Web Hosting Compared: 2006-01

my website is “XahLee.org”. My web hoster is [http://www.westhost.com/package-compare.html] . I'm on the Deluxe plan.

My bandwidth per month is 60GB. It just exceeded that, and they cut out all services.

So right now, if you send me email to xah@XahLee.org it will bounce. And XahLee.org is inaccessible. Please send emails for the next few days to p0lyglut@yahoo.com

I'm gonna talk to their customer service right away in the morning. Possibly upgrading my package again to the $27/month for 80GB bandwidth.

Web Hosting Compared

Here's how they looks for someone who needs greater than 60 giba bytes of bandwidth per month. 1 year payment. Need a unique IP address.

• http://www.westhost.com/
125GB/$21

This is their “New Year Plus” plan. I've been with them since 2004-09. They are very good. No downtime except scheduled. Customer service is prompt and polite.

• http://dreamhost.com/shared/
1.0TB/$10+$5 unique IP
1.6TB/$20+$5 unique IP

DreamHost.com has a “Code Monster” plan that's 1.6TB/$20. They have super bandwidth allowance! I might switch to it. They have a $49 setup fee, but can be weaved for 1 year plan. One thing they don't have is a unique IP address, which is $4.95 per month extra. They are located in Huntington Park, CA. The domain name started in 1997. DreamHost is suggested to me by Michael Stevens (mstevens) on freenode irc #emacs.

• http://www.verio.com/hosting-plan-2000/
200GB/$12.
400GB/$20.

Wow, this low pricing surprised me. I was with best.com from 1996 to about 2000, which in about 1999 got bought by verio. Best.com as a small company was very good. When it became the big verio the customer service becomes lousy. I haven't checked them since 2000.

• http://addr.com/services.htm
80GB/$15.

SILVER plan has 60GB bw. GOLD plan, which seems their highest, has only 80GB. The gold plan is $14.95. This is suggested to me by Alex Feinberg (strlen), who said it's fast, reliable, and cheap, because he used to work there. addr.com is registered to be in Campbell, CA, since 1997.

• http://bizwala.net/hosting_plans/vps_special.php
 100GB/$50.

• http://www.textdrive.com/hosting/shared/
100GB/$100.
 textdrive: For 60GB bw, it's “business 1” and is $60/m. 100GB is “business 2” at $100/month.

• http://www.netspaceonline.net/hosting.php
 75GB/$73.

Netspaceonline's got 75 GB bw for $73/month, “NS-R3” plan.

(note: prices are rounded)

2006-01-29: Addendum

I have switched to dreamhost.com. It is superb. I get 1 tetrabytes of bandwidth per month. That should take care of my bandwidth worries for perhaps the whole 2006. But also, it is less expensive, and there are several improvements important for me over westhost.com. Here i detail them:

• Port 587 open. My internet service provider is SBC. Many ISP block port 25 used by the smtp server to prevent email spamming. So, that means i cannot sent out email to my smtp server at xahlee.org thru the standard port 25. Now, a standard workaround is to use port 587. However, that port at xahlee.org is not open. I talked to westhost.com's support about this and it seems too much hassle to actually get them to open that. So, for several months i've been actually using a smtp service provider for $3 per month. But now with dreamhost.com having port 587 open, everything worked fine.

Full unix shell. While at westhost.com i get a limited shell. (they have some kinda honeypot setup where you don't see any other users or processes) There's no rsync, no emacs, and many other admin commands are not available.

SFTP availability. Westhost.com does not offer sftp, but dreamhost.com does. Usually, if a web hosting service provider don't have something out of the box, it's problematic to get it. To begin with, you have to get to talk to their senior support staff who can understand what you mean.

(Note: i got kicked out by dreamhost. See: John Bokma Harassment (DreamHost Review))

2011-12 Update

from 2006-06 to now (2011-12), i am using 1and1.com. Am very satisfied customer. Sometimes 3 years ago, they updated their service plans so that the bandwidth is now unlimited.

My Webhosting History

I started to have a website in early 1996 at [http://best.com/~xah], hosted by best.com. Best.com is a tiny company located right in Mountain View, CA (that's Silicon Valley). In ~1999 best.com got acquired by verio.com. In 2000-Jan i started to have my own domain xahlee.org, and it is hosted by the http://mathforum.org/ Swarthmore College http://www.swarthmore.edu/ (PA). At these times, my site xahlee.org does not yet have controversial essays. It's mostly mathematics referred to by hundreds of educational organization. In 2002-07, i moved xahlee.org to a commercial remarkablehosting.com. Then, in 2004-09 it's with westhost.com. In 2006-01, due to partly a refusal of bandwidth upgrade, i moved to dreamhost.com. In 2006-06, someone on newsgroup harassed me and dreamhost.com is kicking me out. I switched to 1and1.com .

According to drexel's newsletter Drexelink Vol.7, No. 8 [http://www.drexel.edu/univrel/drexelink/story.asp?ID=847&vol=7&num=8] , Math Forum begun in 1993 at Swarthmore College, then it got purchased by WebCT in 2000-07. Then, WebCT lost interest and Drexel University [ http://drexel.edu/ ] (PA) took over Mathforum.org in 2001-08.