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Every now and then there comes a company worth mentioning and I thought I’d take this time to do just that. If you’ve read my previous posts on web hosting you know how I feel about web hosting uptime and the customer service accessibility.

ImHosting is a breath of fresh air in the hosting arena. Upon careful examination of their services I was very impressed to say the least. Not only do they have excellent hosting packages, but they also have a price plan to fit just about any budget. Their standard shared hosting package starts at just $6.95 per month and includes 2,500 GB of Space and 20,000 GB of transfer, which is the most offered in the industry at the moment. Their uptime guarantee is phenomenal - currently 99.998%, which sets a new standard for reliability. This translates to less than 35 seconds of downtime per month, which is extremely rare in today’s industry. As far as the customer service goes, in my opinion it is one of the best. They offer a 100% customer satisfaction and an excellent compensation plan if your site ever goes off line. If your website ever goes down, ImHosting will actually credit the following month’s service fees to make up for the downtime. Now, that’s what I call service!

You can check ImHosted out right here with the below link.

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Have you ever had your website turned off? Yes, I mean turned off like a light switch. I have and let me tell you it is no fun at all. I was in a meeting with a prospective client and was attempting to show her one of my nicely created websites when I typed in the address and the “Server not found” error in Firefox displayed. Of course I re-typed the address with a shy, timid smile and blushing cheeks telling my client that I must have entered the name in wrong. Well, I still got the error again and when I looked more closely I realized that I had in fact entered the name in correctly. The rest of the meeting didn’t go too well as all I could think about was the website being down. After my client left I quickly logged into my master reseller account (WHM) and noticed that the site was completely removed from my account. I was furious. I had no warnings or inclination of this. I sent an email to my hosting provider who sent me a reply a day later stating that my website was using too much bandwidth and was terminated. The provider was rude and non-chalant in their response and seemed not to care that they just shut down a site of mine without warning and not only embarrassed me in front of my client but also lost valuable data of mine that I had not had a chance to back up.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Don’t sacrifice cost for quality. Besides that, there are way too many good web hosting companies out there to be bothered with these second rate losers. In fact, HostGator who I currently do some of my hosting with sent me an email and a telephone call before taking action on one of my sites, which allowed me to correct the problem.

For additional information about good web hosting companies check out 10topHosts for a complete listing.

This is a big debatable question people ask all the time. I have been a PC guy my entire life and never really gave Apple computers a chance. I’ve put up with computer crashes and glitches in Microsoft Windows since its inception, always thinking to myself that they would eventually fix any problems with the operating system and everything would get better. I also used to tell myself that that there was no other choice. Nowadays I am reconsidering my position as far as computers and operating systems go.

My Compaq Laptop developed a problem with the power going to the Motherboard and eventually the Laptop failed on me. I then decided to purchase another one and decided on an HP Laptop. Not six months after owning this Laptop I had a problem with the power cord, which I decided to replace myself. The technical support at HP also advised me that my Motherboard needed replacing as it was on the known defects list. So basically when I purchased this Laptop from Best Buy I was NOT told it was on the known defects list and subject to recall. I was told it may take up to 4 weeks to repair. Now this is utterly ridiculous because I do everything from my Laptop and cannot afford to be without it for 4 weeks straight! Also, why should I have to be without my computer – I just bought the darn thing! One more problem I have had is that this computer is so freaking’ slow it is pitiful. This system definitely cannot handle Windows Vista, which is a true resource hog in my opinion.

So now I come to the main focus of this rant of mine. I am considering purchasing a MacBook only because it is based on the Intel processor which allows me to dual boot the system and also because it is reliable and has a much higher resell value. If any of you have any suggestions I’d like to hear them from you. Thanks.

As I began collecting websites I found the need to host them somewhere. Some of the people that I bought them from offered me a month or so of free hosting until I found my own place. At first I decided to go with Godaddy since I have a bunch of domain names there. They offer a cheap shared hosting package, the low price and the fact that I could host a bunch of sites at the some place attracted me. It only took me a few days to discover that shared hosting packages really suck! If you upload your files to the wrong directory you will bring down your existing sites and re-load each one again.

After a week or so of crappy shared hosting I learned that only the primary account has any stats on it, the other accounts don’t have their own stats. Another upsetting fact is that in order to edit a site I had to edit it on my computer and then up-load the file to my hosting—a real pain in the butt! This was the final straw, I was in search mode for a good hosting package.

My search started with Hostgator because everyone uses them, well not everyone……sometimes I round up my numbers a little bit. I checked their website and their reseller packages (separate c-panel for each site) were within my price range. Granted the price was higher than what I was paying at Godaddy but I wanted all of the features and benefits of their re-seller hosting package. So it was time for me to test their customer service using both phone and their chat box. I am the type of person that makes a customer service rep quit or take up a bad drinking habit. After what seemed like an hour on the phone and on the chat box I determined that their customer service did not pass my test.

My next step was looking at a bunch of other places for hosting. I was really impressed with ipowerweb, they pick up their phone in a timely manner and they are really pleasant on the phone. For a shared hosting provider they get my thumbs up, I even run an ad for them.

I will skip over the next 20+ calls and fast forward to the end of my search, I ended up back at Hostgator. It took about 5 minutes on-line to sign up for their shared hosting package and about 20 minutes to set up my account. One of the most attractive features of their service is that they will move up to 30 sites for free! All I had to do was fill out a form on-line and 24 hours later they move my accounts. Since I love to torture customer service reps I decided that I would only have them move some of my accounts and they could help me move the other ones. I placed a call dealing with the pains that come with being placed on hold for 10-15 minutes and finally got one of their reps. The rep spent an hour or so on the phone with me answering my questions and helping me correct (I messed up) my shared hosting account. The rep never tried to end the conversation, rather he really wanted to make sure that all of my questions were answered. For their customer support and hosting packages, Hostgator gets a thumbs up.