Hey everybody! I'm gonna get myself some web hosting, and it's going to be my portfolio site (I'm a graphic designer). After reading these forums, other forums and checking prices/features, I'm down to A Small Orange or Go Daddy. I need your help, though: I've read better overall reviews for Small Orange, but the plan I like is $50/year ($5/month, 2 months free w/prepaid year) and offers 300mb storage and 10gb transfer. Go Daddy would be $43/year and offers 5gb storage and 250 transfer. Am I ridiculous to go with much smaller storage, yet better reviews? Or, since it's just a portfolio site - nothing fancy - should I opt for the more economical choice? (Btw, this is my budget: approx. $5/month or less!) Thanks for your help!
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A Small Orange vs. Go Daddy
- Thread starter hessdesigns
- Start date
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If it was my site (and I am in a similar position, actually) I would definitely take the ASO package and take the risk of running out of storage space eventually. I've heard almost unanimously good things about ASO, and many mixed feelings about GoDaddy. I tried to Google "a small orange complaints" and "godaddy complaints". The GoDaddy search, half of the links returned were from people griping. ASO - not a single bad comment. I also found this review.
I've had ASO since mid-2005. No complaints at all... my simple sites are very responsive on their servers (probably helps that their Atlanta datacenter is not too far away). Their customer service is really quick and helpful. Only gripe is that storage is a bit on the low side, but for my purposes that's not a huge issue.
Another vote for ASO vs. GoDaddy. I've never personally used GoDaddy, but I've had clients that have used and I've gone through their accounts to post stuff, contacted help, etc. and it's just been a mess. I don't hate them, but it seems like every little thing took 6 steps with them when it took ASO 2 steps.
Also, ASO's customer service CANNOT be beat.
Also, ASO's customer service CANNOT be beat.
Forget how much storage space they offer, for a moment, and consider how much storage space you need.
Almost every host oversells. If all their customers used up their allotted quota, they'd be in a world of hurt. I have accounts with 200 GB of storage, and I'm using 5 MB. People like me are more common than the people who use up their space. Chances are, you might be just another over-sold customer to any of them.
Then again, if you're going to upload a lot of images to your portfolio, space probably will be an issue. I think it's still worth the time to calculate (and guess) how much you'll actually need. If both provide ample space for your stuff, go with the one with the better performance reputation.
I can not tell you which is better. I've never used GoDaddy. I have used ASO for years, and, while they're still very good, their performance seems to have gone down lately.
Almost every host oversells. If all their customers used up their allotted quota, they'd be in a world of hurt. I have accounts with 200 GB of storage, and I'm using 5 MB. People like me are more common than the people who use up their space. Chances are, you might be just another over-sold customer to any of them.
Then again, if you're going to upload a lot of images to your portfolio, space probably will be an issue. I think it's still worth the time to calculate (and guess) how much you'll actually need. If both provide ample space for your stuff, go with the one with the better performance reputation.
I can not tell you which is better. I've never used GoDaddy. I have used ASO for years, and, while they're still very good, their performance seems to have gone down lately.
Thanks so much for the replies! I think I was already leaning towards ASO, so this just confirms my thinking. Once again, MacRumors members to the rescue!
Here's a question I just thought of. Do any of the hosts use any kind of on-the-fly compression technology to make it seem like they can offer more space?
Remembering the days of Stacker/DoubleSpace, where a compression layer would "turn your 40 meg hard drive into an 80 meg hard drive" - as long as you were storing text documents that were easily compressible.
It seems to me that other than images, a website would be full of scripts and HTML text that would be pretty easy to compress.
Remembering the days of Stacker/DoubleSpace, where a compression layer would "turn your 40 meg hard drive into an 80 meg hard drive" - as long as you were storing text documents that were easily compressible.
It seems to me that other than images, a website would be full of scripts and HTML text that would be pretty easy to compress.
A VPS is a server that is, essentially, your own machine (this is done through partitioning and emulation). Therefore you can install any application you want on your server, and have your own IPs, without worrying about what applications the provider supports. You can also access the server via SSH, and such.
A shared web hosting plan basically gives you a folder in one of their machines. You have access to it via cPanel or FTP, and ASO gives a bunch of useful apps to boot, but it's not open to app installs like a VPS is, since you don't have control of the entire server, just the one particular folder.
To original post:
I would say go with both. Get the domain from GoDaddy, and host it at ASO!
irmongoose
A shared web hosting plan basically gives you a folder in one of their machines. You have access to it via cPanel or FTP, and ASO gives a bunch of useful apps to boot, but it's not open to app installs like a VPS is, since you don't have control of the entire server, just the one particular folder.
To original post:
I would say go with both. Get the domain from GoDaddy, and host it at ASO!
irmongoose
I can tell you that one of the founders of ASO was a Neowin regular before he helped start it. He understands the power user and forum community which is why their service is top notch.
I would totally go with ASO if I needed a host.
I would totally go with ASO if I needed a host.
Just to add what I said before:
My site went way over its bandwidth limit last night and was offline when I woke up. I emailed ASO to get the issue fixed/upgrade the account.
Email sent: 11:52:04 AM
Email back from ASO with site up and running again: 11:55:05 AM
That's great customer service
My site went way over its bandwidth limit last night and was offline when I woke up. I emailed ASO to get the issue fixed/upgrade the account.
Email sent: 11:52:04 AM
Email back from ASO with site up and running again: 11:55:05 AM
That's great customer service
I vote for GoDaddy on this one, as I haven't used ASO. So far, GoDaddy has been great in every department for me...especially support. I've had to call in on things a couple of times, and I've never had to wait more than 3 minutes to get a live person to answer my question.
Good luck with your decision!
Good luck with your decision!
Just FYI.. ASO upgraded the server my websites were hosted on this week. during the process my addon domains settings were lost. Gone. Bye-bye.
The websites were down for most of the day... they knew it, knew it happened.. I never got an email. I checked the site tonight (because I told a client about ti today and wanted to make sure it was up and running) and it was down.
I had to submit a help desk ticket.. and wait for them to email me back, before they'd admit "Oh yeh.. well, your websites all need to be reconfigured.. sorry about that."
They can't even do it for me.. the data is gone.. and whle I can understand a data loss.. I can't understand not emailing me and letting me know "oh.. your sites are down, we f'd up.. and we can't fix it so you might want to do something."
They didn't send me an email... nothing. That, in my book, is completelly unacceptable.
The websites were down for most of the day... they knew it, knew it happened.. I never got an email. I checked the site tonight (because I told a client about ti today and wanted to make sure it was up and running) and it was down.
I had to submit a help desk ticket.. and wait for them to email me back, before they'd admit "Oh yeh.. well, your websites all need to be reconfigured.. sorry about that."
They can't even do it for me.. the data is gone.. and whle I can understand a data loss.. I can't understand not emailing me and letting me know "oh.. your sites are down, we f'd up.. and we can't fix it so you might want to do something."
They didn't send me an email... nothing. That, in my book, is completelly unacceptable.
good thread
I'm not too familar with ASO, but have had GoDaddy for several years and have had very few problems. ASO does appear to be worth a look, though. (Looking doesn't hurt, right?)
Anyway, it's just good to read a thread without streams of crying, moaning, and vitriol. Truly helpful. Thanks!
I'm not too familar with ASO, but have had GoDaddy for several years and have had very few problems. ASO does appear to be worth a look, though. (Looking doesn't hurt, right?)
Anyway, it's just good to read a thread without streams of crying, moaning, and vitriol. Truly helpful. Thanks!
I havent used ASO but I have used Godaddy. I left them with over a year left on my plan they were kind enough to refund me only $11 after over a month of fighting with their tech support over the worst SQL servers I have ever hosted with. I went with Ace-Host and am having great luck. Godaddy would never be consistant with tech support they just put my stuff on the back burner and got to me when they could. I vote ASO Site unseen seeing how I will never host godaddy again.
