MakeUseOf Recommends Pair.com For Hosting

We constantly get emails from readers asking for advice on the best hosting company. If you have a website, I am sure you are always wondering if you are getting the best deal for your money. You always see plenty of really good offers and contradictory reviews all over the web and you’re not sure which one to choose.

Finding the right hosting company is VERY important. Along with choosing the right domain name it’s the most important decision you have to make at the very beginning. It’s unfortunate but with the exception of a few hosts most of the hosting companies are pretty bad these days.

Why? The competition is so high and they charge so little that it becomes impossible to offer decent service and customer support.

MakeUseOf Recommends Pair

Here at MakeUseOf we use Pair and we are very happy with them. When you have a big website, a reliable host is an absolute must and Pair does it for us. It doesn’t mean we’ve never experienced any problems, we also do, but Pair has a really good tech support team. It’s very fast and in most cases reply to our concerns within about 10 minutes.

What Separates A Good Host From A Bad One?

Server Speed: The good host never overloads its servers. That’s exactly the problem with most of the hosts. They simply host too many websites on a single server. The more websites a server has the less resources there are for your website.
Good Uptime: That’s a defining factor that separates a good host from the bad one. It’s also directly related to the number of sites on the server. The more sites there are on the server the more problems the server is going to have.
No Unlimited Offers: There is one common factor among poor hosts – they all offer unlimited storage, bandwidth etc. Don’t fall for it.
Good Tech Support: No matter what company you’re going to host your site with, there will be issues, it’s part of the process. What makes a difference here is that those issues can be fixed rather quickly when the host offers good tech support. Which often means a direct access to support personnel and not call center reps who have no access to the server and has to make yet another call to get to the right people.
It’s not cheap: I have yet to see a good hosting provider that is cheap.

When it comes to Pair they score quite well on the above criteria. So if you’re looking for reliable hosting company to grow your website MakeUseOf recommends Pair.com.

Tagged: hosting • webmaster tools

Aibek Esengulov

The guy behind MakeUseOf.com. Follow him and MakeUseOf on Twitter @MakeUseOf. For more details check out MakeUseOf about page.

http://www.useinstead.com Gerrit

Are you prepared to say that MakeUseOf or any of their writers didn’t get any money or other form of payment or service for this recommendation? They seem pretty pricey compared to what’s out there.

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

No Gerrit, we didn’t get any payment from them for the above article. The reason for posting it was the a number of recent emails from rather established blog owners asking me for advice on the host. Thus we decided to do a post on it.

As it’s the case with any other web host out there Pair has its referral program and rewards clients accordingly. This reward is not any better then what we would get by promoting any other host. Pair is the only company we recommend to other people.

http://ajaydsouza.com/ Ajay

While I agree with the other parameters, how can you put “Not being cheap” as a parameter for a good host?

Does that mean that any host has to be expensive to be good.

What if a host is able to deliver on all the parameters and give you hosting at a reliable rate?

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

Not being cheap is a relative term here. What I ment to say good hosts usually charge more than most of the other hosts, like those that offer plans with unmetered bandwidth for 5.95$ a month.

http://www.oldcodger.org Old Codger

Never heard of Pair before this. Looked at the web site. Pretty generic services provided.

I host my two web sites plus others that I have developed with SupremeHost.net which is based in Houston. One year of their cheapest hosting costs me just under $30. Service has been reliable – even when the hurricane hit Houston – up all the time. Was down for 3 days one time when they had a fire in their back up batteries. No data lost in any event.

Two sites hosted are http://www.oldcodger.org and nantongmap.net. I live in China and the company has quickly moved the sites to an appropriate server when the Great Firewall of China accidentally blocks them. Moved at no cost and quickly.

The Old Codger
http://www.jashsayani.com Jash Sayani

Well, its not very expensive. All good hosts cost almost the same.

BTW, Albex, can you tell me how DreamHost is?
Thanks.

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

hey Jash

I don’t have any experience with them so can’t help you here.
http://twi5.com Nischal

since you asked, DreamHost is one of the best hosting providers out ther. And if you are interested, U can use the promo code “twi5″ to get $50 off on hosting!

I’ve had my sites on dreamhost and what I particularly like about them is the prompt customer service. I’ve been with a couple of other hosts before but nothing beats DreamHost ;o)

http://cli.gs/tuJTst Amaron

I’ve never used Pair. But, thanks for the recommendation.

I’ve been using HostGator. It’s very nice and fast. You get 24/7 live support, plus ample amount of storage and bandwidth.

They offer first month for just $0.01, using coupon “WORDPRESS”.

Will try Pair.com, but it’s bit expensive.
Neil Watson

I have 3 websites hosted at nsdesign.co.uk. I’ve used them for 5 years. Not the cheapest, but the uptime has been good, and the technical support very quick and responsive.

(And for those who may be suspicious, I have no other connection with nsdesign and will get no cash or other benefits if anyone signs up with them – other than it helping to keep them in business).
Joe

I’m all for getting a good host but seriously, anyone that charges a ‘setup fee’ in 2009 has some volume issues. And their prices are outrageous comparatively speaking. I can almost get dedicated servers for these prices. I’ve used other hosts for $5/mo and they work really really well.

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

“…Iâ€™ve used other hosts for $5/mo and they work really really well.”

Please let us know which onea did you use. Once, I hosted a couple of sites with HosteDepartment for 5.95$. The mistakenly deleted my account at one point, it was a huge mess.

http://thespiffylife.com/ Josh

I’ve had DreamHost for a few years now and I haven’t got anything to complain about with them. One thing I love is that they have written their own admin panel (i loathe cPanel) which makes things easier and a lot nicer looking.
Last month I used about 5TB of bandwidth and that’s with the “standard” plan.

http://www.jashsayani.com Jash Sayani

Hi. I just signed up at DreamHost for 5 yrs. I was allotted the bishop server which had issues for a few days. Seems to be back to normal now.

Which server are you allotted ?

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

Issues on the very first days ? Not a good sign!

http://www.jashsayani.com Jash Sayani

@Aibek: Yeah, I had sent over 5 mails to support in the first 3 days!

DreamHost reviews are mostly good and they are also 11 yrs old, so I opted for it. Anyways, hope there are no more problems…

brian

I’ve had fantastic service with http://www.siteground.com/. I have been with them for about 3 years and I have been very satisfied. I switched from a service that was 11 times as expensive. The 2 times I had problems, I set up a trouble ticket and it was addressed within 20 minutes (usually after midnight), and they worked with me to fix the problem. The price is good for me, it totals to $6 a month (for 3 years) for 750GB and 7,500GB txfr and $16 a year for the domain. I’m NOT a high volume site though, we usually have around 2,000 hits a month, so I can’t tell you if it’s good or bad for big sites like this excellent one.

http://makeuseof.com Aibek

For smaller sites most hosts should be fine, the differences start to appear once the site starts to get some heavy traffic or lands on hugely popular sites like Digg.