The marvels of a good host

I do not have my own data center. In fact, I don't know of too many people who do. The things are large, and complicated, and take an abundance of resources and manpower to run and maintain. In fact, as much as I'd love to, I don't even have my own production server due to the prohibitive costs of sufficient bandwidth in my area. So I, like countless other webdevs, am compelled to rely on hosting companies that all too often offer the world but deliver nothing more than a box of rocks.

In the past nine months, I have struggled with two such hosts. Although it is not my intention to badmouth anyone (thus I won't go into details), I do feel it important to mention the companies as a cautionary for others who might consider them today or in the future.

With the first, Christian Web Host (now a reseller for Jumpline), I had enjoyed an excellent relationship for several years. Their service was always reliable, their support was always prompt and relatively competent, and their prices and offerings were at least in the realm of competitive. Then, about ten months ago, all of that changed.

And the second, StartLogic, I had hoped would be an adequate replacement for CWH as my go-to host. On paper, they offered unbeatable pricing and service, but within just a couple of months of signing on the dotted line (right after the money-back guarantee expired, of course), a number of issues with performance and a glaring problem with the quality of support quickly spoiled that hope.

So the third time around, I was earnest about finding a good host. For about six months, I researched packages and pricing schedules and read reviews on an almost daily basis. To be certain, it was nearly overwhelming. Several times, I thought I had narrowed the list to one or two, only to then stumble across a number of reviews that brought into question one or more of the things that webdevs find important in a host. Finally, though, one company managed to find its way to the surface.

I was impressed when they responded to my sales inquiry within fifteen minutes. I was astonished when, the first time I contacted support, they answered - competently - within the hour. And I was overwhelmed last week when they helped a client in an incredible bind when their former host hosed their site. But I must take a moment to explain.

The client had built an incredible library of topographic imagery weighing in at over 155GB which they tied into a Google Maps interface to showcase and sell. The host they were with had billed their service as "unlimited storage" and "unlimited bandwidth," but apparently had an undocumented limit of 25GB storage. When they discovered the massive photo library, they of course sent notice that it would be removed for taking up too much space. The problem was that, since they sent so many promotional emails and such, the notice went into the client's junk mail system. There was no follow-up of any kind until one day the client discovered that the whole thing was gone.

I should mention, since most of us don't upload that kind of data on a daily basis, that uploading 155GB to a new server would have taken my client more than a month, even assuming they could absolutely saturate their upload capacity.

Enter HostGator.

Not only did HostGator set up a dedicated server for a reasonable price, but they then went above and beyond to converse directly with the data center so that, rather than having to upload the entire folder again, my client could mail a hard disk directly to the data center and have it connected to the server. It was a violation of ordinary security procedures, but HostGator support made it happen.

So the moral of the story is simple. HostGator has it all. Performance, reliability, support, and an unusual dedication to meeting the customer's needs.

Now, who knows. HostGator could tank in a few months or a few years, but for the time being, they've earned my seal of approval.