading PHP and finding clients' sites stop working, or having 10…

Speaking as someone who is involved in a couple of charities, each of which has a single VM, Bytemark's not all about big clients. Their support has always been excellent.

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

#144

Post by kyoji »

I really feel the need to plug Nearly Free Speech, my host of choice:

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/

Definitely not aimed at large(r) sites, but for my static sites and a few WP installations it works fantastically. The control panel takes some getting used to, but the "pay for what you use" business model more than makes up for the rough edges. Its all À la carte and I love it, I've been a customer for 5 years with no problems.

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

#146

Post by yardie »

cylinder wrote: post #6

Hosting is like commercial airlines. Everyone wants excellent service, but they shop on price, and expect it to be low. Those who can actually spend a lot, do it themselves anyways (private jets). This could be the beginning of a consolidation phase in the hosting industry just like what took place with airlines.

Except airlines don't have SLAs. Since there are limited seats and limited departure slots the guy with gold membership and the guy with the, almost free, jumpseat are getting the same basic service. There is a lot more variance in hosting than price.

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

#147

Post by newsreader »

I'm definitely in the minority here but I just don't see how "GoDaddy is a horrible company run by horrible people selling horrible products." I dealt with GoDaddy in the past and have an active account with them. I think that their prices are reasonable and their customer service is good enough – at least for me. I do find that navigating through their website is a pain and definitely not designed for a non-technical person, but that alone doesn’t make it horrible.

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

#149

Post by sumedh »

cleversoap wrote: post #24
arkitaip wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. I'm currently happy using Webfaction but I just know it's a matter of time before I have to look for a new hosting company.

I've been with them for quite a while and one thing I've noticed they do differently is that they will upgrade your service periodically while not changing the price. For example, I've gone from 128MB to 512MB of usable memory for my vhost without paying anything but my $9.99 a month. There are other anecdotes (awesome control panel, good support, etc...) that make me think it's unfair to group them with other hostin…

I have an account with webfaction and my mysql DB was using more than 256 mb of memory. I immediately got an email saying that I need to lower the usage or upgrade to higher plan.

I was thinking of my next step when I got an email next day that my account has been upgraded to 512 mb memory plan at no cost.

Definitely made the right move by moving from hostgator to webfaction.

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

#150

Post by mrjatx »

d23 wrote: post #141
ohashi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think this is the beginning of that phase you haven't been paying any attention at all. Just look up Endurance International Group. They own many (most?) of the major consumer brands and snag up new ones regularly. I can think of two big purchases this year already: DirectI ($110m) and A Small Orange (not sure on sale price)

Wait, A Small Orange was bought? This would explain a slight shift I've noticed with them in the last year...

Yes, they're EIG now just like Bluehost, Hostgator, etc.
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