Web hosting should be simple, easy and affordable.  Unfortunately, there are so many web hosting companies out there, it is almost impossible to find “the best”.  Why?  Because there are sponsored lists of “the best” hosts — these companies pay for their ranking!  This article describes my long, hard search for a web host that landed me at BlueTreeHost.com where I am extremely happy!

When I first starting looking for web hosting, I was seduced by promises of infinite bandwidth and storage.  There were plenty of choices in this field:   HostGator, IxWebHosting, Blue Host, Lunar Pages, EasyCGI, and many more.  I decided on IxWebHosting.  My conclusion:  all these places are the same.  You don’t get shell access, the database servers are separate from the hosting servers and are overloaded, sites are generally slow and unresponsive, and you have to sign up for a year at a time to get the good deals that are advertized.

Having used IxWebHosting for months now, I have come to the following conclusion: this type of webhosting is inexpensive for a reason.  It is not very good. If you are hosting a plain HTML website and aren’t concerned with load times, this is definitely the way to go.  But if you require a database, look elsewhere.  The servers are overloaded, making your site unresponsive and slow at peak times.  my relationship with IxWebHosting is now over, and I am happily hosted at BlueTreeHost.

BlueTreeHost is amazing.  I have shell access, a useful control panel, spam filters, 100% uptime so far, plenty of storage and bandwidth, all the databases and email addresses I could ever need, and more.  Best of all, BlueTreeHost is based in Philadelphia, which means the servers and support are both local.  BlueTreeHost is unbeatable in my book, and once I have enough income, I will switch all my hosting over to them.  If you are in the market for a host, BlueTreeHost is worth a look.  You’ll pay a little more if you need the storage and bandwidth requirements that I do, but it is well worth it.  Right now, I am paying only $12.99/mo and I didn’t have to prepay for an entire year.