Here's my story, what do you think?

A few days ago, 3 to be exact, all of my websites went down for no reason. Seem's as if my host didn't contact me until later that night and emailed me that "The harddrive was hooked up to the wrong IDE controller which made the hard drive rendered useless" and lost all of the information on the drive... all of the sites... all of the backups...

Out of the blue, he canceled all of his shared and reseller accounts and left it up to all 250 of us to find new hosts. He took his 1-800 # down, took his email addresses down, and lastly his forums were down at all. The last line of the email was "Good luck with your new host." That was messed up.

This gay host is http://www.x-gravity.net

So... I went on a rampage, threw some things across my bedroom in anger because I had lost everything I have ever saved in that FTP. Everything.. pictures of my girlfriend and I... pictures of designs I've made... And such..

Then, my next step was visiting http://www.HostHideout.com to find a new host. Posted up what I required and I got 3 responses within 30 seconds of my request going up. I have narrowed it down to this, and I need your opinios...

Do I go with my friend who had about 10-15 clients, 3 tech guys who are online all the time.. and I would get 5gb space, 65gb bandwidth with unlimited everything AND private nameservers all for $16/month USD.

Or...

Do I go to http://www.virtuosonetsolutions.com which is rated almost the best hosting company in the nation, with 24/7/365 support from well knowledgable employees who has over 75 servers in The Telehouse in NYC which is about 10 miles away from my home. I would get 3gb space and 50gb bandwidth with them for $19/month USD.

What would you do? And what is your opinions on my old host? Thanks!

In your situation, the bigger the company the better the security.

yeh if you want make sure the same wont happen again you will go with the 2nd one - you get what you pay for imo and if your paying for support thats all the more better given the circumstance

I personally would go with my host, http://www.bladehost.net. Best host PERIOD. lol. Nah, go with the second host.

LoL, I already got yoru opinion Rob.. haha. I'll probably wind up going with the second choice... but I would still like some more opinions.

What do you think about my old host? Why wouldn't he save the backups to a remote server? Why would he just cancel 250 accounts all at once?

*UPDATE*

I have just gotten an email from him telling me, personally, that there is a technician coming from Florida who is going to look at the drive and see if he can still recover the files. So we'll see what happens.

In the email, it said "We have already offered some customers to be moved to our other server." So I had to come back with "Yeah, well, I've been a paying customer for over a year and a half now and you don't even offer to switch me? What the hell is wrong with you? But I guess none of that means anything to you right?"

I'm waiting on a response now.

go with www.successfulhosting.com, I am with them.

im with www.dollarwebhosting.biz lol, been there for over 6months and not had a single bit of down time or any problems. . . i guess maybe just sometimes you get more than what you pay for huh?

Successfulhosting.com offers 2 kinds of resller plans, which I would need. The basic reseller only gives 300 MB storage.. that's just not cool. And I can't even find the link for Reseller Plus.

http://www.virtuosonetsolutions.com <-- I doubt is one of the best.

I was in the hosting business with 2 companies (Dr2.net and Mesopia.com), we merged into one company (Mesopia.com), over 5500 clients. I was on the team till recently since I became a full-time freelancer. Got all the magazines, stayed up-to-date on WHT, was invited to all the conferences. And I never even heard that name with such prominence.

BTW: No I'm not saying go with Mesopia.com, I'd suggest spending a bit more money with a bigger company.

Regards,
Patrick

Hello, I am the friend from the above post. Some of you might recognize me from other forums, but I just wanted to plead my case a bit.

I actually host more like 25-30 clients at the moment. I have multiple servers at The Planet datacenter, all monitored 24/7. I have been in operation for around 2 years now, and the hosting business was originally intended for my own web design clients, but I slowly opened it up to others in need of a reliable host for a budget price.

As you know The Planet is recognized as one of the top companies of its kind. They spend a lot of time to make sure that each server is working properly and is secure from attacks.

My techs are online 24/7, and I also offer my personal number to my hosting clients if they ever have any problems.

Anyways, it isnt always size that matters, just the people behind the scenes.

-Kevin