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For the past week I’ve been transitioning my sites from a small mom-and-pop provider to larger but-still-down-to-earth hosting provider, Dreamhost. Things have been shaky so far. The web server has gone down several times, and the mysql server completely crapped out for two days - they ended up replacing it. However, they were pretty shaky at my previous provider too. Dreamhost has much more streamlined support and reporting systems, so getting issues resolved and finding out what is going on is a lot easier.

My main reason for switching was that the old host stopped allowing me to alias emails to comcast addresses. About 1/4 of the users I support are on comcast, this was a big issue. Of course, after being set up for a while with dreamhost I realized they do the same thing, but with AOL instead of comcast. However, they do have mailman distribution listsoftware and other filter methods for getting around this, without furthering the spread of spam (which is the cause of these blocks).

Secondly, after doing some research, I realized that I was paying a lot more, and I wasn’t getting a lot more. I was paying around $40/mo. on the old host, with 7 web sites (mixed windows and linux), 3 gigs of storage and 50 gigs of bandwidth. Now, $10 per month for 200 gigs of storage and 2 TB of bandwidth - all linux (I’ve been waiting for an excuse to dump ASP/Access and use wordpress and gallery for my personal sites).

I’m not sure if there is a better host out there in my price range. Between $10 and $50 a month you really can’t expect much. You’d have to pay close to $100 at least for a reliable shared environment, and even higher if you want dedicated hosting. I think two of the sites I host are pretty high profile, but still - they don’t make money and my “clients” can’t afford better hosting. The only problem with site down time is that it goes against my reputation. Most people don’t know the difference between the artist and the framer.