Choosing a Web Host

Finding a good hosting provider can be a daunting task. Here, in order of importance, are the criteria that should be considered when choosing a hosting provider:

  • Support for the functionality your website requires
  • Uncrowded servers with nearly 100% uptime
  • Quick response times to trouble tickets
  • Ease of administration
  • Bandwidth & storage space

Unless your website is destined to become incredibly popular (think a dating website or photo-sharing site), bandwidth and even storage space shouldn't be the deciding factors in your decision.

Here are the hosting companies I recommend for most of my customers. Features and pricing is current as of early 2007.

Dreamhost - $7.95/month, prepaid

160 GBs storage, 1.6 TB bandwidth, email, free domain registration

Current Dreamhost coupons:

OFF25DH - use at checkout for $25 off 1-year pre-paid hosting.
OFF30DH - use at checkout for $30 off 2-year pre-paid hosting.

MediaTemple - $20/month

100 GBs storage, 1TB bandwidth, email, great control panel

Joyent Connector - $15/month

5 GBs storage, 15 GBs bandwidth, email + online file storage and intranet software


What hosting provider should I use?

Winner on Price

For most nonprofit and small business hosting, I recommend Dreamhost for their value. If you anticipate having a lot of visits or you plan to host large files such as videos, then Dreamhost's copious amounts of storage are the way to go.

Winner on Ease-of-use

MediaTemple offers an elegant control panel that makes setting up email account and other necessary tasks easy.

Winner on Features

If you'd also like separate online file storage (think backups of your data), a great online webmail application, calendar and contact manager, then a Joyent Connector would be my choice.

This site, copyanddesign.com, is hosted with Joyent.