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Rabidmax
Registered Users
Ventrian Active Member
Posts:34
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| 9/04/2007 9:19 PM |
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Hiya all, I'm doing up a quick 'n dirty dnn site up for a 'friend of the family' (as they say) company, and was looking for an australian based hosting company to set it up with. So far the one that seems the closest to what I'm looking for (cheap, Australasian, DNN happy) appears to be these guys: http://www.webhostforasp.net.au/hosting_compare_aspnet.aspx
Their cheapest plan ($AU9/mo on a 12 month payment scheme) supports DNN happily (on MSSQL Express), which should work fine for the relatively simple portal I'm doing, as long as the support is good, and the DNN snappy enough.
Has anyone had any experience with webhostforasp.net, or any other aussie based (dnn) hosts? I realise it's a primarily US based company, but it seems to be have some decent qualities. This is going to be a 'set up and leave' type job for me, so I'm not looking for anywhere with multiple domains, should be just a single install/portal, and I'll leave the general running/ownership with the people I'm doing it for.
I've previously had experience with ixwebhosting.com (US based), I thought they were great but since they're not keeping up with the times (no .net 2+), I'm not going to be sticking with them.
I had a read of the w4life and wss sites, and I'm not overly impressed. I'm pretty sure we'll be buying a subscription to ventrian anyway, for the gallery/news/possibly property agent, so not geting the 'free for subscribing' doesn't really bother me.
I guess I'm not overly tied to the Aussie-based hosting idea. It's not like I'm from here anyway, but the company is and I'm sure they're a 'support the country' kinda place. Plus being able to say 'it will cost this much per year' in their own currency means they don't have to worry about it changing due to the exchange rate every time they go to pay... shrug.
Cheers for any help guys n girls :)
Max |
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Scott McCulloch
Administrators
Ventrian Master
Posts:17224
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| 9/05/2007 12:00 AM |
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Have you looked at ExpressNet?
I'm in the process of establishing a hosting membership deal with them (entitling subscribers to a period of free access to this site). |
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Scott McCulloch
Site Administrator |
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Rabidmax
Registered Users
Ventrian Active Member
Posts:34
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| 9/06/2007 5:19 PM |
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Thanks for the link Scott, I had a look but I didn't really like what I saw there.
I'll keep looking until I get the whole skin etc thing sorted, but so far that webhostforasp.net.au host is my most likely candidate.
Cheers. |
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Simon Holman
Gold Membership
Posts:10
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| 9/06/2007 5:54 PM |
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Hi Take1.
May I ask what it was that you didn't like on our site?
Regards
Simon
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Expeed
ASP.NET & MSSQL Hosting
DotNetNuke Hosting
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Rabidmax
Registered Users
Ventrian Active Member
Posts:34
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| 9/06/2007 7:17 PM |
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Hi Simon, I should probably rephrase what I said up there, 'I didn't really like what I saw there' was supposed to be more like 'I didn't like their plans better than the what I was already looking at', if that makes sense.
I wasn't overly thrilled with your most basic DNN plan, 100MB space and 1GB traffic didn't seem like a serious amount for even a basic website. A gallery with a decent number of pictures with decent resolutions will eat up both of those pretty quickly, especially if one was doing a travelling diary or the like. I mean 10 family members would only be able to view the site once each before the traffic was gobbled up. I know I have a 1gig memory stick in my camera that gets munched through even at 3Megapixels, and end up with a couple of hundred pics from a single oktoberfest trip, for example.
These are the main things I look at for a personal website host, price, whether it includes a domain registration (or multiple), database access, space, traffic, and email. The last one is sort of a 'depends on what I'm doing', but 20 email addresses seems surprisingly restrictive, especially when the site has it's own domain name.. Is there a reason that it isn't 'unlimited'? If I were setting up a hosting site, all plans would have unlimited email addresses per domain, and maybe restrict the space by domain, like the host I'm considering does. If I went with Expressnet for a corporate website, I'd likely have to turn to something like google for the email, shrug.
The only thing that made me take a second look at Expressnet was the MSSQL 2005 database that came with the basic plan... I like MS SQL, wouldn't be pleased with just MySQL. MS SQL Express works just fine by me also, which is why I'm considering webhostforasp.net.au. It has, for all intents and purposes of a basic site, all the functionality needed.
I don't know if other people would consider this, but I quite like to have a play with the control panel of the host that I'm looking at, or at least some detailed screenshots. I signed up to one host a few years back without doing so, and the interface for managing everything was pretty unimpressive, to say the least. I ended up transferring to ixwebhosting within the month, not that their control panel is anything to rave about, but it was more familiar to me.
Shrug. I guess that's just how I think when looking about. I didn't see anything about ExpressNet that blew me away and thought 'wow, that's really an added value that I haven't seen anywhere', most things just seemed average, or less than, in the case of space, traffic, and email allowances.
So yeah, sorry I wasn't overly clear in my last message, hope that clarifies things a bit :)
Cheers,
Max
PS. Have you seen the plans at www.ixwebhosting.com? The most basic ($US3.95/mo - linux only) includes 300GB of space, 3,000GB traffic, and it includes a free domain registration (but no databases, that's the $US8.95/mo windows plan...). The only reason I can't use them is they haven't been (and don't seem to be planning on) installing the .Net 2 Framework. It's a shame.
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Rabidmax
Registered Users
Ventrian Active Member
Posts:34
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| 9/06/2007 7:29 PM |
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I just had a 'live chat' with one of the support people from ixwebhosting, apparently a couple of weeks ago they updated all of their windows boxes with the .Net 2.0 Framework, but haven't updated the documentation yet. So, looks like they've got everything sorted there!
Mint.
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Simon Holman
Gold Membership
Posts:10
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| 9/06/2007 8:48 PM |
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Max
I appreciate the feedback and would like to respond.
The first point to note is that our service is positioned primarily toward business customers, not personal. We very rarely see sites with large photo galleries as yours is. You would be surprised at how many of our customers are on the bronze plan, get quite a few visitors and still go nowehere near their allowance. The number of email accounts is based on experience of previous clients needs. We seldom have customers with a need for more than 20. We would certainly be happy to provide more on any plan if requested.
The problem with "unlimited" plans are two fold. Firstly, it attracts the type of customers that we try to avoid. Those that want the world for very little and in a large number of cases will abuse the systems they're being offered. I am not implying that you are one of these people though. The second issue is that they're not really unlimited. If you look through the T & C's of most sites offering unlimited anything, most times there will be clauses saying that you can't use too many server resources. This is the general escape clause these hosters use to kick people off when they start using more than they think they should. I had a friend who had a hosting plan in the US offering 100Gb of HD space. He uploaded 30Gb of video's to be displayed on his site and even before the site was live, they cancelled his account citin gthe very argument I just mentioned. When he enquired about the 100Gb he was told "we don't expect people to use that much, we have a fair use policy in place, and you've exceeded it"!!
Website hosters offering SQL Express are actually in breach of Microsofts Licencing agreements. They are required to purchase an SPLA licence to supply SQL in a hosted environment. And when your looking at ~$800/month for that licencing, the costs are not small. The only place you can use SQL Express is if your using a VPS for your own website and want to install it.
I accept your point regarding the control panel. I'll look at adding screenshots or a demo of the control panel. I agree that some of the control panels in the market are fairly ordinary.
My only comments on $3.95 / month hosting packages are that you get what you pay for. There are certain fixed costs of hardware, bandwidth and storage space that have to be covered. You can do that two ways. Charge almost nothing and hugely overcrowd your servers to the point where all the sites on that server suffer. Or, develop a thoughtful, well budgeted business plan based around sustainable quality hosting. It may cost a little more but I can guarantee you that I can put a lot less customers on a server than they can, make the same amount of revenue and the customer benefits in almost every way.
Regards
Simon |
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Expeed
ASP.NET & MSSQL Hosting
DotNetNuke Hosting
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