Being a Web Designer for 4+ years now, I’ve seen a wide spectrum of web hosting setups. Some were a breeze to navigate and set things up and some were not.

The Best

HostMonster Review | Update: I put a little more research in and found that even WordPress, which is respected by millions also recommends this hosting as the #1 very best web hosting solution available.

HostMonster (or BlueHost, same thing) is by far the best web hosting I have ever seen and it’s what I personally use and run about a dozen websites on, including this one. The reason is simple, it has everything you could ask for. It’s easy, affordable, and there is quality and quantity, there is no compromise with this service.

Here is a breakdown of the service:

• Price: $5 – $8 a Month (this fluctuates based on how many months you purchase)
• What you Get: Unlimited Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Domain Add-ons and pretty much unlimited everything else you could ever need
• Server: Linux; this is the standard for most websites and makes most other standard practices/languages used for web design better and simpler
• Control Panel: cPanel; is the easiest system I’ve ever used and I think most Web Designers/Webmasters would agree, to do anything is a snap, create a new email or ftp accounts, add-on a new domain etc.
• Customer Service: 24/7 Phone and Chat (American), and I’ve used it often and have always been satisfied

Extra Tidbit:
HostMonster also has one of the best Affiliate programs around. And as by this link: http://www.hostmonster.com/track/calmestg/ you can clearly see that I’m utilizing it. Nothing to hide because the beautiful part is that I would recommend it to my clients or anyone anyways and you’ll save $20 on web hosting by signing up through me, so it’s a win win win.

Signup Now and Save $20

The Worst

GoDaddy Review

Sorry GoDaddy, it’s nothing personal.. but you have the worst, most convoluted system I have ever seen. I actually get a mild feeling of dread when working on a clients project that is on a GoDaddy account, I dislike it that much.

Here is a breakdown of the service:

• Price: $12 – $15 a Month (this fluctuates based on how many months you purchase), they have lower rates, but this is how much it costs to get an equivalent package to what HostMonster offers by default
• What you Get: Unlimited Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Domains Add-ons etc. (I believe it’s roughly the same as HostMonster, but again you must buy their most expensive package to get this)
• Server: Windows (you pay extra for Linux); this may not seem to be a concern to you if you’re not designing your own website, but I think it limits things like the quality of help you can find and the cost, certainly will make things unnecessarily difficult
• Control Panel: Custom; they’ve created their own and this is where the trouble comes in, it’s difficult, slow and a mess to accomplish even the simplest of tasks, it’s pretty difficult to setup FTP with GoDaddy, so you often resolve this by just using their built in Java FTP client which if you leave unattended for more than a minute times out or crashes, also if you try to upload too many files at once it crashes, then the navigation of the entire admin/control panel is a mess, so many different pages and sub-pages and almost everything opens in a new window causing a mess on your desktop and a headache, also you will time out of the admin if left unattended for just a short while, I could go on but I’m already creating my own convoluted mess in text
• Customer Service: 24/7 Phone, but no Chat (Indian if I remember correctly), and I’m pretty sure it was a horrible system and I was on hold forever

Extra Tidbit:
Mentioning American Vs. Indian was in no way a racial bash, I work with clients and professionals all around the world and they’re all great people, because I only surround myself with great people. This is simply for the fact that as many of you may know, it’s already difficult enough to explain a technical problem you’re having, let alone on top of that having difficulties understanding a customer service rep or vice versa because of a language barrier.

Update:
I was recently speaking to GoDaddy tech support about a clients email address that still had not propagated or become usable in over 24 hours of initiating it’s setup. At the end of the conversation I thought I’d go ahead and ask; “Why is it, that GoDaddy takes SO long to do anything when other hosts I’ve worked with handle everything almost instantaneously?“

his reply was something to the effect of:

“Well, it is true that certain things can take up to a day or so to propagate or update, on good days when it’s not so congested things can go more quickly. But, the fact of the matter is that GoDaddy is the most popular host, and it gets very busy.”

I definitely would not argue that point that it is the most popular and that has plenty to do with how slow it is, but it certainly is not the best. Truly, GoDaddy is an unstoppable beast that with their money and commercial advertising with Super Bowl spots has become the household name in hosting. With that said they’ve done a better job with marketing than they have building a great system for customers.

The Challenge

Don’t just take my word for it, do your own research;

godaddy sucks AND hostmonster sucks are popular Google searches. Read up on it yourself, there are pros and cons to everything, no one and no one thing are perfect in life. Politely, if you can make a good case for or against either GoDaddy or HostMonster I’d love to hear it. I’ll do my best to rebuttal, but if you make valid points they will be recognized. You’ll never get fluff and salesmanship from me, but honesty and straight forwardness.

Thanks, Bryan