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Need an ASP.NET hoster? - webhost4life review

Update: Given changes at webhost4life (new owner, new support, new control panel, new hosting environments) at the beginning of 2010, the review below is outdated. I now recommend Arvixe and OrcsWeb.

When I started SharpToolbox.com, I needed to select a hosting solution. I chose webhost4life, and this year I renewed my account with them because I think they have very goods hosting plans and I'm happy with them.

Here are a the main advantages you get with webhost4life:

  • Price: I chose the $9.95/month plan (Update: now $11.95), and I consider it a bargain. (this means a one time payment of  $140 for a year, one time setup fee included)
  • Bandwidth: unlimited! Now, try to find something close from the other hosters for that price. And gigabytes fly by quickly... Unlimited bandwith is invaluable if you plan to share pictures, videos, or even software.
  • Domains: you can create as many sub-domains as you wish for free, and host multiple domains on one account for $15 a year per additional domain
  • SQL Server and MySQL databases
  • ASP.NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0
  • Mail: POP and IMAP, SSL, SPAM protection, virus protection, 100 accounts by domain...
  • Configuration: a control panel let's you setup your hosting
  • They currently have a special offer that includes shared 128bit SSL and doubled space for the same price. For the $9.95 per month plan (Update: now $11.95), that means you get 300MB on disk + 300MB for SQL Server + 300MB for MySQL. Update: the new offer gives you from 1000MB to 3000MB of disk space and from 2000MB to 3000MB of SQL Server space!
Of course, you can see the details on their web site.
Everything is not perfect though, and I had to contact the tech support a couple of times to fix a few things. But the good news is that the tech support is efficient and fast enough. I've been happy with the free online tech support. My problems were fixed quickly.

I don't usually advertise for others, but here I have three reasons:
  • people reading these weblogs may need a hosting solution,
  • I'm satisfied with webhost4life and don't mind spreading the word to thank them for the service,
  • I get a commision if you sign up with them and tell them madgeek sent you, or use this link to sign up :-)

12 Comments

  • I was just wondering if you are still happy with webhost4life.com 's hosting plan.

  • Lately I've been reading that WebHost4Life's service is on the negative side. I just want to see if you are still hosting with webHost4Life and would you recommend them for a database intensive web site?

  • I'm still using webhost4life for my websites. I'm not sure that I would recommend it for anything intensive or critical though. Maybe it's different with their higher end offers, but the cheap hosting plans are for light websites such as mine.

  • I visited your website sharptoolbox.com and I love your postings. About your hosting company,have you ever experienced other hoster than webhost4life?

  • Not really. I only tried ORCS Web quickly a while ago. But while the service seems better, their control panel was lacking most of the features found in webhost4life's, and hosting multiple domains was difficult to setup.

  • I am going to move my sites to them. is there any issue about ASP websits?

  • I don't know because I've never used ASP, only ASP.NET.

  • I have been using webhost4life for four years. They were great back then. However, I think they have new owners. Two days ago they moved me to their 'new platform' however, they cloned my database from a month ago. Luckily I have nightly backups on my ftp site and was able to download the data locally. When I asked them to please restore the correct database they ignored me and then pressured me to pay $30 for premium support, which I finally did because I needed this done badly. They still never did it and I spent all night scripting the data and moving it back up by hand.

    Then last night my database went down. It still is not up over 10 hours later. All the support people tell me is that they are 'tier 1 support' and that the task is being fixed by 'tier 3 support'. Nothing happens though.

    I signed up with DiscountAsp.net last night at 3 am and my site is now operational with them. Luckily I only have one customer and can just give them the new domain name.

    Avoid the new 'webhost4life' like the plague!

  • Just curious. Are you still with webhost4life? The company migrated my site and nothing works now.

  • Instead of webhost4life, I am now recommending Arvixe and OrcsWeb.
    See http://weblogs.asp.net/fmarguerie/archive/2010/05/19/asp-net-hosting-arvixe-orcsweb.aspx

  • webhost4life have gone seriously down hill I used them for 5 years , and recommended them , they were 10 out of 10 for the money , they have now been sold , I had 5 domains with them that pointed to different folders as there roots , the domains should have been able to be easily pointed to each folder using their domain pointing manager , but it simply did not work

    the support people now copy and paste answers , and do not actually do anything , they buy time by saying 'can we have a screenshot' when the problem was stated in 1 line
    'ie domain.com should point to /domain and it doesnt it points to the root of the whole site '
    ( they do this just before the max reponse time of 48 hours )
    so I had 5 sites effectively down for 5 days , the old webhost4life any issue would normally be sorted in an hour , truly truly awful if you need support , stay well away now


  • Webhost4life really sucks now. Stay away since they have no support or no backup. Even some of my websites are hacked due to lack of security in their server and they can't help me at all

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