Choosing a home for a website is possibly the most frustrating thing you can do on the web, it’s in effect like choosing a new house, but combined with moving to a completely new town. Sometimes you can do all the research in the world, but nothing can prepare you for what it’s actually like to live there.
I have been a firm believer in Dreamhost, and had a great time with them. Although I have experienced very little downtime with them, I have noticed that things have been getting pretty slow lately, and decided I need a more reliable host, not just for myself, but for my clients. Their recent billing issue fortunately didn’t affect me, and the way they handled it was the reason why I love Dreamhost. Their transparency, urgency, but mostly sense of humour is definitely what has kept me there, and support has always been great with emails being answered within a couple of hours.
I have read a lot about A Small Orange, who seem to be a very reliable and trustworthy host. Although they are less transparent, and don’t appear to have as much of a personal touch I think that it is about time to actually try out another host. However I do not want to be reliant on just one web host, especially since I will still be in a shared environment, so I think that I will configure the DNS settings so that they primarily point to A Small Orange, but also have a copy at Dreamhost. This way, hopefully my websites will always be available, even if one host is experiencing problems.
I haven’t purchased an account yet, but hopefully I will test one of my domains there in the near future to see how the transition goes. If all goes well, then hopefully I will have a new home!
