Got a domain, need a good host!

Aumni

Hey guys - I'm looking to purchase a domain. I've been looking at a few sites and have read up on the traditional manner in which they're organized and kept but was looking to see if you fine folks here at the Help/Advice forum could lead me towards a reputable registrar.


Thanks for your time and help


UPDATE: OK guys, thanks for the advice here I purchased a domain on Godaddy. Now for the hosting. I see that Godaddy offers a basic 3.99/mo plan with 200gb storage and 2000gb bandwidth and databases and whatnot but I haven't looked at hosting options in a while. Any suggestions?

Lewisham

godaddy.com have been great to me. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

ASimPerson

I do. godaddy is shady. I switched from them to domaincontender - somewhat less shady, just as cheap.

yourclothes

how the hell is godaddy shady at all

shit is practically the standard

plus there's hella easy to find coupon codes and shit (pretty much every rev3 podcast)

Taximes

I've purchased three domains from GoDaddy over the past four years and never had any problems (although I can see where you might expect shadiness from their name/site layout/advertisements).

Of course, the extent of my interaction with them was pretty much just to buy the domain and point it to my host's nameservers, but their control center seemed pretty easy to navigate and use whenever I needed to. What more could you really want from a registrar, anyway?

SeñorAmor

I third (fourth? seventeenth?) godaddy. They've always been awesome and their handling of the whole registerfly fiasco has been superb.

Oddly enough, my only complaint with them is their hold music (I'm on hold with them as I type this ;-))

Six

I went with godaddy with my latest domain and they've been great. Very easy to get someone on the phone when there was an issue, and everything else aboiut the experience has been top notch.

I use Readyhosting for another domain, and while they're all right I'll probably switch it to godaddy when my renewal is up.

Jimmy King

A couple years ago I transferred all of my domains from godaddy to register4less.com.

Godaddy didn't specifically do anything wrong but I don't care for them. I dislike the whole "we're trying to sell you a super cheap deal on everything internet related in the world" thing they've got going and I can't stand their website and UI.

register4less costs a bit more but the interface is so much nicer to user. They also includes private registration (your name, address, etc. are not shown in whois info) in their fees and are cheaper than most every other registrar once you add in the usual extra fee for private registration. They also provide an e-mail address which regularly changes for the contact address which forwards to your real e-mail address. This way if your e-mail is harvested from the whois record by spammers it only works for them temporarily.

Zifnab

We use Namecheap for all our domain registrations. I've never used GoDaddy, so I can't comment on them, but I find the Namecheap interface and such pretty easy to use, and I've never had anything but good experiences with their customer support, the few times I've had to use it.

misbehavin

I've been with GoDaddy for years, and love them. Cheap, easy to use, amazing customer service, and just generally a good company.

Before GoDaddy, I had used register.com (fucking awful! $35 for a domain! what the shit?!), so my excitement over GoDaddy may be tempered somewhat by how awful my first experience was. But still, no complaints.

grungebox

If you want a little less obnoxious spam and feel dirty dealing with godaddy, there's always Gandi. That's what I used just a month ago. The problem is that they're in France, so the price is steep due to the relative weakness of the US dollar compared the Euro. It's about $16 there. Other places are cheaper, but my brother swears by Gandi.

misbehavin

grungebox wrote: »

If you want a little less obnoxious spam and feel dirty dealing with godaddy, there's always Gandi. That's what I used just a month ago. The problem is that they're in France, so the price is steep due to the relative weakness of the US dollar compared the Euro. It's about $16 there. Other places are cheaper, but my brother swears by Gandi.

Feel dirty? Why? Because of their ads?

Echo

I too swear by Gandi on account of being European.

Aumni

I think I'll try Godaddy. Thanks for the responses guys, this has definitely been helpful.

mmurch01

I have about 90 domains with godaddy and it is very easy to organize them. The best feature though, is the service. I had a guy call me from godaddy out of the blue to tell me about some services they offer that are cheaper (and comparable) to the ones I was currently using (cashparking and linux hosting). We chatted for a while and he gave me some good tips on picking up drops too...good stuff. Highly recommended.

Philodox

I use godaddy for registering my domain. I tried their hosting but I wasn't terribly impressed. It wasn't awful but I didn't feel it was worth the money.

If you're in Canada, I've used Cirrus Hosting and they've been pretty solid. The tech support is lightning quick and I haven't had any uptime issues with them.

Lewisham

Hosting: I use http://www.kualo.com and they are great. The packages are pretty cheap, and the guys who run it are always available to help (except when they are asleep).

DISCLAIMER: I am IRL friends with the CTO, but check out their other clients (yes, Play Asia use them!) and Google for reviews. They really are very good. My website (http://chris.to) is hosted there, and I 've never had downtime.

Zifnab

When it comes to hosting, the most important questions is "What are your needs". So, what do you need out of this hosting? How much are you storing, how much traffic are you looking at, what sorts of server-side stuff do you need? Etc, etc.

Taximes

I posted this same question awhile ago and got referred to DreamHost...the best net-related decision I ever made was switching to them from my old host.

Their cheapest plan is $9.95 a month, and you get 153 GB of space with 1.5 TB of bandwidth. They've also been great for PHP, mySQL and everything else I've needed.

If I would have known you were looking for both, I would have recommended them earlier as some of their packages include a free domain name. :P

One warning though: if you elect to pay monthly, there is an initial $50 setup charge. However, you can circumvent this by paying for a year upfront (not so bad...it only amounts to $120 if you get the $10 plan).

Plus, there's some kind of referral scheme that supposedly can earn you cash if that's your thing, but I honestly just love their service. I think it was Janson who originally recommended them to me a few months ago.

Medopine

I'm on dreamhost at the moment. Just started with them and so far only had one bit of downtime that they seemed to work pretty hard to correct. Still, there was a good half a day where my site only worked intermittently. From what I've read of them that doesn't happen often.