Who Do You Guys Use for Domain/Hosting Services on Your Websites?

[MatrixClaw]

Odd question - But I was just wondering, who do you guys use for your website? I'm thinking about creating a site, and I need something reliable for uploading songs to. Obviously, I need a large amount of space and bandwidth, so I don't have to keep deleting finished products after my storage fills up, like I do on dropbox.

A friend of mine setup a website through GoDaddy, with 150GB of space, for our production company and said I can use it for my studio site if I chip in on the monthly fee. However, I'm honestly not sure I want to share with someone else. I'd like to know that I'm in complete control of everything going on with the hosting. Obviously, with this route, I'd also have to buy a domain.

My dad uses Arvixe on his business's site, and while it doesn't really get much traffic, since it's just a basic design for giving information on his construction business, but we've never had any problems with it in the past. The site was shut down for a day or so a while back, which I thought was somehow my fault, but it turns out it was an error in their server and they fixed it within a half hour of me emailing them about it. With Arvixe, you get unlimited space and bandwidth, for half the price of GoDaddy, and free domain for the life of your hosting. That always seemed really fishy to me, though - There's got to be something they're not telling you there.

So anyway - What are you guys using? What would you recommend? What would you not recommend?

 

[Taurean]

You just have to keep in mind your upload/download use. Most of these common hosting packages are misleading. For example they say "unlimited" BW and space but not really. The unlimited BW and space is theoretically there, so they aren't lying in that sense but the fineprint specifies "fair use". Somebody who works with a lot of big media files (such as an audio engineer) consistently will most likely get flagged and throttled. IF you do a lot of professional work with media files with tons of download and upload day to day consistently, you need a dedicated server or a virtual private server, which will cost good money, not a "shared server" which is what most of these common hosting packages are. Now if you go and split and "shared server" and shar eit with anotehr person or group who are uploading and downloading a lot, it's even worse.

 

[MatrixClaw]

You just have to keep in mind your upload/download use. Most of these common hosting packages are misleading. For example they say "unlimited" BW and space but not really. The unlimited BW and space is theoretically there, so they aren't lying in that sense but the fineprint specifies "fair use". Somebody who works with a lot of big media files (such as an audio engineer) consistently will most likely get flagged and throttled. IF you do a lot of professional work with media files with tons of download and upload day to day consistently, you need a dedicated server or a virtual private server, which will cost good money, not a "shared server" which is what most of these common hosting packages are. Now if you go and split and "shared server" and shar eit with anotehr person or group who are uploading and downloading a lot, it's even worse.

So then who would you suggest?

It's not like I'm running a big professional studio, just a small project studio out of my home, so it's not like I get a ton of customers. My goal as a studio isn't really to make money doing it, as much as it is to just offset to my gear purchases

 

[Fbarre]

I use 1&1 in the UK and never had any problems with it so far. Customer Support is great and the administration panel is very easy to deal with. I would not go with GoDaddy since I heard that they were selling domains that were registered and in use without letting their customers know and more of that kidn. Also 1&1 doesn't cost too much and offers different bundles which have pretty much everything you need. Before 1&1 I have been using Fasthosts where I had to pay £30 rental a year just to be able to use a single database, which is insane...

 

[Chaos_Moon]

I just started creating my own website. I host it through GoDaddy, and design it through WordPress. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it, but I'm still learning and creating mine. Like yours, I just have a small home studio.

 

[aortizjr]

I would just go with godaddy,bluehost,ipage, etc. The range is like $5-$15 a month. It is so cheap why even share? As long as you aren't shipping full sessions you will typically be ok. Besides imagine the upload time. Snail mail would be faster.

Mine I mainly use for sound samples and for sending mixes as MP3's to clients. I also use it to share ideas with my bands and collaboration with folks in other cities. With everything as MP3's the transfers are pretty small. Every once and a while when I know it is something big or where lots of people will be hitting it, I will use dropbox or something.

Personally I rent a full server and share it with other people. But we are all web developers and host multiple websites for our bands, friends, small businesses, etc. So it is worth it, but my transfer rate is pretty small and I am about as busy as I can handle while still having a day job (2 albums, 4 EP's so far this year). So I suspect a regular hosting service will be fine.

A good idea is to offset some of the transfers with dropbox and soundcloud if it is an issue. But I suspect it won't be. Then with so many of these hosting sites with canned sites and such, it is so much easier than it used to be.

 

[Sloan]

I use GoDaddy, but IT IS SLOW AS FUCK.

I also suggest using Wordpress for your site, I've been looking for something like that since 1998.

 

[MatrixClaw]

I use GoDaddy, but IT IS SLOW AS FUCK.

Hmm... that's not good. Definitely not what I want

Wordpress is pretty cool, I've used it before. Generally, I design all my websites from scratch, using Dreamweaver, though. I might use Adobe Muse for my site though, just cause I've been playing around with it lately and it's super easy to get a nice looking site that would take a lot longer to completely code myself

 

[Sloan]

Hmm... that's not good. Definitely not what I want

Wordpress is pretty cool, I've used it before. Generally, I design all my websites from scratch, using Dreamweaver, though. I might use Adobe Muse for my site though, just cause I've been playing around with it lately and it's super easy to get a nice looking site that would take a lot longer to completely code myself

GoDaddy uses virtual hosting like most cheap web hosting where there are thousands of sites hosted off one physical server, the problem I think is that they are obviously popular and the servers are just overloaded, so often it is pretty slow.

I really like using wordpress because it is extremely easy and there are a ton of great user-made plugins that get updated often with new version changes. I can post to my site via mobile/email, have that post go to facebook, twitter, and myspace or vice versa. I use reverbnation music player and show widgets in the sidebar so I can track those stats in reverbnation. I really like being able to integrate all the social media bullshit we have to keep up with nowadays.

Speaking of integrating social media, have you checked out http://www.onesheet.com ? It's an interesting idea, but not sure how useful it is.

 

[sprack]

Amazon AWS.

 

[drew_drummer]

I use 1&1.

 

[darthjujuu]

hostgator. highly recommended. fast as shit, good customer service, siq cpanel. powerful / open if you know what you're doing, babytown interface if you don't. best of bof' worldz.