ASP.NET Hosting Options

Question

I'm not trying to start a "which language is better" argument here, so please don't go there.
I typically use PHP for most of my web development (mostly because hosting is cheap), but for various reasons I'm looking to use ASP.NET for a couple new projects. But one of the major reasons I've stayed away from ASP.NET up until now is the cost. I've seen some budget hosting options, but they always seem a little sketchy to me. From what I've generally found, that's just the way the hosting scene looks for ASP.NET unless you want to go dedicated.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for a solid ASP.NET host with a good feature set and reliability for my money? Also, are there any options out there along the lines of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud? And yes, I know... Mono. I'm talking about Windows based "grid" hosting options?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I cannot offer advice on a good service to use, however, I would stay well clear of 1&1.

Answer 2

I've been with Ikoula so far, since their MSDN avec Ikoula offer is only 2.95 € a month and good enough for some testing. But I found their stability lacking at times, so I'm now hosting a different site of mine at DomainBOX who have some good offers as well.

That being said, I recognize that a French and a German provider may not be suitable for everyone, but there is also a List of Hosts on ASP.net.

Edit: The one problem with ASP.net shared hosting is that you don't get access to IIS directly. Usually you have to use Plesk or somthing similar, and that limits you. For example, having "domain.com" redirect to "www.domain.com" using a HTTP 301 moved permanently is simply not possible at many hosts, which kind of sucks.

Answer 3

I have heard great things about HostMySite and their service and uptime has always been good which is what I have always been looking for. But, they are a little expensive.

Answer 4

I work for an ASP.NET shared hoster so I think I have a reasonable insight into the business of hosting.

Regardless of language or platform, you generally get what you pay for. If you're looking for good uptime and good support then you tend to have to pay a bit more.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'sketchy' but there are loads of good value budget plans out there (godaddy, webhost4life, discountasp, brinkster, et al) provided you're happy with two to three nines uptime and support response times of around 6-8 working hours. These are great for running non-mission critical sites like blogs or forums. If you're looking to do a bit of web commerce or plan to run a site with a high volume of traffic then you need to pay more for better resilience and support. This may mean a semi-dedicated or fully dedicated solution (virtual or physical).

I know it all sounds a bit vague. However there are so many budget plans out there with short contracts (or even money back if not happy agreements) that there's no real harm or expense in trying a few until you feel you've got the right one that suits you.

Answer 5

I've had really good experiences with CrystalTech so far, both shared and dedicated, we use them for all of our clients.

Answer 6

Unfortunately, I cannot offer advice on a good service to use, however, I would stay well clear of 1&1.

Quoted for truth - 1&1 is a MAJOR PITA to cancel - worse than AOL.

Answer 7

I've used gate.com for a while, and while they were flawless with their uptime, I did want to switch to a unix plan, and it took FOREVER to get done, so i left. But besides that, they rocked.

Answer 8

I too would avoid 1&1, they have a lot of unacceptable downtime.

I have used MaximumAsp for a long time, and have nothing but good things to say about them. Used both dedicated and shared server options.

Answer 9

I really like Server Intellect http://www.serverintellect.com/.

I used them for shared hosting for a while. I had a couple problems that ended up being my fault in the code, but when I called I got a real person that understood what the problem was. They troubleshooted it quickly and helped me fix it. And this is on the $15/month shared hosting. I recently upgraded to a dedicated server with Server Intellect, and it's been great too.

I would avoid 1&1 and Lunar Pages. I've tried both of them, and the support isn't there. Transferring a domain off of 1&1 is a pain. I ended up having some downtime on the site because of their process. I also have an account with Crystal Tech. They are good, but I've had a couple of short down times on my site. I'd recommend Server Intellect over them, but Crystal Tech is not bad.

Answer 10

I haven't used them myself but I was asking a similar question of some friends a few weeks ago and everybody said good things about DiscountASP.NET. And you can bring the cost down with a code from KBAlertz.

Phil

Answer 11

I have had ASP.NET server space @ WebHost4Life and Brinkster for a few years and they both seem reasonably good and affordable so far. Of the two, I'd probably recommend WebHost4Life because they have a lot of user configuration options. For example, you can set-up an application to run in the Asp 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 and 3.5 workspace. Then, you can set-up a new application in a different directory and have it run in a different workspace. There's a page to manage permissions like read, write, and execute. There's detailed stats on each of your domains down to individual page hits by month, day, and year.

Good luck.

Answer 12

Another thing to look into when comparing ASP.NET hosting companies (especially with shared hosting) is what trust level they run. The configured "trust level" indicates how "sandboxed" your code is and what all you can and can not do within the hosting evironment.

Answer 13

I'm using a Linode (www.linode.com) running Mono. For me it's a much simpler and cheaper solution than EC2. Performance is way better than expected and allows for some ondemand expansion. I've added extra RAM 'on the fly' during a busy period and removed it later with no problems.

Answer 14

I have used domaing8.com for the last 3 years and they have been giving me almost consistent uptime. I run a small e-commerce site on their cheapest hosting which costs about 4 USD per month and I have never had complaints about them being down. Also they give you lots of configuration options and also their support is very good. They pretty much respond on the same day and they give you your money back in case what you bought does not suit the kind of application that you have which is very comforting and encourages me to try them out almost every time.

Answer 15

The company I have been working with is using Intermedia but we have been down for up to 5 hours on an almost monthly basis. I will look into all the providers mentioned above, but lets keep the list going. Its so hard to find legitimate reviews of windows hosting companies.

Answer 16

I'm very happy with DiscountASP.NET. They've been my host for years.

Answer 17

I've had great experiences with HostMySite, They have great uptime, great support, very good on their updates, don't quote me, but I believe their running 3.5 SP1, (I'm running a rigged version with the sp1 dlls in the bin dir, without problems). I'm currently working on a project with Network Solutions, their support staff so far has not been very helpful we'll see if they turn out to be okay.

Answer 18

A little less known, but I host one of my sites using reyox.

Their support is real fast and they were the only shared hosting plan that would allow me to use SQLite. SQLite.net requires either medium or high trust (I forget), so it took a day or so of shopping around to find these guys.

Answer 19

Lunar Pages has been good. It has been 2 years. I haven't experienced any down time.

Answer 20

I am very happy with the support and network that Server Intellect is providing us. Very impressive tech response times with us less than 10 minutes on most issues. 9 1/2 months hosting without any downtime on the network. Netcraft.com I recommend Server Intellect if your looking for a great Windows Dedicated Server

Answer 21

This is a little late to the conversation, but I use 1and1 for hosting a number of sites. I haven't had any problems with downtime, customer service, or transfering domains from 1and1 to other hosting companies. I've been using them for about four years.

I did have problems with other hosting providers with customer service and transferring domains back to 1and1.

My experience has been good. As always, YMMV.

Answer 22

I've heard some good things about Mosso. It's RackSpace's cloud computing platform. It looks like you can setup your site to be hosted on a LAMP setup or Windows 2008 w/ IIS7 and .NET 2.0/3.0/3.5.

Answer 23

+1 for Server Intellect.

Answer 24

If you don't want to spend a lot of money and get a LOT, then Arvixe web hosting is a good choice.

Answer 25

I am using arvixe.com which is very good, and not expensive