Do any of you guys have a favorite shared host? I use siteground and fluidhosting. Both work pretty well. I like fluidhosting more, but I can't figure out how to change the register globals on their shared hosting plan. siteground works, but it seems a little slow sometimes. How are your experiences with joomlabamboo sites on other hosts?

Hey Poetic,

If you are in Australia I have found Jumba to be an excellent shared host and the price aint bad either, my sites install well with Joomla and run well, not had an issue in 12 months

I have a reseller account however heres the personal link to show you their starting prices

www.jumba.com.au/hosting/personal

Cheers
Craig

I think its a bit of a mixed bag really and depends on the server you end up with.

Ive had reasonably good experience with Site5 on the shared host until JB hit a spike and the server couldnt handle it anymore. They are very cheap as well.

I ran a vps at hostican and think they have a very good setup as well.

Interested hear others points of view here too

I need to check out Jumba @Craig

Choosing the correct hosting company (that is Joomla friendly) does not always mean the cheapest or the most expensive. Over the past six years I have dealt with my fair share of hosting services and many promise the world and end up delivering far less once you sign-up. Currently I use two shared hosting services (Host Monster and SiteGround) and one reseller service (Eleven2). In addition I co-manage two dedicated Apache servers and two Windows servers. The Apache servers are with GoDaddy and Rackspace and the Windows servers are two independent (self hosting) units. Now, taking all this into account and based on my personal experience, here is how I would rank them:

1) Host Monster
2) Rackspace
3) Eleven2
4) Windows Server
5) SiteGround
6) Anything other then #7
7) GoDaddy

I selected Host Monster #1 because they know how to run a shared hosting business better then any other service I have done business with. They support Joomla, unlimited domains, unlimited HD space and an unbelievable amount of available bandwidth all for a very, very reasonable annual fee. In addition they offer excellent 24/7 phone and live chat support. Their up-time for my account has been 99.2% and when there is a problem, they text my cell phone with a notice! The only issue I have with them is that they do not offer a reseller service...

My experience with Rackspace, Eleven2 and SiteGround have been good (nothing outstanding) and with the exception of SiteGround I'll more then likely renew my contract with these companies. Had you asked this forum question a year or so ago I would have positioned SiteGround much higher in my ranking. Something has changed with this company (not sure just what) and in my option, their overall up-time, customer service and server speed has gone down hill over the past year or so. One of the biggest drawbacks with SiteGround is their one (1) domain per account policy. In today’s hosting world they are way behind this eight ball.

Now, who will I never go back for hosting service with:
1) GoDaddy
2) WingSix*
3) eHostPros
4) Any hosting service related to #1

* In WingSix's defense, they used to be my very best shared hosting service hands down. When they sold their company to a mega server company operating under ten different names about a year and a half ago, everything went to hell and fast! In my option GoDaddy should just go away and eHostPros needs to take a lot of customer service classes and stop adjusting their servers to lock out applications like Joomla.

I hope others jump on this forum with their hosting likes and dislikes. It makes us all stronger consumers when shopping for the next greatest hosting server company.

Thanks for the quick responses! I post from my bb, so please excuse if this looks weird (or is full of typos). I'm in the states, but I want a service which is fast and effective here, but also maintains good international service. About a third of visitors for a couple sites visit from outside of North America. I'm pretty sure that shared servers won't be co-located, but I may transfer at some point, and its good for me to know for the future. Unfortunately these details tend to be relatively difficult to come by, and most hosting companies advertize unlimited plans (that just limit in other ways), so it makes a paper comparison pretty difficult.

For shared hosts (all I've really used), fluid hosting has been incredible. Lots of updates, and a fast service. Very reasonable in cost too. They don't advertize anything unlimited, but they've been more than sufficient for my needs. I would not host video with them on a shared plan if you expect tons of visitors, but if you expect that many wisitors, who will let you stay on a shared plan and keep your site responsive?

I think fluid limits the number of accounts on each server with an eye for performance, but they've been fantastic for a couple years. Their servixe is also very helpful. Since I'm a shared hosting client, and the defailt, for security reasons, on their servers is to set it to off, I cannot change this in my htaccess. I'm not even sure how much its affected me, but I think its cause a few minor issues for some extensions. I imagine this will not be a prob when 1.6 becomes available.

Sieground has been what I expected in terms of being a large webhost, and while they claim to offer alnost everything unlimited, they count your cpu use on their server to ensure you don't bog it down. I think that's reasonable for shared hosting, esp at their cost, but its a little misleading. I just added a domain to a primary account to, and it cost 30. I'm really not concerned with the expense, but the process is less than elegant: the way they break the tree heirarchy down to fit within the primary domain space, but it works so far.

I read about some hosts at a non-affiliated (I think webhosting talk or something) forum, but opinions were so varied that I chose siteground based on how it positioned itself as a joomla-centric host. They're not bad, but iw would not recommend them the way I would with fluid for non-joomla sites (or even joomla so long as you don't intend to use too many extensions and are willing to pay a little more).

Ed, thanks for the review on hostmonster. I'll look into them for the next site I do. If I chhose them, I'd be glad to use you as a recommendation if you get anything for that. Great response, btw.

Craig, glad to know that you've found a good host in au. If I ever make a site that targets the region, I'll go with them.

Anthony, thanks for your help recently, and great work with your templates! I spent quite a bit of time researching them, and yours looked so much nicer than the competition. I'll definitly be renewing my service with you next month.

Incidentally, I noticed that you paired with joomlapraise for your most recent template, which looks great. They make an incredible admin template too. Glad to see your collaboration.

I think that I'll be moving to drupal for a couple projects. Does Bamboo do anything for them?