I had been wanting to move my personal web site on a server that supported both PHP and MySQL for awhile since I started working with the two technologies. After talking to a friend about it, he suggested I find a host and do month to month billing until I am satisfied with the hosting company.
My first stop on the hosting journey: TowerHost. TowerHost had great prices and good plans, but horrible support. Ex. They offered IMAP mail, yet do a search in their support section for IMAP, nothing. I filled out a support form, and it took over a week to get back to me. I need customer service. Zip files, move on.
Next stop: AMX Host. While their web site is a bit shady…hardly any content, the support contact is often avaialable on IM and the plans/prices seemed again, right on. Things were going ok for the first few months then the servers got hacked, a CPanel vulnerability, and do you think I got notified other than going to my web site only to see a hacked index.html page? No. AMX offered little explanation and did not email any of their customers to let them know the servers had been hacked. Sorry, that is not acceptable. Zip files and move on.
Third time is a charm right? Time to spend some money and go to a hosting company that has a 24/7 support phone number. So, this host will be the last post on the old server until I move the files and databases to host number three: Host Gator.
If you know me personally, you know I manage web servers/sites for a living, so this is extremely frustrating for me. If only I had a little more money, I would get 2 Xserves (running OS X client of course), throw them into a Verio Data Center and support myself. Someday.
