Wow…here’s the story…
I use Dreamhost to host ilias.ca. I have many ilias.ca email aliases. Most relay messages to a gmail account (for spam filtering, and a searchable web archive), which then forwards them to an IMAP account hosted on ilias.ca.
On Friday, Dreamhost decided to move some email accounts to new hardware . Here’s the blog post:
A small number of accounts had mail that was unable to be moved over to new hardware before we had to power down the last of our servers and move them out of the old data center. For now we are setting up those users (without the data) on the new system so they should still be functional and we’ll be working on restoring the data once we have moved the servers (the data is not lost, just not currently available). We apologize for this. we understand how important mail is and wanted to reassure those effected that we’re aware of the matter and are working to correct it.
So on Saturday morning, I woke up to find that all of my previous messages and user-created folders for other hosted ilias.ca addresses for that matter. In fact, I couldn’t even connect to my mail server until a DNS server update. It’s Monday now, and Dreamhost still has not fixed the issue.
Let’s add some extra weirdness to the matter. Today, my IMAP account stopped receiving messages, and started sending my Gmail account bounce messages. I contacted Dreamhost about this, and it appears the configuration was changed from being fully-hosted to a forward-only address with no destination. What this means: dataloss!
I put up with the occasional downtime because of the price, but dataloss? My previous messages being missing for over two days? So after speaking with all i have to say is Buh-bye to Dreamhost.
Does anyone have suggestions for a hosting service?
If you’re set on still using a shared hosting provider, i’ve got nothing but good things to say about HostGator, Good prices, amazing uptime, no complaints at all.
However, if you’re not deadset on shared hosting, i’d HIGHLY recommend going with a VPS. I like stuff from RapidXen ( http://rapidxen.net ) or their sister company Nerios ( http://nerios.net ). For a bit more than you were paying at Dreamhost, you get full root access, ability to install whatever you want, good bandwidth, good stability and…Well, since you have root access and access to the mail configs and apache/lighttpd/cherokee configs, you’ve got an infinite number of options for stuff.
leave it on Google and access via IMAP?
Ouch 🙁
I’m in the process of moving my stuff off Dreamhost (for various reasons – I only used Dreamhost because it cost me nothing), over to WiredTree (managed VPS). I’m not in a rush, so am taking my time, leaving my blog and email to last. So far the experience has been awesome. While a VPS may be too much for just blog and email, paying a premium for better support seems worth it in the long run.
For low-cost shared hosting, I second Hostgator – but be aware its basically on the same level as Dreamhost.
I’ve been using http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net for about a year. While the costs are slightly higher than typical shared hosting (for me, anyway) I’ve never had any catastrophic incidences with them. (I would consider your narrative here “catastrophic”.) I’m sure I could also optimize my resource usage and start paying less. 😉
Anyway, it’s a decent host; have a look!
Linode is pretty good.
Use “Google Apps For Your Domain” for your email.
Just stumbled across http://hostjury.com/, that might be helpful.
I can’t say enough good things about SliceHost in the VPS market.