Hi guys. One of my design clients is looking to change webhosts, and he’s searching for a reliable, secure, rock-solid host for his business (online store) that, alas, requires a Windows OS (they use FP extensions, ASP and an Access database). His company’s small- to mid-sized, with their biggest sales occuring around Christmas and Valentine’s, when they really get hammered. (Actually last February they were DDoS’ed by what may have been a competitor… at least, that’s what my client suspects.)
Personally I think he should be looking for his own server, or at least a VPS, but he’s okay with shared (which is what he has now).
I know some great Linux hosts (my own hosts are wonderful – been with them for ten years now) but my knowledge of IIS-based hosts is very limited. I wondered if anyone had any recommendations for excellent, trustworthy & responsive hosts who specialize in IIS hosting / Access and so on?
(BTW, the reason he’s looking to move is that his current hosts – a small telecom – were bought out and gave him only two weeks(!) to find a new hosting provider. Crazy! Nothing like having plenty of time to make an important decision, huh?)
All help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I host a few small .NET websites with Discount ASP.NET. It’s fine, but very hands-off. My biggest beef is that you can’t remote desktop into the server to change things; everything has to go through their portal. Well, at least with the cheapo version, I’m pretty sure if you pay more they give you more access. IIRC, it costs about $100/year for a basic host package.
Up from that, the place I contract with the most uses Rackspace, and are very happy with them. But we’re talking a large account - I seem to recall them mentioning they pay $2K or more per month for hosting.
Thanks, Athena! Yes, the client looked at Rackspace and that was definitely out of his price range, unfortunately. I know they’re pretty much the gold standard.
I’ll take a look at your link, and see if for more $$$ we’d get more access to the server and customer service. Actually one thing I’ve disliked about my client’s past host is that they too had their own “control panel” (which is very limited). I know I’m used to the open access from *NIX servers so maybe I’ve been spoiled; I mean, I’m no programming wizard but I can install and tweak/customize scripts, and sometimes that means shell access. Not being able to do that with this client has been quite frustrating!
Anyway, thanks very much for the rec! I’ll look into 'em.