The search is over!
While the journey was tough, and we lost some of our exploration party along the way, finally, our efforts have proved not to be in vain, and the search for the new host is over! The golden glow floods the room, as we open the treasure chest to claim our prize…xHostSolutions (on the Windows US Helm xValue plan). Well, that's the end of my short career as Indianna Jones I think. The short list was NetLogistics, Web24, discountasp, Mosso, and xhostsolutions.
My past has been tattered with hosting vessels barely able to keep their servers afloat, requiring the vast hordes known as the Oversold to bucket water out of the ship. I'll nary forget my time with Unlimited-Space, SolidInternet* or Dreamhost. The promise of a mound of treasure is not quiet as good as the regular funds that stream from SLA's. My stint as Guybrush Threepwood should end there.
*To their credit SI didn't oversell (well, not that degraded the service), they were just hopeless.
Why leave Dreamhost?
Dreamhost had a lot of potential, their features were good, speeds were acceptable, they weren't "smalltime" with many servers and a decent arrangement, but they failed on just one key thing….stability. While you pay more for hosts with a SLA, it at least encourages them to keep their servers going. Over the past few weeks, my mail has been up and down, my site has fluctuated from timing out to having the user folders cleaned out to actually working!
On the flip side, I've also been with NetLogistics in the past, and while they had plans that suited my needs, they were a bit pricey (but this is actually reflected in quality of service/etc) on my relatively low budget.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (about xHostSolutions)?
The Good:
- SmarterMail rocks. If you've ever had any form of shared webhosting, you'll know that SquirrelMail, Horde, Imp and most of the others all suck for webmail.
SmarterMail's web interface, on the other hand, performs fast, handles HTML properly, and is very similar to Outlook. - When trying to figure out if this was the account for me, I sent a few emails which were all answered within half an hour. Some of these were at 11pm!
- I suppose this is a "good". HELM, the web panel chosen by xHostSolutions, is very responsive compared to CPanel or Plesk. The interface is uglier than the others (subjective), but it works very fast. Plesk, on a much faster host, often would take up to five minutes to just login, let alone perform other operations!
- Despite my initial fears, Wordpress works, and it works great. I tested by installing WP 2.5, imported all my blog posts fine
- Url Rewriting (Helicon Tech ISAPI_Rewrite v3) works just like MOD_REWRITE in Apache, is installed through HELM and once you punch in the correct rules, works perfectly with Wordpress.
The Bad:
- As good as SmarterMail is the version provided is "only" SmarterMail 4.x Pro, not Enterprise which has proper Outlook syncing.
- Limited databases (not too bad to be honest, just need to prefix tables)
- Only MySQL(4/5) and MSSQL 2000 on the US server. I have been told 2005 will be offered in a month or two however.
- No .NET 3/3.5 support (yet?)
Url Rewriting (through ISAPI) won't install through HELM. Major bummer.They fixed it within 30mins of me sending the support ticket!
The Ugly:
- Although not their fault, the time between submitting an application and having my account activated was horrible.
This was their payment gateways fault - Paymate. They don't seem to operate on weekends, so I had to wait till Monday (submitted late Friday night) before Paymate processed the order, and then handed that to xHost - Ping times are higher than Dreamhosts unfortunately.
At this rate, I hope to migrate my blog over by the end of next week, but we'll see how things go.