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Recommendations for a Good Domain Registrar and Web Host?

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 7:48 pm
by futures_untold
Hi guys

I'm looking for recommendations for a new domain registrar and separately a good web host.

I've been using Moniker.com as a registrar and various hosts who have all since folded or been bought out by others (resellers I guess).

While Moniker is good and I shall continue to use them if all else fails, they're not the cheapest and the customer service is US based which is expensive if I need to ring them. For these reasons I'm interested in finding some alternative options.

The following factors are important to me.

Domain registrar:

- Low price for registering / renewing domain names
- Easy user interface for updating the DNS settings, parking domains, locking the domains, updating / hiding whois info, etc
- No 'hidden fees' or 'surprise charges'.
- Easy transfer of domains to and from the registrar.
- Friendly customer service who are easy to contact and respond quickly.
- UK or US based, but will consider other countries if you've had a great experience with them.

Web Host:

- Reasonable price considering the service levels (cheapest isn't necessarily better as cheap means people are probably cutting corners somewhere in the equation).
- Good customer service when raising tickets (friendly + fast / useful response).
- Clarity about how many accounts they host on their server (preferably a fixed amount rather than 'unlimited' (which will effect all the sites on the server eventually when under load).
- UK and US based (although will consider other countries if you've had a good experience with them).

I'm interested in hearing your experiences with your current preferred registrar and host.

- How long have you been with them?
- Do you know / interact with specific people within the company that are friendly and helpful?
- Who would you recommend and why?

And finally, if you have any good 'heads up' tips I ought to be aware of, I'm all ears!

Thanks!

Patrick :)

Re: Good Domain Registrars and Web Hosts?

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 10:35 pm
by Soulstep

Re: Good Domain Registrars and Web Hosts?

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 1:25 am
by smalltock
I don't have any recommendations, but I'd like to point out that your criteria are very general. Quantifying your qualitative constraints may result in more satisfactory recommendations.

Re: Good Domain Registrars and Web Hosts?

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:17 am
by Vast_Grid
http://www.squarespace.com/

make the website before buying it!

Re: Good Domain Registrars and Web Hosts?

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:00 pm
by futures_untold
Thanks for the link. :)

They rank Go Daddy in second place which raises my eyebrows considering the amount of bad press they've received?

Do you have any direct experience of a specific host that you've used?

smalltock wrote:I don't have any recommendations, but I'd like to point out that your criteria are very general. Quantifying your qualitative constraints may result in more satisfactory recommendations.
Thanks for the feedback, I've amended the original post to be more specific. :4:

Vast-Grid wrote:http://www.squarespace.com/

make the website before buying it!
I tried using Squarespace but found the interface more confusing than hand coding!

Re:making the site before hosting it, having a host and domain name sorted motivates me to get cracking with the coding and content creation. :)

Thanks for the comments so far guys, I'm still keen to hear your direct experiences with hosting your own sites and registering your domain names with different registrars.

Patrick. :)

Re: Recommendations for a Good Domain Registrar and Web Host

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:47 pm
by Crimsonghost
My wife has used godaddy in the past and they were great. Ver friendly and helpful with getting your site up and running.

Re: Recommendations for a Good Domain Registrar and Web Host

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 6:13 pm
by fragments
Yea man, GoDaddy has been great for my basic needs. And trust me, you won't forget to renew anything with them if you use an email you check on the regular. They bug the shit out of you. The only thing is they will start to sell the address registered to the domain after a while. I get shit for one of mine all the time.

But do some research on virtual private servers if you need some serious web hosting.

Re: Recommendations for a Good Domain Registrar and Web Host

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2013 9:44 am
by Brothulhu
My mum uses Dreamhost I think, good and cheap apparently

Re: Recommendations for a Good Domain Registrar and Web Host

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2013 10:18 am
by futures_untold
fragments wrote:GoDaddy bug the shit out of you. The only thing is they will start to sell the address registered to the domain after a while. I get shit for one of mine all the time.
Hence my apprehension regarding GoDaddy... :|

fragments wrote:But do some research on virtual private servers if you need some serious web hosting.
Not sure I need a VPS yet lol, just want to host some small sites.


Brothulhu wrote:My mum uses Dreamhost I think, good and cheap apparently
Thanks for the recommendation, it seems a number of DSF members have had a good experience with them (See thread below). :)

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I dug into the DSF custom search and found this old thread discussing web hosts which I remembered seeing before (but was felling too lazy to search for when I posted this thread :6:).

The recommendations in that thread included the following hosts:

- Dreamhost.com
- Bluehost.com
- Justhost.com
- Mediatemple.net (found in a different thread on Dubstepforum)

(Ignoring the other two suggestions in that thread as they look spammy imo).

Any more suggestions / recommendations appreciated.

Patrick :)

Re: Recommendations for a Good Domain Registrar and Web Host

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2013 3:29 pm
by fragments
Well, if you need more reason not to go with GoDaddy, I find their user interface/account info stuff extremely confusing--I rarely need to use it, but it sometimes takes me an hour to find what I want, lol. Maybe I'll look into these others!