I’m not satisfied with my current webhost, TextDrive.com, and I’m looking for suggestions/alternatives.
TextDrive has provided good support, mostly, and the $25/month for shared hosting is reasonable, though clearly not the cheapest out there. I have a handful of domains (<10), and pencoyd.com, running clock is the only active one. The 2GB storage and 10GB/month in bandwidth are fine, and I do want to run WordPress (at least). I’m hardly a power user, but my vanity appreciates the opportunity to make bigger mistakes to challenge myself technically, so more features are appealing (if not truly important).
The two major failings of TextDrive?
First, the shared hosting goes down too often. There was a stretch in the spring of this year where the server I was on (bidwell, for any TD customers… but hardly the only one with problems) went down at least once a week for 1-3 hours. This went on for ~6 weeks. When that server goes down, clock goes down (unfortunate) and our e-mail goes down (very frustrating, and what’s pushing me over the edge). The TextDrive forums are full of frustration.
Second, the webmail default set-up (and the rest of the control panel) is poor. TextDrive gives you enough control that I should probably be able to install something better myself…but I suppose life is too short, or my priorities are elsewhere, or something. Anyway, it’s been a persistent pain point. I’ve been told about Fastmail, which would be a separate solution to the e-mail issue (for an additional price).
But I think it’s time to solve both problems at once, if possible. TextDrive isn’t the worst I’ve used, and the individual, real support contact I’ve gotten along the way is impressive. But I don’t want to need it!
The webhost recommendations I’ve gotten so far are, in no particular order:
I haven’t done my research yet on any of these. Hoping, before I start, that the LazyWeb will throw me a bone and short-circuit/accelerate my research.