Discount Web Hosting Guide, Affordable Hosting Services

  Ranks #1, because is one of the best hosting companies we have ever reviewed. If IX Web Hosting keeps up the good work, we will consider moving our website to their servers.

IX Web Hosting has made a remarkable name for itself since its inception in 1999. Boasting their own data center, a highly professional website and very attractive hosting plans, they have managed to be added to the short list of companies that Best Host Reviews is reviewing. Over the course of our review of IX Web Hosting, a period of many months, they continuously improved their performance, reliability and customer service, resulting in extremely quick loading websites and high customer satisfaction.

Reliability
During our extensive hosting experience with IX Web Hosting, we have had hardly any server outages. It would be a lie to say none of our test accounts have never been down - however, the uptime track record is impressive. The question is not IF downtime happens, the question is how often it happens and how quickly your hosting company can resolve the problem, and prevent it in the future. Our overall reliability experience with IX Web Hosting is positive. IX Web Hosting employs diesel backup generators, tested weekly, to ensure that no downtime is encountered over power issues. They also perform routine upgrades to their infrastructure, and do so in as unobtrusive a way as possible, which is a plus.

Price Value
IX Web Hosting, as with all of the hosts we review, are in the shared hosting market, one in which competition is fierce, and prices can only go so low. As a consequence, you tend to get a great deal for your money and IX Web Hosting is definitely competitive in this respect. They offer free site builder software, a free shopping cart, a wonderful customer control panel, and of course, great prices. Their billing cycles run from quarterly and semi-annual to 1 and 2-year billing cycles, on all plans. The longer the billing cycle, the higher the discount that is offered. On top of this, customer support well-covered: 24/7 phone support, a LiveChat interface and a snappy ticketing system make problem resolution painless

  Ranks #2, because Host Excellence is clearly a premier player in the shared hosting market. They are definitely a good choice, and we don’t hesitate in recommending them.

Host Excellence has been in business for several years and with their own data center and customer support office, Host Excellence has been constantly improving the performance of its services and quality of its support. Having recently updated their web site with more aggressive hosting plans and prices, Host Excellence has really started putting the heat on the competition. Their generous selection of hosting plans, coupled with superb service and network reliability, have resulted in fast loading web sites and high customer retention.

Reliability
Host Excellence has an impressive track record when it comes to the stability and dependability of their services. Acknowledging that reliability is in the interests of everyone involved, they have gone to great lengths to ensure that problems are few and far between. Their private data center is a testament to this principle. Backup power facilities, fault-tolerant systems and 24/7 on-site administrative staff make Host Excellence a good choice for anyone.

Price Value
If you’re looking for a great deal on web hosting services, look no further. Being a customer-oriented business, Host Excellence puts a lot of effort into offering their customers as much bang for the buck as you can get in shared hosting, providing a great selection of services and payment options, not to mention a noteworthy level of customer support, the value of which is something that cannot be easily expressed. They provide you with the tools needed to build your website, setup an ecommerce store, manage your databases and a great deal more, all at a wonderful price.

  Ranks #3, because their competative prices and their reliability.

Dot5 Hosting has quickly risen from relative obscurity to a top player, hosting thousands of customers at the iPowerweb data center (with whom they are a "Power Partner"). Their website is crisp and professional, and offers a wide range of bonus features on all accounts, including web templates, bulletin board and ecommerce software, and multimedia streaming support.

Reliability
We had a few hiccups during our time with Dot5, but nothing serious. Sometimes there were delays in the load times of PHP content, which became an off and on occurrence. The problem cleared up after some time and was not apparent throughout the rest of the test. That’s pretty good, being that when a problem like that develops, it is seldom resolved. Not many hosts are willing to put in the effort necessary to reduce server load once a problem with it develops. This is an indication of Dot5’s commitment to resolve even the more difficult issues that arise.

Price Value
Dot5 offers free domain registrations with its 1 and 2 year billing cycles and has no setup fee on any account or billing cycle. Not bad. For only $4.95 per month, Dot5 allows you to manage up to 6 domains on one account. With 200 GB space and 2000 GB monthly transfer shared between them, it's great value even if you only need to host a single domain. Their base package gives you all the features required to host your personal website or small business site and provides all of the space and flexibility you need to expand. Their plans include a fully-equipped Marketing Centre, a Web Site Creator, as many Shopping Carts as you need, a Search Engine Submitter, Search Engine Submitter Reports, a Keyword and Meta-Tag Generator, a Website Link Checker, and $50 Overture credit. All of this, at the price they offer, is a genuine deal.

  Ranks #4, because Overall, Vistapages is a great choice for your web hosting provider.

Vistapages has been providing web hosting services to customers since early 2004 and are well known for their amazing inexpensive web hosting plan called "VistaDeal" -- It sure is a deal! Let me tell you why! They only have 1 web hosting package, convientently called the "VistaDeal" shared hosting plan. With 350 GB of web storage and 3000 GB of data transfer, for only $6.95 per month, you'll never have to worry about being restrained on disk and transfer limitations or worry about breaking your wallet!

Reliability
The VistaDeal comes fully featured with PHP4/PHP5, CGI/Perl, Python, MySQL, PostgreSQL to just name a few. You'll also enjoy the ability to host up to 16 domain names with one account, make use of unlimited e-mail accounts, parked domains, mailing lists, sub-domains and tons more! It's incredible at how much Vistapages gives away with just this one plan verses other hosting companies entire product line put together! Vistapages also throws in several dozen one-click, auto-install scripts, such as mailing list managers, content management systems, blogs, photo galleries and more, not to mention a free site builder for those of you who do not know how to build a web site.

Price Value
Vistapages' VistaDeal package is very affordable. The pricing break down is simple, they have 3 payment terms, month-to-month, yearly and 2-year prepaid plans. With their 2 year plan, you'll be able to get in a $6.95 per month with free setup, their 1 year plan is $7.95 per month with free setup and their month-to-month plan is $15.95 per month plus a $20 setup fee. Their service comes with an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee!

  Ranks #6, because BlueHost is an excellent choice, especially for customers who place a premium on performance and reliability.

BlueHost was founded in 1996 and is known for its inexpensive hosting plans and great performance. They are one of the larger hosting companies out there and provide customers with large amounts of web space and bandwidth, making their hosting solution a valuable commodity. Additionally, they offer several free script plug-ins such as, chat, blogs, polls, web auctions and bulletin boards. Supporting multiple features like, CGI, PHP, Perl, Front Page, MySQL Databases, ecommerce tools with a free shopping cart and the ability to track website traffic, BlueHost makes an all-in-one deal.

Reliability
BlueHost, during our review of their services, proved to have performance and reliability on par with the best shared hosts out there. They are conscious of not overloading their infrastructure, and of staying ahead of the load-curve by constantly expanding their data center. This factor stood out above all others and if performance is a paramount concern, BlueHost is definitely worth a look. We only experienced a few technical issues, all of which were resolved within a reasonable amount of time.

Price Value
Despite Bluehost’s great features, or perhaps on account of them, they do cost a little more than the other companies on this list to host with. If you prepay for 24 months, you do get the $30 set up fee waived and only pay an average of $6.95 per mo. BlueHost only offers Linux hosting. If you need Windows hosting, such as for ASP.NET or Microsoft data bases, you won’t be able to host with BlueHost. Overall, their hosting plan is a good bargain, especially for the performance and reliability they have achieved.