MortyMoose, delay time on a ticket was important to me. The quality of the responses I get on a ticket are important. Waiting a more than a day for responses that are half effort is not acceptable when there are good people waiting on me to fix their broken site. It is hard enough to get things accomplished through only email - and then if it takes them over a day to respond, it takes wayyyyy too long to get things straightened out. After I experienced some of that iwth my new iHost account, I did some more Googling on that name and found a number of forum postings that said the tech support was slow and some said they thought there was no one answering emails on the weekend sometimes. Keep in mind that you CANNOT talk to a billing person on the phone. They will not allow it. When they have your money and they have taken 3 months and lots of emails and still not given it back and will not let you talk to the billing department to straighten it out. It gets frustrating! Certainly enough to give a bad recommendation. Since I switched to 3Essentials, they have answered my support tickets between 1 and two hours. My first round of questions were each answered, with detail, in less than 20 minutes each. My overnight and weekend tickets are also handled timely and professionally. And my customers and I have enjoyed fast websites - much faster than my last host. I have worked with 6 or 7 hosts over the years. I'm not new to the whole website thing. I need service and I was not happy with iHost during the short time I was there. If you decide to go with iHost, please tell us your experience after a couple weeks or so. I hope for their sake that they get a better rating with you.

Thanks for your reply Jcosta.

You said you tried 3Essentials.  Other than a harder control panel, what was your view on them?

Thanks.

I started a thread on 3Essentials, but it hasn't gotten any replies.

I know I seem like I am asking a lot of questions, but I want my customers to be happy and successful, and hosting is a big deal.

Thanks again,

MortyMoose

I had a lot of issues setting up one site with 3Essentials. They didn't have the permissions set correctly for a DNN site so I had to run through several screens and reset permissions a bunch of times to get my DNN Site to work. Once I did it ran smooth and fast but the control panel which was a plesk panel was a nightmare to use compared to helms.

I am also bias because I used helm on my servers so I was already familiar with it but I still think it is a much easier to use interface.  It also has a full billing system and allows you to accept credit card payments from your customers if you have a credit card processor like I do with Autorize.net.   I am not sure if the Plesk panel lets you do all that.  I do know that Plesk is a single machine controller.  That means your email, SQL and site are all on the same computer.  Helm controls multiple servers which means the SQL server is separate from the email and web server.  To me that is a big advantage.

I host just revamped their support system.  You use to send an email but now you have to go through their web interface.  I think it helped them reduce a lot of spam which seemed to help them speed up response times.  If you put in an URGENT request in because a site is down they respond in under an hour.  If you put in a normal non urgent request they seem to respond within a day.

I signed up for both 3Essentials and Ihost at the same time.  Used them both for about 2 months with 3 different sites and ended up going with IHost.  All my customers have been happy.  The start up time for a few of the DNN 4+ sites have been the only complaint and I just installed keep alives on those and haven't had any other issues with customer complaints.

IHost does have actual people that answer the phone.  Just go to their site and click on contact us and they have a billing and support number.  I have called them a few times and people do answer during business hours.  They also just opened a second location in a different data center.

Get a monthly account with both and make up your mind for yourself.  Let me know who you chose.

Later!

I tried Ihotasp and wasnt impressed by the response times. I have since moved to Server Intellect, 5 months no complaints so far.

I am currently hosting some of my sites on iHost, and am moving more over. So far I am very impressed, especially for the price. It is hard to find a re-seller account that offers as much as they do in that price range. I am not reselling specifically, I offer hosting to my clients (I own a web design company). iHost try to sell themselves as by developers for developers, and from this statement I assume that they expect a level of knowledge from their clients. For me they have responded to my questions in good time and offer a solid product. I know what I am doing and I want control of my accounts. Their Helm system offers just that. Their web pages load quickly, and their uptime is solid.

For DNN and asp.NET hosting I haven't found a better value, especially if you have more that 5 domains. I would recommend iHost to any seasoned experienced web designer. For a someone who newer (especially DNN) or needs to have a lot/quick support they might not be your best option. If you have been doing this for a while and want a good solid host, I would recommend them.

Please feel free to ask me any specific questions on their hosting if you are considering them, I'd be happy to respond.

James Harrison
www.alavri.com

First of all, thanks to all of you for all the good info in this thread and others. I've historically tried webhost4life (several years ago) and found it painfully slow (DNN 2, so I forgive them). Recently I tried again with Easycgi and it was miserable waste of my time. The automated DNN configuration didn't work and took about 5 support tickets to finally get it working. Only to find out that root DNN was not supported! So, I tried to move it myself and it did not work...I suspect it was permissions but they were of no help. This went on for nearly two months (off and on, I have a day job).

Finally tonight I read this thread and had narrowed my list to PowerDNN or iHostASP. Simply based on price I chose the latter. Well within an hour I have my main portal (running on the root) and another parent portal working perfectly and seems to have very quick response (for a single page).

Now, the only reason it took an hour is because I didn't watch the DNN tutorial on their site. I had already set us a MS SQL database and I think the Application Deployment tool would have preferred to do that. I quickly changed the web.config settings to the DB I had created and, viola, worked great.

The only other reason it took me an hour was because of my 2nd portal. That too would have went faster if I understood domain aliasing. I've been a spoiled user of DNN at my day job since DNN 1.x and have had direct access to IIS so I've never ventured into aliasing. Again, if you follow the domain aliasing tutorial and add the portal to DNN it works great.

So now I've saved anyone thinking about iHostASP about 45 minutes. You'll be up in 15 minutes!

Paul

I have, unfortunately, become and expert on bad and worse .net hosts over the last 5 years.  As all of you know, you can ask the questions and do the research but it is very hard to determine the quality of a host without "field" testing them for a few months.  IHostASP has been, by far, the best host I have had and I am mid way through year 2 with them.

They are not the cheapest but their reliability is top notch and their support is (usually) excellent.  I have called IHostASP on the phone about a dozen times over the last year and each time I was actually able to speak with a qualified tech in less than a minute (business housr).  The majority of times I have called, there was no problem...I was simply seeking info about Helm or some sort of customization.  They always have been friendly and informative...other hosts have just directed me to some generic knowledge base article. While IHostASP does have an extensive KB, they actually have no problem helping you solve your problem of answer your question. 

Early on, I had a problem with a larger volume DNN site not performing.  I sent over DNN logs and spoke with support.  In my past experiences, most hosts simply pass the buck.  They say it is a code issue, optimization issue on your end, or say there is no problem at all.  IHostASP did not do that.  They analyzed the logs, identified a problem with one of their servers and moved the site without interruption to a different server...all within 24 hours.  I have had no problems since that incident and DNN performance has been excellent.

The breakdown of pro's and cons as I have experienced:

Pros:

• Phone support with friendly English speaking techs.
• Automated DNN Installation engine allows for one click DNN installation of all available versions (including 5.0).
• Good prices.
• Good site performance.
• Excellent Email stability.

Cons:

• Somewhat slow Email/helpdesk support.
• Not the cheapest host out there.
• I am not a big fan of Helm (prefer Plesk) but that is simply an opinion.
• Not quite as much email service customization as I would like but you can call and they will adjust certain settings for you.

I would strongly suggest giving them a try.  I know the frustration a bad host can cause and my experience with IHostASP has been very positive.

i am also happy with ihostasp

the one downside i found was that the email is part of the disk space quota, the work around i found was using ihostasp only for dnn and using googleapps standard for email

requires a little work with the dns (a cname and mx records) but once you have it setup works like a dream

yeah i have had a few bad times with dnn providers in the past but would recommend ihostasp to anyone

Here is the review you need to pay attention to!

So you want to know, do I go with iHostAsp.net or not? Great question and it's difficult to tell from the reviews on this thread, as well as the threads across the web. So people swear they are the greatest, some swear they are horrible - so who do you believe?

This is going to sound arrogant, but I will give you the answer...are you ready. "It depends." That is the answer you have all been waiting for and I know, it makes you feel a void in your mind and stomach. Don't fret, I'll explain.

You need to look at what your needs are first. Are you hosting your own little site? Are you hosting a site for you client who is "Joe's Pizzeria"? Then by all means, host with iHostAsp. It all boils down to the most simplistic phrase, "you get what you pay for." For a little site that you have or for Joe's Pizzeria, if the site goes down every once in a while, no big deal. This WILL HAPPEN when you host with them. If you happen to log into the SQL studio, directly to your database, you will be amazed (and possibly shocked) by the hundreds of databases you are sharing the SQL server with. After 15 years of IT, I know that 300-500 databases on a high-end SQL server are not going to perform well. It would be a safe bet that the IIS boxes are sharing the same number of sites. Again, if you are hosting a little site for you or a small client, you are getting your value.

However, if you have a client with a higher profile site (meaning they will be going to it once or twice a day OR the site will be hit by outside visitors on a frequent basis), you are in for a world of hurt. Now I need to clarify further, it is pot luck pick when you register a new domain with them because you don't know what SQL or IIS box the site will be assigned to. I have approximately seven sites with them. The most complex (most database calls) site performs exceptionally well. One of the simplest sites is dreadfully slow. Sometimes it takes 20-25 seconds to load a page. What burns me (and others I'm sure) is that they if you bring this to their attention, they give you a canned response about .NET and how it compiles when a page is requested.

Another infuriating experience is how they market the fact that your database gets backed up automatically. Well for those familiar with iHostAsp, we all know that for 6 - 9 months now, this doesn't happen when you sign up. One day you will go to retrieve a backup to find it's just not there. Why? Because the process they implemented to automatically back up databases for new domains broke a long time ago and they haven't gotten around to fixing it. The past five domains I hosted with them did get backed up until I put in a support ticket. What burned me on this was the response of, "management is currently evaluating potential solutions." This was a response from five months ago and as of today they still haven't corrected the problem.

I also love the post about "the Internet doesn't go home on the weekends." My latest support call (because the SQL server was down, so therefore so was two of my client's sites) over the weekend was greeted by, "Press 1 if you consider this an emergency." So I pressed "1" to get this response, "The extension you entered was not valid." So I have sites that are down and your phone routing is not even set up correctly?

So as I said, I host quite a few sites with them, but as of a few days ago I realized for me, I was in the wrong environment. AGAIN, IF YOU ARE HOSTING A LITTLE MOM & POP SHOP, then use these guys. If you are hosting a client site that needs to be responsive, then pay more and get a better value.

I realized that $9/month was not where my clients needed to be, so I bit the bullet and rented a dedicated server. Now keep in mind paying approximately $80/month for shared hosting vs. $180-$200/month for a dedicated server. I had to make the jump to keep my clients happy. I can't even begin to describe the difference. I have sites now that load in under a second that use to take 4-12 seconds to load.

So for "Joe's Pizzeria" use these guys and charge your client pennies to host their site. BUT, when you need to host that social networking site for your new client, don't expect $8/month to give you the performance that your client is going to rave about.

Again, look at the price you are paying and how it equates to "value." If you need to go the the economical route, then understand there will be tradeoffs.

Thanks for your post.  I can't agree with you more. You get what you pay for.  I host with ihostasp and I'm very happy with there dedication to dnn and their knowledge.  However some of my client can't deal with the 1/2 maintenance window and no weekend support for their website.
I'm curious.  Where are you hosting your dedicated server?

I second the thanks. As a user of the cheapest package I've found it relatively easy to set up and maintain over the last couple of years but oh the speed - or rather the lack of it. I can no no longer put up with a home page that can take up to 30 seconds to load. As someone observed above, people are not going to wait that long for your page to appear - they're gone, and with them their business.

I have about 30 sites on an ihost reseller package. Most common complaint is speed. It's a mixed bag. I've learned to optimize the speed of the sites (thanks to information on this site) and have set up my own pinging software to keep the sites active. Get that done and ihost works fine but it's still not the fastest thing on the planet. I have a couple of sites on databasemart.com that are faster right out of the shute (for $3.99 / month!) but don't plan on DNN specific knowledge and support.

Been a while since this was added to but let me add a recent (read that current experience).

Over the last several months I had noticed a increase in 2 things, neither good. Downtime and service wait time.

When a site crashed during an upgrade early one Friday morning I asked for them to restore the site to the previous day. Waited 35 hours for that.

I decided to try other hosts. After some research and testing I settled on 3Essentials. Started moving my sites over. By last Wednesday all but one was moved.

Thursday morning that site is down.
To avoid an overly long rant it is now 97 hours and the site is still down. Faulty hardware caused one of their database servers to become corupted.
They claim that all but a few databases were restored sometime Saturday.

The ones that were not restored they claimed that the owners had messed with connection strings or logins.

When yesterday I pointed out that I had done neither response was
"Your issue may be completely unrelated. We do not have to modify web.config, it only has to be modified if SQL server login information has changed."

97 hours 32 minutes now................

I my frustration I forgot to mention the above host is ihostasp.net