Spotlight

Last fall I needed to find a new host for my 4 blogs. My website had previously been hosted by a friend, and something suddenly happened which meant that my blogs went down without warning and I had no way of knowing when they might come back up. I was very upset, and wanted all of my sites up and running as soon as possible.With the holidays coming, several reviews due, and my various other stressors, I wasn’t looking forward to searching for a host that was reliable, attentive, and relatively inexpensive. Thankfully, my friend Sue (of Graceful Kate) had recently researched and chosen a new company to host her business. She had chosen Ultimate Hosting, after looking at the pros and cons of other web hosting companies.I was in an unusual situation when I was looking for a web hosting company: I didn’t know my bandwidth stats, I didn’t know how much space my site used on the server.  While I knew how to FTP and how to manage my blogs, I didn’t know much about the other particulars of moving and managing a site, as it had been done for me. Sue had said that the folks at Ultimate Hosting were very helpful, so I contacted them.Helpful doesn’t even begin to describe Bobby (the owner) and his staff at Ultimate Hosting. They walked me through all of the setup, taught me the basics of how to manage their interface, and stuck with me via email or iChat until I was all set, then checked on me the next morning!I am pretty tech-savvy, as well as computer literate, but there was software I had never used and new procedures. Unlike many other men in the tech industry I’ve dealt with, Bobby never treated me in a condescending manner; he was helpful and polite.  I have found Ultimate Hosting to be a wonderful host for someone running one or several blogs. My reasons for choosing them, and sticking with Ultimate Hosting are:

1. They have reasonable rates (I pay $5/month for their starter plan, and have never even used half of my alloted bandwidth and server space). 
2. They are a service-oriented company, quickly replying to any email or support tickets, and frequently available on iChat as well.
3. They are small, but growing; they want new customers and want to keep their existing customers happy.
4. When there is a problem, they fix the problem, apologize, and explain what happened AND why it’s unlikely it will happen again.
5. If you ask what you think is a stupid question, they will answer it without any attitude.
6. They will accommodate your needs. This is a company that understands you could change servers if desired, so they want to keep you happy. Because most users pay month-by-month, if someone isn’t happy, they can leave. Ultimate Hosting wants you to stay happy.
7. The website management software at Ultimate Hosting is wonderful. They use cPanel, and have installers for all the major blogging tools. This means adding a new blog takes only a few moments (It was so easy, I added one for testing backgrounds, and switched our home page into a blog format.)
8. They remind you to back up your data, and make it easy to do so.
9. They offer unlimited email addresses for your domain. It’s so nice to compartmentalize everything into different categories!
10. If you start going over your bandwidth, they will upgrade you to the next level temporarily and contact you for the future.  I was shocked that many web hosts would suspend service!

I have only had 2 problems with Ultimate Hosting. One was a mix-up with billing, and that was fixed very quickly - before I emailed! Ultimate Hosting’s servers have also been a few times, and in general it’s only been for a few moments, but there was one longer stretch that led to them setting up a different site for support only. They recently acquired another hosting company, and there have been some growing pains. However, the philosophy of the previous hosting company make me very grateful for the hosts I have had!I highly recommend Ultimate Hosting. Bloggers with several blogs and one-blog bloggers will find great tools for statistics, installing, and management of your data. Small to mid-sized businesses will feel right at home, too. They’re a great host, with wonderful service.

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