Unless you want to tread VERY lightly into blogging (ie. writing only 2 or 3 posts per year) we do not suggest Wordpress.com, even for beginners. Going through wordpress.com you don’t truly own your site (WP does). You’ll also be limited in terms of themes and plugins you can use. You’ll be forced to update to the latest version of WP, which isn’t necessarily a good thing if you are accustom to one version and rely on plugins that may not work with a newer version. You can’t choose your own domain name. And it will be time consuming (though certainly not impossible) to move off of wp.com were you to choose to do that later.

Given how dirt cheap a really good host can be, going that route makes sense for most people.

I honestly don’t know enough about eleven2 and rackspace to comment on them. Host Monster is in that category of hosts that is perfectly good but not superlative in any way.

For what it is worth, Spot Cool Stuff has a cloud host with VPS.NET that we are happy with. They don’t have unlimited bandwidth, but a key thing for you (and everyone else) to keep in mind is that really no one has unlimited bandwidth. Everyone has limits, it’s just that the so-called “unlimited bandwidth” hosts don’t put an exact number to them.

Also, we are working on a review of the best (in our opinion) cloud hosts. Check back for that.

Thanks again,

~ SCS

As a new blogger on two topics, one on dating and matchmaking, I want to keep the conversation from deteriorating, while ensuring the blog enables people to share valuable insights that are positive and painful or sensitive, if they will help others.

I ended up on your site through a Twitter link to check out the two restaurants in caverns in the Caribbean. Thank you for that. I needed a reason to put the Caribbean on the bucket list besides the beach.

May I ask, do you know anything about eleven2, hostmonster and rackspace (cloud)?

I have a feeling my two blogs I’m working on will have a lot of traffic, video, photos, comments and things I have no idea of yet that might slow it down on a shared server. I feel smart just knowing what that means. I heard GoDaddy, where my empty WordPress blog s parked until Monday, dings you for getting too many users on your site at the same time. I’d rather pay extra than have to move everything again and again.

I’d also rather make a smart decision right now and not pay Rackspace’s $100/mo for maybe 4 blogs at $1200/year if I can get the same unlimited bandwidth (right?) with hostgator.

I’ve been asking for this help on Twitter and am happy that people I met at podcampAZ, including a young man named @EricJMyers, friends Social Media Club Phoenix (@smcphx) and others with WordPress experience have been insightful.

It means a lot that you pointed out the ad alliance with WordPress and the information on Media Temple. Media Temple was recommended by someone who’s likely an affiliate. Hey, if we find a host we like, why wouldn’t we want to become an affiliate?

If you get a chance to answer soon, and I know I’m writing this on a Saturday, it will be so beneficial.

I like the honesty and the variety of categories on your site. Thanks. Keep the coolstuff scoops comin!

Sincerely,
@RoseannHiggins
Phoenix, Arizona

The thing about website hosts is that webmasters tend not to appreciate them when they work perfectly but get really pissed when anything goes wrong. As a result every website host — every single one of any size — has at least one review by an unhappy customer somewhere on the internet.

And with the particular review you cut & pasted, notice how this person’s problems started after an upgrade. It isn’t clear from the writing but it is very possible that the reviewer did something wrong during this upgrade. That is, the problem may have been the reviewer’s fault, not Easy CGI. And further still, this person’s site was only down for 2 hours. That’s not good, but 2 hours of downtime a month still translates into 99.7% uptime. We have no idea where the claim of only 85.5% uptime came from but we are certain that’s 100% wrong.

So, we stand by our recommendations: If uptime is paramount to you go with Host Gator. If you want solid uptime with a super-simple WordPress install Easy CGI is a great choice.

The way we look at it is: Every individual website host review has to be taken with a grain of salt.