Hi, I know theres a thread here about free webhosting, but I'm interested in good paid hosting.
I need to host a few games and what not, I'm wondering if anyone has a host they've been using they could recomend. Also, when checking out sites for hosting (which I have been doing a bit) what should a typical agser site use require in bandwith and storage?
Any help in this matter would be appreciated, thank you.
Ipowerweb has been where many of the AGSer sites have been hosted in the past. We recently got our own dedicated server to host sites on so they were moved to that, but Ipowerweb was a decent host, I think.
Bandwidth for games is tricky to estimate, generally you'd expect to use a few gb a month, but for example, when BJ4 was released AGA's bandwidth surged and the 40gb ran out in a couple of weeks.
Quote from: scotch on Sun 31/07/2005 03:00:38when BJ4 was released AGA's bandwidth surged and the 40gb ran out in a couple of weeks.
Because of all the horny American teenagers who thought that it was Blow Job: Episode IV. :=
A company I've recently started using is called Hostfolio (http://www.hostfolio.com). They have very reasonable prices.
Here is a link to their Window's Web Hosting Plan (http://www.hostfolio.com/web-hosting-plans.asp).
They have Cold Fusion hosting for not much more, which is why I started using them.
If you don't want to be forced to pay yearly (which I know I sure as hell don't), use what I use:
Linux hosting: http://hosting.roboticalworld.com
Windows hosting, required for ASP: http://www.relio.com
Both are very affordable and very reliable. :D
Globat (http://www.globat.com/) have pretty good prices and always have some offer going, at the moment it's $1.99 p/m for the first year with 5gb of space and 75gb bandwidth.
If you need lots of space and lots of bandwidth at reasonable prices: www.hostrocket.com aren't bad... (1 Gig storage, domainname, 50 Gig bandwidth for $6.95 / month)
He! Out of topic, but I've read "Good gay webspace?" at the first glance... :)
Quote from: Farlander on Sun 31/07/2005 12:54:54
He! Out of topic, but I've read "Good gay webspace?" at the first glance... :)
Well if that's what you're after, try HomoHost.com :)
P.S. I have no idea if that site exists so don't blame me if your scarred for life by it's possible content ;)
Quote from: dg on Sun 31/07/2005 13:31:52
Well if that's what you're after, try HomoHost.comÃ, :)
P.S. I have no idea if that site exists so don't blame me if your scarred for life by it's possible contentÃ, ;)
Who are you trying to fool?
You CANNOT beat the ease of signup and customer support of HonestNetworks...
I mean, just look at their plans: http://www.honestnetworks.com/personal.shtml
But.. You must get your own domain name at http://www.godaddy.com or the likes. That's only $8.95 a year, though. VERY cheap stuff.
Quote from: scotch on Sun 31/07/2005 03:00:38
Ipowerweb has been where many of the AGSer sites have been hosted in the past. We recently got our own dedicated server to host sites on so they were moved to that, but Ipowerweb was a decent host, I think.
I wouldn't recommend ipowerweb. AGS was hosted there for a year or so, and I can only describe them as incompetant. When the site was up it was fine, but their technical support staff didn't have a clue when problems cropped up. Also, they accidentally redirected my domain to another site for a few weeks.
It may be cheap but you get what you pay for.
This site is currently hosted with westhost (www.westhost.com) which is more expensive but the staff do seem to know what they're talking about.
Quote from: Pumaman on Sun 31/07/2005 21:27:48
Quote from: scotch on Sun 31/07/2005 03:00:38
Ipowerweb has been where many of the AGSer sites have been hosted in the past. We recently got our own dedicated server to host sites on so they were moved to that, but Ipowerweb was a decent host, I think.
I wouldn't recommend ipowerweb. AGS was hosted there for a year or so, and I can only describe them as incompetant. When the site was up it was fine, but their technical support staff didn't have a clue when problems cropped up. Also, they accidentally redirected my domain to another site for a few weeks.
It may be cheap but you get what you pay for.
This site is currently hosted with westhost (www.westhost.com) which is more expensive but the staff do seem to know what they're talking about.
I completely disagree with CJ's estimation of ipowerweb. I used them for about 3 years, and I don't have a bad word to say about them. Downtime was minimal, and technical support requests rarely took long to be resolved. Plus they're incredibly cheap for the services provided.
Aside from them though, Heart (http://www.heartinternet.co.uk) have very generous packages, for a great price, too. Might not be open to people not from the UK, but I dunno.
I am hosting my site with Site5 (http://www.site5.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=263), and they're the best host I know of so far in terms of both plan value and customer support (~15 min avg ticket reply time).
And, you just missed it, but they had a special where you could get a free month of hosting just for using Firefox.
A free month for using FF? That's a sale!
I'd check out http://nearlyfreespeech.net/
Their pricing plan is the most interesting thing I can find. Rather than a standard monthly charge you 'top up' your bandwidth credit and it just gets used up as it does. It's supposedly more price-efficient than standard monthly-fee packages.
They offer $1 for 1GB. If you run out of credit, your site automatically shuts off, so there's no chance of accidentially having a huge overage bill. Of course there are hosts out there which use the monthly fee system, and, if you do the math, it probably works out cheaper than $1 for 1GB, but for those hosts which offer very large amounts of bandwidth (I know someone once offered 1200gb), they're probably overselling, a practice where the host guesses that 8/10 people aren't going to use their allocation of bandwidth. The system generally seems to work, but I'm still in two minds as to whether it's a good practice or not..
BJ4 is 22mb and was downloaded 7791 times as of posting. That works out to about 167gb. If you're on a low-bandwidth diet, you'd probably be better off with Nearlyfreespeech. High-bandwidth diets might want to try and get away with an overselling plan or something.
If you want a good host with a traditional scheme, check out A Small Orange (http://asmallorange.com/). They don't oversell, and their prices are divided into two parts, the first plans being normal paid webhosting, the 'Extreme' plans having very high bandwdith allotments, but nothing fancy like PHP and MySQL. So if you need to host large games, you might want to get an Extreme plan or something.
I use www.shieldhost.com
No banners or pop-ups will be forced to appear on your site.
Disk Space 400 MB
Transfer Space 10 GB per month
And that's just $1.99 a month..
They are very cheap and very good.
For a domain name I use www.cheapdomainname.com or of course www.godaddy.com
Hope that helps...
I used http://www.switchweb.co.uk as I found them cheap and easy to set up. Plus the guy who owns it goes to my Uni and it was easier going for that than trawling through thousands of sites.
I know I only get about 1gb of transfer a month but when I signed up I didn;t have any games. My maximum I've transfered is 750mb and that was with all my Brittens photos.