West Host is having a sale right now on virtual private server (VPS) hosting. VPS is a step up from what most companies offer, which is Virtual Hosting. In a sense, most web hosts pack as many accounts onto a server as they can fit without getting in trouble, with VPS you have a guaranteed share of the resources of that server.

I just signed up for a new Big 10 sale account in preparation for purchasing PickPic. If you aren't having any problems with your current host, I don't recommend switching, but if you're unhappy where you are at, or if you're looking to set up your web site for the first time, this is a great deal.

West Host Business Plans

While I'm not sharing this simple because I believe it's a good deal and not for any personal gain, it would be nice if you signed up for you to fill in my name on the referral box. I think I get some account credit for each person who signs up

That really is a good deal and I just went to it, myself.

Matt, I'm curious, do you have as much down time as I do hosting with WestHost? I was with GoDaddy for years and never had my site down for more than a minute or two at a time. Yesterday my site (hosted with WestHost) was down *yet again* for another 3 or 4 hours. Argh!

I really had heard so many great things about WestHost and had much higher expectations than this. I thought GoDaddy was the Wal-Mart of hosting, but turns out they were pretty good after all, I guess.

Oh well, nothing I can really do about it now. I have PickPic, my BluDomain site and everything over on WestHost, so I'm not about to move it all somewhere else right now. Just thought I'd see if I happen to be on a bum server with them or what. I moved to WestHost about 4 or 5 months ago.

Every time I call they're very apologetic, but that doesn't really help me out much when my blog, proofing, site and everything is down for hours at a time during the middle of the day on a pretty regular basis.

Sorry for venting... I just meant to ask how your experience has been with WestHost. And how long have you been with them?

I just signed up with them actually... I was a little concerned at first because my control panel was a little sluggish to begin with, but now that my domain has populated across the internet as belonging to their name server everything is lightning fast. I will keep an eye out for outages... so far I have not had any downtime though.

Yesterday I spent a long time talking with 2 of their techs on their online chat/support system. I learned some interesting stats:

-1/2 of their servers have been up for a year or longer.
-They're building 23 new servers every week to keep up with their expansion. (Sounds like a lot!)
-They strive for 99.9% uptime, but it's not guaranteed.
-The server I'm hosted on is significantly below the 99.9% uptime goal, although I couldn't get an exact figure. My server was down for about 4 hours last Tuesday and was down again just one week ago at the end of February. Before that, it was down in late December.
-My server has less than average resource usage, so it's actually a good, fast server -- when it's up. (I had to add that. =)

So, that's what I learned. The tech said if he were me, he would stick with the server I'm currently on since it should be quite fast, so I guess I'll stick it out a little bit longer and see how it goes. They're always very apologetic and understanding, but that doesn't help when your site's down.

That is really odd that it has been down so much. We have been with Westhost for about a year now and have not experienced anything like that. I can only think of one time where ours was noticeably down, and that was very brief. The only other times it has been down has been when they send us an email warning us that it will be down for maintenance at midnight or 2am for a few minutes.