Hosting reccomendation

I started using a Vultur VPS a few years ago and won’t look back. It can be a bit more work, but I can host any online service I want.

I’ve made a list of recommendations based on this thread and will be looking at their sites tonight. So glad the OP started this. :slight_smile: I was going to wait until my renewals were due but I’m done. I spent an hour this morning shuffling email around to gain 50mb of space on the server, and by 2pm I’ve lost 15 mb of that, with no new emails. I have no idea how that happens.

Diane

Pair allows this, and it looks like there’s no extra charge:

I switched recently from the GoDaddy monster to Digital Ocean. Setup uses the command line, so there’s a bit of a learning curve. But lots of online help out there. $5 month for the basic plan. Best feature: free SSL cert.

1 Like

I shouldn’t have separated paragraphs lol! I don’t want to be forced to use that. I thought it was copout on my providers part to suggest it. Even if it’s not, I prefer to keep Google and MS away from my emails :slight_smile:

Diane

2 Likes

I reccomend Hover.com

For reliable email: fastmail.com. $30 to $90 per year depending on features and disk space. 50/year gets you 30GB email storage plus 10GB file/website storage, and lets you use your own domain. Note that the website features are limited–they provide web support for static pages.

For a site more complex than static pages it’s best to separate email from website hosting. Managing web services is easy, pretty much anyone can do it. Email is hard, and these days really needs a specialized company that can have the proper contacts with other email vendors to fix problems. It’s not enough to simply be technically competent anymore. It may require that you use a real domain registrar that lets you point various services such as web and email to different places, but that makes it easy to move your services around; some ‘host it all services’ can make it hard to move away from them.

Fastmail features:

Fastmail Features | Email, Calendars and Contacts

how to set up a website at fastmail:

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141

An alternative for domain registrar and email is gandi.net. email is included for every domain. I haven’t tried the email yet since I’m happy with fastmail, but I’m gradually moving my domains to them. For email, it may be an advantage that they’re in France, with EU privacy laws. gandi also does webhosting, but I know nothing about it.

Gandi Email - Personalized Email address, Email Services — Gandi.net

Web hosting for your site: fast and powerful — Gandi.net

1 Like

As I read this, it is somewhat different from what is called Catch-All at, for example, GoDaddy.

There the user that has a domain name can have many e-mail accounts, each with an address of the form name@domain.com. Each of those different names is handled as a separate e-mail account.

In addition to those e-mail addresses, that user can have one more e-mail account, which GoDaddy calls the catch-all; all mail with any address at @domain.com–for which an e-mail account has not been created–is delivered to the catch-all account

1 Like

Looks like you’ve been inundated with recommendations. Nevertheless I think you should definitely check out https://www.siteground.co.uk

I have no affiliation with them, apart from being an extremely satisfied user for a couple of years. They have offices in Virginia, Madrid, London, and Sofia—I’m guessing they are headquartered in Bulgaria. Their core team is made up of people whose names end in -ov and -ova, which might lead you to be concerned about their customer support. Trust me, it is second to none.

Not that I have had much use for customer support. I have never used a hosting service provider’s website that was clearer and more thorough in its explanations and guidance. It is a brilliant piece of thoughtful UI, that enables you to change any setting you could imagine to control how your website and emails function. Until I switched to SiteGround I had just assumed that nobody ever designed a hosting website for an audience of other than alpha-level internet protocol geeks. You won’t be able to see how their user control panel works without singing up, but do check out their website to get a feel for their service. While you’re there make sure to look at the comments from clients and industry experts.

Finally, they’re not just about good service and UI. They’re fast, very fast, and they’re secure—and not a month passes without them improving something in these areas.

Sales pitch over. Good luck!

Another happy Pair user checking in. I have used them for over 20 years for things ranging from my personal domain to a big business to an ad-hoc alumni site, using everything from shared host to dedicated server. The reason I keep using them: the tech support is absolutely top notch.

2 Likes

FYI, no need to rush to move your emails. Even if you cancel your Comcast service, you can still keep your Comcast email account alive: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-email-only

1 Like

I only recently found out the importance of SSL certificates. Without them your web pages get labelled “Not secure” or similar and this might put off potential visitors. SSL is an encryption system associated with https web pages - instead of http.
You might not need it unless visitors need to fill out fields on the web page.
My advice is to check that the ISP is able to support SSL (I am guessing that most do but the extra charge can vary greatly).

A VPS form Vultr, DigitalOcean, or another provider can be good for webhosting by the sufficiently technical but you’re not using that to host your email, right?

Any reason to choose Vultr other than they have an even-lower-end option that’s less than $5/month?

Anyone not using shared hosting can have free SSL/TLS certificates from Let’s Encrypt, but that’s part of what you had to set up yourself on the command line, right? I expect any shared host to automate Let’s Encrypt certificates for their customers to make HTTPS simply a checkbox option in their web interface, Dreamhost does and my impression Pair does.

1 Like

+1 for SiteGround, though I suspect they’re possibly overkill for the original poster’s requirements. I’ve used their technical support multiple times, and never waited longer than 5-10 minutes for a response. (Yes, minutes.)

They do support catch-all email addresses, too.

A vote for gandi.net as registrar, I’ve been using them for 20 years for multiple domains. Excellent.

I use Namecheap. They always have specials for transferring domains to them.

That’s good to know - thanks!
Diane

This was interesting on the emali companies. What other ones are out there?

Is this primarily a web based email like gmail? I don’t need anything like calendars or shared features, just email I can download to my computer.

Each of my domains has a few different addresses and it sounds like each one will need a plan? Though maybe I misread that one.

Diane

Scratch that! I found an article with more

Diane

1 Like

I’ll scratch it, but I’m curious about your characterization of gmail as web based. All my gmail is downloaded to my computer and every account I have (iCloud, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail) cloud be accessed via the web if I chose to.