Interland Redux

My tune has changed.

Recently Interland raised their prices and slapped limits on email POP accounts and lowered the amount of disk space in each plan. As a result I've been looking around for other suppliers and I've been pleased with all the options available.

Unfortunately I took advantage of signing up for 2 years of hosting at Interland to get my per-month charges down. So I'm throwing away some $$$ by moving. But it's getting pretty frustrating dealing with them so it's worth it. My recommendation: Host with someone who lets you pay on a monthly basis or offers refunds for unused time if you transfer your account.

I'm not in a position to recommend any particular host anymore. I'm in the process of moving all my personal sites from Interland, where I customarily have to wait 20 minutes or more for technical support when my server crashes (which it does every 3 days or so) to a new host (www.datapipe.com) where tech support calls get answered on the second ring. In the process of finding DataPipe I looked at a dozen other hosts that had better pricing than Interland.

At DataPipe I've actually purchased not just Web site space but an entire private server. Technically I'm able to offer full-service hosting on my server, which I'll be doing for friends and family and a few business for which my daughters have developed Web sites. I'm definitely not starting a Web hosting business. It's just cheaper and easier to do my several personal sites this way than to buy individual accounts with any host.

My DataPipe server runs Linux, which is a pain since I'm an NT guy, but I have full access to the server via telnet, so that's cool. I'm trying to learn Perl and the Apache Web server, which is challenging but fun.

In the course of all this I've had a chance to talk to tech support at both www.buydomains.com and www.enom.com, two domain registrars. I've been relatively impressed with the promptness of the answers at both companies, though it's taken two or three days longer than it should have to do a simple transfer from one to the other. Both seem to offer flexible registration services, but BuyDomains has a way of grouping all your domains into one account for easy access. Since Laridian owns about 50 domains and we have a half dozen within our family, it's convenient to have two accounts at BuyDomains — one for Laridian and one for me — where I can quickly access all my domains.