Best web server company for hosting programmers is?

Hi all,

My first post here.  I develop apps in Silverlight, ASP.NET & ADO.NET, WPF, and I'm looking for the best web hosting company for programmers.  Right now my server is pretty much the developer server built into Visual Studio 2008, running locally on my PC.  My machines are either a Windows 7 modern PC or an older Windows XP PC, both running Visual Studio 2008 with SQL Server Express.

There are a lot of web hosting companies out there, but after emailing some of them I get the impression what they do is host a front page for a business (i.e., index.html), and/or a one particular app that a company has developed, but they don't host lots of apps (I develop a new app every few weeks or months).  I need a place that will hold my hand when I want to publish my app.  Turnaround time is not that important, in that even if the IT guy gets back to me within a week that's fine.  I just want to have that support.

Can anybody recommend a "programmer friendly" web hosting company?  One that will support you if there's a minor glitch?  Also I need for them to run SQL Server in the background since my apps use a database.

Thank you.

PJ

I think there is a big event hosting programmers comming up in Las Vegas - but I don't think that is probably of much help to you.

I'm not sure.

But don't forget to compare the cost of buying a business internet connection for your home and running a server out of your basement.I say a "business" connection because you need a fixed IP and one that allows SMTP traffic.

A web hosting company is not responsible for what content you provide.. all they do is supply the tools.. You tell them that you need a 'windows' plan which includes .net and sql server and then you are responsible for the rest.  It is up to you to know the correct connect strings to glue it all together it is not up to them to debug your code.

ManipUni said:

I'm not sure.

 

But don't forget to compare the cost of buying a business internet connection for your home and running a server out of your basement.I say a "business" connection because you need a fixed IP and one that allows SMTP traffic.

You don't need a business ISP contract to run a server at home, in fact it's pointless.  I use Virgin media and have a 20MB line, Virgin want more money for a 10MB line just because it's a business contract.

Anyway I use no-ip.com which is about £7 a year and allows you to have a fixed IP address assigned to a dynamic one. It works really well and automatically picks up your new IP address if it changes.  Been using it for over a year and never had an issue.

leeappdalecom said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

You don't need a business ISP contract to run a server at home, in fact it's pointless.  I use Virgin media and have a 20MB line, Virgin want more money for a 10MB line just because it's a business contract.

 

Anyway I use no-ip.com which is about £7 a year and allows you to have a fixed IP address assigned to a dynamic one. It works really well and automatically picks up your new IP address if it changes.  Been using it for over a year and never had an issue.

The upload sucks on consumer lines and you cannot use them for e-mail.

Uh... shameless self-plugging notwithstanding, but I run my own hosted services company with two fronts: one is your bog-standard webhosting biz where I just provide my clients with space and bandwidth; the other is more of a "managed hosting" (not the same thing as managed colocation though) where I assume some responsibility for my clients' web applications (in exchange for a significantly higher fee, of course). My clients include EBANK and a number of vehicle leasing firms.

I own and operate my own hardware in a Mancunian datacentre; I assume you're in Greece so the ping times shouldn't be too bad (maybe 60-70ms?). My stuff is all Windows Server (some 2008, some 2008R2) with the usual compliment of infrastructure: MSSQL, MySQL, and I do SVN hosting too.

My website's currently down, but most of my clients are by word-of-mouth (I have a generous affiliate scheme) but if you're interested I can point you to my contact form where we can take this further.

W3bbo said:

Uh... shameless self-plugging notwithstanding, but I run my own hosted services company with two fronts: one is your bog-standard webhosting biz where I just provide my clients with space and bandwidth; the other is more of a "managed hosting" (not the same thing as managed colocation though) where I assume some responsibility for my clients' web applications (in exchange for a significantly higher fee, of course). My clients include EBANK and a number of vehicle leasing firms.

 

I own and operate my own hardware in a Mancunian datacentre; I assume you're in Greece so the ping times shouldn't be too bad (maybe 60-70ms?). My stuff is all Windows Server (some 2008, some 2008R2) with the usual compliment of infrastructure: MSSQL, MySQL, and I do SVN hosting too.

 

My website's currently down, but most of my clients are by word-of-mouth (I have a generous affiliate scheme) but if you're interested I can point you to my contact form where we can take this further.

GoddersUK said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

Uh... shameless self-plugging notwithstanding, but I run my own hosted services company with two fronts: one is your bog-standard webhosting biz where I just provide my clients with space and bandwidth; the other is more of a "managed hosting" (not the same thing as managed colocation though) where I assume some responsibility for my clients' web applications (in exchange for a significantly higher fee, of course). My clients include EBANK and a number of vehicle leasing firms.

 

I own and operate my own hardware in a Mancunian datacentre; I assume you're in Greece so the ping times shouldn't be too bad (maybe 60-70ms?). My stuff is all Windows Server (some 2008, some 2008R2) with the usual compliment of infrastructure: MSSQL, MySQL, and I do SVN hosting too.

 

My website's currently down, but most of my clients are by word-of-mouth (I have a generous affiliate scheme) but if you're interested I can point you to my contact form where we can take this further.

I was going to post that

ManipUni said:

leeappdalecom said:

*snip*

The upload sucks on consumer lines and you cannot use them for e-mail.

I never had a problem using my virgin line for my Exchange server as long as you set the outgoing smart host to virgins SMTP server otherwise you find a lot of servers bounce your mail.  Never had any problems with in bound.     Even though virgin is a dynamic IP service, I've had the same address for a long time, even if I'm powered off for a few days.

ManipUni said:

GoddersUK said:

*snip*

I was going to post that

I recognised the irony when I posted it

When I say "down" I mean "intentionally removed because I don't need it"; I'm not at a point where I want to take on customers en-masse, but picking up a few here and there is fine for now. It isn't down because of any problems.

ManipUni said:

leeappdalecom said:

*snip*

The upload sucks on consumer lines and you cannot use them for e-mail.

Depends how much bandwidth you need I suppose, I just use 123reg for email, DNS, and domain registration.  

I use a VPS service, and do my own thing with that, pretty much as I see fit. I prefer the flexibility of it over comitting to dedicated hosted hardware, as I can change the resources as the demand changes. At the moment I'm using a XEN based service, which is working quite well for my needs, but testing a VMWare based competitor. I also run SQL-Server Standard via an SPLA license arrangement.

discountasp.net are not bad. you might want to check them out.

figuerres said:

discountasp.net are not bad. you might want to check them out.

I am familiar with discountasp.net from their cheap prices.   Do you use them? Do they also hold your hand for your first ASP.NET or Silverlight publication?  I don't expect them to debug my app, or even to tell me what my connect string should be for ADO.NET, but for you programmers out there there are lots of other things that are not at all obvious to a casual programmer like me using Windows, such as virtual directories, a Unix concept, for example PhysicalPath vs ApplicationPath vs PhysicalApplicationPath, and things like setting permission to write to a directory (I'm taking about setting it up so I can write to the directory--I am familiar with Windows permissons and even Unix permissions since I FTP to my own website hosted by Earthlink).  Also right now everything is working fine in the localhost (my hard drive) but I'm not quite sure how to publish, and from a few blog posts I find it's not trivial (there are three different ways, and the easiest, from inside of Visual Studio, is I don't think supported by my free Express version, though I will double check).  I'm not sure a 'big' organization like discountasp.net can support me.  What I don't want is to pay for a year's subscription, then find myself talking to some script reading but otherwise computer illiterate high school graduate in some call center.   However, the way things are looking that might be the industry norm, in which case I will sign up with them and then look to this board for support.

W3bbo said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

I recognised the irony when I posted it

 

When I say "down" I mean "intentionally removed because I don't need it"; I'm not at a point where I want to take on customers en-masse, but picking up a few here and there is fine for now. It isn't down because of any problems.

Thanks W3bbo, master of baiters (are you their master or a master?).  You are, if you're the right person and cheaper than discountasp.net, the kind of person I would like to meet, since my apps are strictly adverts for my company, and there's nothing confidential or proprietary about them.   I might however just try discountasp.net and see what happens--worse case I'll be out of a couple of hundred dollars and find their support is nonexistant, in which case I'll be back on this board asking you to help me troubleshoot!

I am indeed in GRE, and the trouble is they have digital noise here where you're either getting a decent signal (see below) for a generic DSL or nothing at all for 30 seconds to a minute.  Very frustrating but par for such countries...this is not unusual when they are building infrastructure.

PJ

http://www.speedtest.net/ 

Athens, GRE at 18/2/2010: download speed: 6.95 MB/s, pin = 21 ms; upload: 0.25 MB/s
average US says this board: 6.9 MBps

What I expected to hear from this site, since I'm signed up under Azure, is whether the Azure infrastructure will host some of my Silverlight and ASP.NET apps.  Anybody here signed up with Azure and have you been able to do that?  These apps would be non-commercial apps in development.