THE QUEST FOR A GOOD WEB HOST
Looking for a good, reliable, webhost that is also cheap? READ THIS BEFORE YOU DECIDE:
I spent literally weeks researching web hosts. I started by checking out the many host rating sites on the Web, and it soon became evident that they were not to be trusted. In fact, my conclusion was that they were nothing more than advertising fronts for the top 10 or so US hosts. Why? Because no sooner would I narrow the list down to this or that popular host (always the same old names), than I would check the various forums for user comments and turn up as many complaints as posts of over-effusive praise. I began to suspect that the praise was so over-the-top and in such stark contrast to the complaints that it had to have been planted by company stooges. Call me paranoid and bad-minded if you like, but that was my strong sense.
Then, by pure chance, I came across an obscure forum in which a few posters were singing the praises of a host company with a weird name that I had not encountered in any of the host assessment lists - ICDSoft. The punters were especially enthusiastic about the quality and fast response times of ICDSoft's email "ticket" support. I checked out their website and was impressed by the prices of their plans, and the bang they offered for your buck. I emailed their support on numerous occasions over subsequent weeks to ask this or that question about what I could or could not do on my site under their various plans, whether there were any hidden charges (there were not), blah blah. On every occasion, they emailed me back within 20 minutes with a full answer to my queries. I noted that they guaranteed a response from their support team within 1 hour maximum, 24/7. I am not a technical whizz, so it was important for me to know there would be reliable help at my fingertips at any time I required it.
Nevertheless, I kept researching, asked local people I knew through various forums with good, fast-downloading websites who they were using, and back came a variety of answers. I checked out every recommendation exhaustively, and nothing came close to ICDSoft, for value or service. My one area of doubt was that a web host with servers overseas would not download my site for punters within Australia as fast as Australian-based servers. After expressing my concerns to ICDSoft's support, they emailed me instructions for conducting a "ping test" so that I could directly compare the download speeds attainable through their Hong Kong and US-based servers with local servers. The result was that the fastest of the local hosts (McGooHQ - easily the best of the Australian-based hosts I checked out, but still nowhere near as good for value as ICDSoft) proved slightly faster than ICDSoft, but not fast enough to justify going with them on this point alone. As you'll note when browsing through my site, the download speeds are very fast anyway, albeit not quite instantaneous (I'm on ADSL).
So, I eventually signed on with ICDSoft and am pleased to report that I have found them exemplary. Bloody cheap, extremely helpful and prompt in their email support responses (and believe me, I have sought their help extensively and often in fine-tuning this site, adding MP3 samples etc). So far, there have been zero outages. If you're looking for a great host, I'd recommend them unreservedly. Click on the banner below to check out their site.
Ross Buncle, November 2005