My Dad is organizing a fundraiser for the California Maritime Academy sports program. He wants to accept payments using PayPal via a web site, but the university doesn’t allow paypal on their sites for obvious reasons. Paypal account is already set up, so that is inflexible. What do you suggest? Size is not really an issue. The site will be very small with low traffic. No ads would be preferable. He’ll only need the site for 4 months.
What I’ve found so far:
Yahoo has a $9/month overkill everything included site. This is my fallback.
I’ve found free sites, but they mostly get bad reviews, have pop-ups and/or don’t serve content that contains PayPal references.
I saw an ad in Wired magazing for www.1and1.com. They start at $2.99. I don’t know anything about them but for a 4-month site with low traffic I’m sure that will be fine. If they’re going to suck you won’t know it till you’re gone
My experience with Dreamhost has been almost completely positive (their database server was flaky for a bit, but it doesn’t sound like this will be an issue with your dad’s site).
Now, you’ll notice that their offerings will most likely be overkill (but modestly priced overkill at $7.95/month), but they seem to be very civic-minded people. For instance, they always have at least 2 or 3 charities who clients can donate money to and whose donations they will match. It is very likely that if you ask nicely, they’ll be willing to host your dad’s site for free for the time that he needs them.
I can vouch for 1and1. I use them for about a dozen web sites, and plan to add at least 3 more domains to their hosting services this year. They’re very reliable (having been through half-a-dozen pro-level services that either sucked, went out of business, or bought each other out in the last 9 years), and very cheap.
I’d like to second the recommendation for Dreamhost. I’ve had several accounts with them and I’ve been very happy so far.
They’re currently having a special. If you sign up for the lowest plan (L1/Crazy Domain Insane) – which is already more than sufficient for the page you describe – for 1 year and enter the coupon code “777” at Step 5, you can get the entire year of hosting for $9.24. This is an amazing deal for what they offer – it comes with a free domain name and so much more – and if you don’t want to renew after the first year, just remove your credit card info from your account as soon as you finish signing up.
I’d definitely take advantage of this if I were you
Note: If the 777 code expires, you can also use the code “Reply” for a price of $22.40 for one year. Not as good as $9.24, but still decent. Other Dopers have done so in the past.
