OT: Non-Geek wants honest Registrar and Host service

Mon Sep 2 04:45:27 MST 2019

I have to disagree with many of the comments and suggestions thus far.  As
a devops engineer I develop, and maintain hosting platforms.  I work on
AWS, Azure, in-house bare metal.  I have experience with Bluehost, Nexus,
Hostgator, GoDaddy, Google, Linode and Digital Ocean.

First, cloud computing providers are not as easy as GoDaddy or Bluehost to
setup WordPress websites.  They can come close (Linode, Google) but they
are still each more complex, and at minimum about 4 times more expensive
per month to operate.  Anyone who says otherwise is disconnected to what
“non-technical” means.

I worked on the GoDaddy Managed WordPress team developing and managing the
platform, I know all of the developers who are on that team.  They are all
very talented, hardworking and most importantly they believe in the
platform they are developing.  They are not "Microsofties".

So let’s talk about honesty.  GoDaddy has gone through some issues on their
support/sales side.  There has been some toxic individuals and management
on the support side in recent years, however my understanding is that they
have weeded out a lot of the problem people and changed their policies.  If
there are issues with your friend’s experience there, I’m positive that
GoDaddy would make things write if notified about the issues.

I think it is absolutely hilarious sometimes what I here in discussion
groups that I would consider out of date, no longer relevant, or are simply
anecdotally wrong, especially when it comes to GoDaddy and even Microsoft
recently.  I remember team lunches there where we would read the latest top
ten managed WordPress platforms where Media Temple was ranked 3rd and
GoDaddy’s was ranked 8th.  These blogs would pontificate about how much
better Media Temple was then GoDaddy, never realizing that GoDaddy had
bought Media Temple years earlier and that we had migrated their entire
platform onto the GoDaddy Managed WordPress platform.  MT sites were and
are literally sitting adjacent to GoDaddy WordPress sites on the same
servers, but somehow they were better.  So who is being honest and who
isn’t.

How about WPEngine in recent years they were called on the carpet because
they were reporting more site visits than Google Analytics, which they
denied, causing site owners to pay substantially more after going over
their limits. However it was determined that they had not removed the bots
and crawlers that crawl the sites to index them from their metrics.  This
was the same case for FlyWheel.  And just this weekend FlyWheel reported
platform issues, there platform was in maintenance mode for 5 hours
Saturday 8/31.  And they have not been transparent about the issues. Yet
FlyWheel was supposed to the best new MWP hosting platform.  They have lost
(or should) any tripple-nine status they had.  I know someone who may lose
a client over this outage this weekend.  The business owner that runs and
manages the site told me just last night that they are sick of trying other
hosting providers and are going back to GoDaddy because they will guarantee
24/7 support.  They actually said that they miss the feeling of security
they had with GoDaddy. I have many more actual events/issues with other
hosting companies but I won't belabor the point any more.

So everyone seems to have a different opinion on each hosting company, and
registrant.  I don’t get the need to switch registrants.  This just seems
trivial.  The difference with one vs another is literally 2 to 3 dollars
mostly.  It takes 5 times longer to change it and setup something as
ubiquitous as a domain name.  So how valuable is your time?  There never
seems to be a shortage of people who are willing to step over dollars to
save dimes.

But hey if you just can’t stand GoDaddy then I guess try Bluehost.  They
have a good reputation. I have used them on and off for 15 years.  I
recently removed a site because I just can’t stand CPanel as a site admin
dashboard.  But if money is a big deal than go with a large reputable
hosting provider that has a good track record for keeping the sites up. And
is triple-nine rated 99.9% at least.  The smaller hosting providers just
don’t have the depth or the track record.

And just a quick note about Microsoft, because I know how much we love to
hate on them.  They have changed more than any other firm in the industry
over the past 7 years. They are now the largest contributor of open source
in the world (and that’s not because they bought Github). They have a
permanent position on the Linux Foundation.  Windows 10 with the WSL
version 2 summer 2019 update comes with a full Linux kernel built in when
the WSL is installed. By the end of the year they are on-track to have a
fully functional cross platform native terminal that will rival if not
eclipse the best terminal experience on either Linux or BSD (Apple).  They
still have a ways to go but they are seriously moving the needle weekly and
monthly.  Comparatively Linux desktop development seems stagnant,
argumentative, and being out paced by both Apple and Microsoft.

Good luck with finding an alternative to your "largest-local-provider"
problem.

On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 9:16 PM Michael Butash <michael at butash.net> wrote:

> I've moved all my domains to google, good or bad opinion of the org, it's
> far better than godaddy I moved from.
>
> Being an early godaddy person out here, there was some pride in keeping my
> domains there from early years, even hosting, but after acquisition, they
> filled with ex-microsofties and ex-yahoo-ers (who?), there wasn't much left
> aside from bleeding rocks as people.  Just another faceless machine now
> with ambiguous purpose and dubious value.  Not entirely sure how they exist
> these days as not the cheapest and far from the best...
>
> I don't host anything these days, but I just know I wouldn't host there.
>
> Hosting anything, best to see how good their peering is and round-trip
> time to servers it's on from where you and your potential visitors are
> coming from.  Running mtr (an enhanced traceroute) against their servers
> tells you quick if you want to be there or not.
>
> -mb
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 6:46 PM Stephen Partington <cryptworks at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> For Nam services only Google DNS is really easy to use with some nice
>> features. Cloudflares foray into DNS is staggeringly awesome and with many
>> features and a scalable learning curve. Aka easy to use but you can do more
>> as you are ready. And of course you have their other services immediately
>> available. They also will do all your ssl but not the same way let's
>> encrypt does. And finally dreamhost is also pretty good. But they are
>> better geared to hosting and their DNS services reflect that.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 4:58 PM Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I use NameSilo as a domain registrar and Linode for hosting. I have been
>>> happy with them for years now.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 1:34 AM David Schwartz <
>>> newsletters at thetoolwiz.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I use a company local to Phoenix as my primary registrar, NameSilo.
>>>>
>>>> For hosting, I use Eleven2.
>>>>
>>>> In general, I don’t recommend using the same for both.
>>>>
>>>> I used NameCheap, and they’re owned by the same borg entity that owns
>>>> HostGator and tons of other hosting providers. But I’ve used them for years
>>>> for name registrations.
>>>>
>>>> The thing I like about NameSilo is they give you a domain name Privacy
>>>> option for FREE forever. NameCheap used to be for one year, but they may
>>>> have changed. GoDaddy charges an absurd amount for it starting from the
>>>> get-go.
>>>>
>>>> “Honesty” is relative in the domain world. They all have their policies
>>>> and they all enforce their polices. But some are far worse than others.
>>>>
>>>> The “other” big registrar in Phx has a very “honest” bunch of policies
>>>> that railroad you into spending a HUGE amount if you forget to renew your
>>>> domain on-time. NameSilo and NameCheap are far more forgiving, and give you
>>>> 30 days to renew your domain at the regular renewal rate. They’re all quite
>>>> “honest” about it, as long as you read their TOS and pay close attention to
>>>> what’s there.
>>>>
>>>> There’s also an area that isn’t talked about much, and I don’t really
>>>> even know what to call it. But you might think that every cPanel / WHM
>>>> hosting provider is the same, since they run the same hosting software.
>>>> I’ve found that’s not true. Nor is it “dishonest”, either.
>>>>
>>>> There are several dozen settings that can be enabled or disabled on
>>>> cPanel / WHM installations, and there are various plugins that the host can
>>>> also include if they want.
>>>>
>>>> The net effect is, there are some such providers that I’d say tend
>>>> strongly towards the “paranoid” side of the scale, while others bend the
>>>> other way.
>>>>
>>>> NameCheap is a very “paranoid” host. If you want maximum security
>>>> against hackers and invaders, you’ll like them. They get that distinction
>>>> because they have a habit of disabling all sorts of UI options that have
>>>> even the slightest whiff of something a hacker could use to get into your
>>>> hosting account.
>>>>
>>>> I put up with this for a few months, and then moved to Eleven2, who is
>>>> far more relaxed about things.
>>>>
>>>> That said, you can always get a VPS, then install cPanel / WHM or any
>>>> other control panel, and tweak it however you like.
>>>>
>>>> Personally, I have a “shared reseller” type hosting account (ie, one
>>>> that includes WHM) at Eleven2. Shared hosting tends to overload the servers
>>>> after a while, but they usually don’t put as many “reseller” accounts on a
>>>> host as regular (single cPanel) accounts — maybe by a factor of 10-to-1 or
>>>> more — so they don’t fill up as fast.
>>>>
>>>> But if your shared hosting account starts to slow down, and if you’ve
>>>> been there for a while, ask to have it moved to a newer server. That’s very
>>>> easy to do with cPanel accounts, and the places I’ve been tend to be fairly
>>>> accommodating if only because they’d rather not lose you to another host
>>>> just because they don’t want to spend 5 minutes moving your account.
>>>>
>>>> -David Schwartz
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Aug 30, 2019, at 12:36 PM, Victor Odhner <vodhner at cox.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> A friend who is totally non-technical wants to move their WordPress
>>>> from the current registry and hosting service, and is looking for is good
>>>> providers of registry and hosting, with the most honest reputations within
>>>> a reasonable cost.
>>>>
>>>> A few years ago I worked with NameCheap, and have heard fairly good
>>>> stories.
>>>>
>>>> I’ve heard some registrars are in a better chance to negotiate transfer
>>>> of a name which may be owned by the current registrar.
>>>>
>>>> I’m pretty sure my friend was spoon-fed the setup with a single phone
>>>> call, and might find a change too complicated. I am personally free of [
>>>> *largest-of-local-providers*], so my bias is towards running away from
>>>> [*that*], but I don’t really know what choices are “out there” for
>>>> innocent button-pressing clients.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any advice,
>>>> Victor Odhner
>>>>
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-- 
James

*Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-h-dugger/15/64b/74a/>*
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