Help! Need new hosting service NOW !

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Posted by Websquad, 05-07-2007, 01:37 PM
It appears that my current hosting service, who shall remain unnamed, is loosing viability as an on-going business. Telephones are not being answered. Voice mail boxes are full. Billing is fouled up. Support ticket system is a mess. I'm very concerned. The bright spot is that the system has good reliability and one excellent technical support person. I have an unusual business model: pro bono ... I host 13 domains, 95% are non-profit - mostly churches. A few are small brochures but one is a church with almost 500 web pages. Operating funds, about $30/month, come out of my pocket. Have 23 domains registered with GoDaddy, and am happy with their service. I need a reseller account that is supported with cPanal, so I can backup with cPanel from old site and restore with cPanel on new site. I'm open for suggestions! Help !!
Posted by SwiftModders, 05-07-2007, 01:42 PM
Hello Websquad, Welcome to WHT, sort of :-). Well, I see your looking for a cPanel/WHM host so that narrows down your OS preferences and control panel. However, do you have any resource specifications for your hosting account? Any logs or bandwidth records to go on for those sites you host? I would suggest gathering all of that information up and doing a nice search in the Reseller Offers section of WHT for a good deal. Once you have a good list of hosts together you can definitely narrow your choices down by contacting them and giving their sales and support team a quick test. Also, search for reviews on here if you need more opinions if you're torn between hosts. Good luck!
Posted by icecreams, 05-07-2007, 06:59 PM
Websquad welcome to WHT. Sorry to hear you are having trouble with your current host. How much disk space and monthly transfer are you after, that will make it a little easier to narrow down your choices. Most hosts who offer cpanel should be able to move your accounts, the only thing they will need is the account login info.
Posted by BrettB, 05-07-2007, 07:01 PM
It's too bad that your current host is going downhill which in turn has forced you to decide to move to a new host. With your current account, is it one cPanel account with 12 addon domains or do you have a reseller account with WHM and have 13 accounts under a reseller account?
Posted by critter183, 05-07-2007, 07:55 PM
I pay $50 a month for a nice reseller account. Been with them for 18 months and I can't say enough good. The host before them did basically the same thing yours is doing, only worse. They cost me 2 years worth of work building a poker forum. It never did recover from all of the issues I had with them. If you're interested in who they are, let me know. I don't know if it is proper to post hosting co. names around here.
Posted by john90, 05-07-2007, 07:58 PM
critter - As far as I know you can type company names as long as your not working for them in anyway. @OP Good luck with the search. Let us know.
Posted by critter183, 05-07-2007, 08:21 PM
It's Blinx Hosting. No I don't work for them or get anything for referals in any way. I'm just pleased as punch with them. I like the fact that they are in Canada too. I'm in US. I do a lot of politically incorrect stuff and I don't think freedom of speech counts for much any more in America. I did a site for a tax resistor that was surfed extensively by the DOJ and IRS a little while back. lol It got Dugg to the front page of Digg, and the site had a 500mb tax video on it. The site served up 50mb/s for like 8 hours without a hiccup. I cut the link to the video when I got the dreaded "about to exceed bandwidth" warning. hehehe
Posted by ldcdc, 05-07-2007, 08:24 PM
Hosting recommendations are fine here, as long as you have first hand experience with the host. Some proof such as a domain that you host with them will be needed for review validation purposes. You probably want to maintain your anonymity, so you can just send the domain to the moderating team (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/helpdesk/) for verification, and a simple confirmation will be posted here. Thread moved to Reseller Hosting Forum.
Posted by Websquad, 05-07-2007, 08:37 PM
Good News! I had a productive conversation with the lady that provides me with technical support, and I have a better feeling about her company's business prospects. The last time I had to switch she was with her old company and she gave me a couple of weeks warning before they went into melt down. She promised to do the same again. Once again, the contact was made via her home phone which was routed to her cell phone. So, I'm feeling better. Having said that, I still want to have a Plan B in my pocket. To that end, my current contract allows a maximum bandwidth usage of 48.83GB, and a disk allocation of 2,500 MB. In Jan - Apr, my bandwidth usage was 6.09, 4.64, 5.93, and 3.83GB; my current disk requirements are 1,077 MB. I expect these to grow, but not by great amounts. I have 13 domains, will add one in the next week or so, and will likely need another 3-5 in the next year or so. The features that we use in our normal operations are cPanel, WebHostManager for Resellers, Fantastico, WordPress Blog, Mailman mailing list, Agora Cart shopping cart, Server Side Includes, cron, shell access (only occasionaly), and awstats.
Posted by Ireland, 05-07-2007, 09:46 PM
These are all good Reseller Servers: http://www.hostgator.com http://www.hostnine.com http://www.kualo.com http://www.resellerzoom.com http://www.innohosting.com http://www.Dathorn.com http://www.dotable.com http://www.devotedhost.net http://www.knownhost.com http://www.idologic.com Good Response one many in WHT.
Posted by haxcorner, 05-08-2007, 02:53 PM
I recommend a reseller account through Hostgator. I've been with them for over 4 years now & I'm very happy with their services - their lowest level reseller account is $25/month & I think it has plenty of space/bandwidth to meet most requirements. (Plus, it uses whm/cpanel).
Posted by KNL-BSW, 05-09-2007, 12:54 AM
Where most of your sites are churches you should have a chat with Scott over at HostingTruth.net. He primarily hosts church sites. I don't know if he is considering offering reseller plans, but where you have mostly the same content he does and do it for non-profit he would probably be open to the idea.
Posted by bj3000, 05-09-2007, 07:23 AM
Ihave used ace-host.net for 4 years, and are very satisfied with them.... Quick and good support, and not too expencive.
Posted by premium20, 05-09-2007, 08:08 AM
Welcome to WHT. Glad to know you are happy with ace-host. Can you send in a domain for verification to the moderators? To the OP: I would agree with Larry on this one. Why not host with someone who has a niche of Church Site hosting?
Posted by Websquad, 05-09-2007, 02:25 PM
I need a more general site because I do have one for-profit small manufacturing facility and two site sfor a couple of musicologists. I'm thinking about adding one for our local orchestra's community chorus also. The remainder are church related. Thanks for the input, everyone: you've given me a lot to think about and research. One issue I've found is that some of the sites limit Mailman to 500 addresses in an hour, and there is no way to throttle that without breaking up the list and manually sending out batches. Since all my lists are one-way lists, I'm looking at phpList to see if I could modify the user-accessible portion to send batches ... that should be the subject of another post (and on another forum). So, I'm still in the search for Plan "B" - but thankful that I have some assurance that my current hosting service is viable, despite their horrible back office operations.
Posted by KNL-BSW, 05-09-2007, 02:43 PM
Another thing to make sure of is that the host you decide to go with doesn't allow adult content, warez, erotica, etc... in any shape or form which is why I recommended HostingTruth.