BossaNova asked me to look at some web hosting companies for him. The rates on his account were going to increase over 50% I believe - I’m not good with math. He called in to complain. To appease him off the bat they offered to keep his pricing the same as his current hosting price. But at that point he was upset that it was necessary to call in at all.

I have personally experienced the same type of tactic. AT & T would do the same thing when my DSL passed each contract year. They would send me email saying my DSL price was going up unless I committed to another year. Then one year they decided not to contact me or offer me any special pricing. I think it was because they noticed my account was very old and that I had services they offered at a premium price without any additional cost on my part (e.g. a static IP). I would need to call in, being on hold anywehre from 10 to 30 minutes, just to get my pricing back down. Finally I got fed up with the customer service and crappy speed and went to cable.

So, I told BossaNova there are many good web hosts out there with many more features than his current one offers. I volunteered to do the legwork for him. This also gave me an opportunity to use Google’s Spreadsheet.

I find the free service easy to use. I was able to put the data in (hopefully) a presentable format. The service only freaked out on me once, saying I lost my Internet connection and any changes I made weren’t saved. Good prompt warning message as the only modification I made was in a single cell. If you have an Internet connection and don’t have access to Microsoft Office but need a simple spreadsheet program, I’d give Google Spreadsheet a try.

So, BossaNova, here is the spreadsheet for you (and anyone else I suppose). I may update it again after this post, but it will be accessible at the same link.

I hope you are able to find a good host out of the ones I have listed. From the list, I have personally hosted websites at four of the six companies. I recommend them all. But for me lately, disc space offered hasn’t been one of the features I’ve been looking at since I host my photos on other services. If this is the case for you, and if you like good service and reliablity, I’d go with Dotable. I’ve only been with them for about a month right now, but it’s been pretty smooth sailing. You can see their uptime server stats at http://status.dotable.com/.