After three years with VoNetwork, I recently made the switch to Site5. It wasn’t that I wanted to switch to Site5, but VoNetwork kind of forced my hand. After it switched to new ownership last year, my sites started going down more for no reason, email was slow and I also dealt with IP blacklisting issues, and the communication from VoNetwork was substandard at best. The poor communication I could handle, so long as everything was up and running. But when my sites are slow or down, and I can’t post reviews on scanning software or entries about what I’ve done on a particular day, Houston, we have a problem.

I have been with Site5 for a little over a month now, and I’m very happy with the service. The set-up was quick, they used the spiffy cPanel Move feature to automatically transfer all of my hosting accounts from VoNetwork to Site5, the communication has always been excellent, and I even had the option of submitting a review in exchange for a $5 credit. Whoo hoo!

I registered my very first domain in 2001. While I recall the name vividly, I’ll save myself the embarrassment of sharing it with you. Instead, I will share that the domain registration was like $30, and the company — I don’t remember who — wanted nearly that much for a measly little 100mb of space and a few gigs of bandwidth. Pfft. Obviously, I’ve learned a lot since then, but one thing I haven’t experienced a lot of are web hosts. I’ve had domains since 2001, and I’ve had the following hosts:

• CyberPixels
• Netrillium
• E-Starr
• VoNetwork

I can now add Site5 to the list. I’ve had issues with random downtime, DNS issues and weirdness with emails for the past few months, and after an increase in problems and the frequency of them and a decrease in communication, I decided to switch. Angela recommended Site5, so here I am!

Over a year ago I mentioned that I am hosted with VoNetwork. Well, I’m promoting them again, because I am still with them, and I have absolutely no plans of switching. I have all of my personal blogs (including jenn.nu) hosted with VoNetwork, and two very busy and active message boards are also on one of their servers. I would highly recommend VoNetwork to anyone who is looking for reliable shared or reseller hosting!

I don’t know if they use a Rackmount monitor, or something else entirely, but the hosting as a whole is awesome. Excellent uptime, any downtime is minimal and promptly taken care of, and most recently, some sort of spam filter put in on the email server so that my daily spam has gone from 100+ to less than 10.

CyberPixels was my very first host. I can’t vouch for their services now, as I haven’t used them in seven years, but back when I did use them — from the spring of 2002 until the fall of 2002 — I greatly enjoyed their services and customer service. The only reason I moved away from them was because I accepted a technical support job at Netrillium, which granted me free hosting in exchange for answering support desk tickets and support emails.

It’s nice to see that CP is still around, even if some of the people who made it so great (like Cecilia!) moved on to start up their own hosting companies (*cough*the very awesome VoNetwork *cough*).

Who was your very first hosting company?

P.S. Enough with the Phenphedrine spammy commercials God I hate evening television. Thank god for DVRs!

Back in the day of my first domain (name withheld to protect my dignity, what little I have!), I paid over $40 for the registration. The domain name was a .org, and the registration period was for a year.

Yeah… I thought you’d say that. I said it too, two years later when I realized how badly I was ripped off.

A .com, .net or .org domain registration should cost you no more than $10 per year. If you are paying more, YOU ARE BEING RIPPED OFF. Shop around. Know your prices. Stay away from places like eNom unless you have a reseller account; otherwise they’ll rip you off too.

Personally, I recommend GoDaddy. Between their already decent prices and the various GoDaddy coupon codes you can find floating around the internet, you can easily register a .com, .net or .org domain name for less than $8 for the year.

E-Starr Hosting provides convenient, affordable and reliable website hosting solutions for business and personal sites, and has been around since 2002. I found them in May of 2006, after searching around for a hosting provider. I signed up for one of their reseller accounts, and to date I still have that reseller account.

I stay with E-Starr because why should I fix something if it isn’t broken? Any downtime* that occurs happens so rarely that I don’t recall any specific incidents, the owner herself is always available to speak to, and any issues I have had, including billing, upgrades and data recovery, have all been addressed quickly.

Services that E-Starr offers include single domain hosting, multiple domain hosting (resellers) and domain registrations. Their prices are reasonable and affordable, and all plans can be customized to meet your specific needs.

VoNetwork is a hosting company that has been around for a little while, but has recently been taken over by someone who has been in the hosting business since 2000 or so. Her name is Cecilia, and she is a wonderful, trustworthy, dependable host that I set up a reseller account with the moment I knew she was back in business.

I have had my reseller account with VoNetwork since the fall, but only recently began using it with the majority of my domains (for instance, this one). So far, I’ve encountered minimal downtime, and quick responses and help from VoNetwork whenever I’ve needed anything.

I give them a glowing recommendation!