Way back on my podcast Episode 112, I mentioned under my breath that I was no longer using the “Voldemort” of hosting. Once that episode went live, I got a bunch of tweets, Facebook posts, and emails sent to me asking, who I was hosting with, where I went and the reasons for the switch.

I am making this page available in case you don’t listen to the podcast (you really should in my opinion!), as well as a place where I can share some additional information as the landscape does change over time.

So, want to know where was I hosting? How did I get there and where did I go and why? Keep reading!

My hosting history is fairly easy to explain. I started at one of the first hosting companies way back in the day, and then a few years later switched friend’s server. He bought/leased a server, set things up and started to resell hosting. He offered me a pretty good deal and I figured, sure, why not, might as well support my friend! So why did I leave his service?

A year or so into my hosting with the friend, one of my sites was gone. I woke up one morning and was going to do a blog post and the site was gone. Good ol white screen! I immediately shot him a note, though I’m not sure if it was email, sums or Skype. Either way, I said, “Hey! Did you do anything to the server last night?” He was running Plesk and he was always modifying and tweaking things with the server. Maybe he did something by accident and my blog was taken offline.

He wrote back immediately the following answer: “nope”. That’s all, just the word “nope.” Yikes! That’s when I knew I had to move my site to a new server.

I knew then that he didn’t check. He didn’t look into my issue, my concern. He just wrote back, “no.” Luckily it was not one of my client’s sites. It was my own little lonely blogs.

I was not pleased. I am paying $50 bucks a month, and I didn’t have any support. Sure he gave me “unlimited everything” but guess what? It turns out that I clearly valued support! Even if he had said, “Let me check” and reported back to me with some info, I might still be with him. Yes, I’m glad he didn’t lie to me, but then again he just didn’t care. Selling hosting wasn’t his main thing, turns out it was just a hobby, side hustle, extra money, etc. So I started looking for a new host.

I took a few weeks, did some research, and I migrated all my sites plus all of my client sites off of his server and sent him an email, canceling my service. He said, “okay.” Didn’t ask me questions. Was it awkward? Yep, but I’ll come back to that in a bit.

At the time, I had no idea that the difference of hosting, or the value proposition that was out there. I looked at a bunch of options, including at RackSpace, Media Temple, and GoDaddy. I ended up at Hostgator after reading some good reviews. To be honest, HG was just fine for the first 2-3 years, but then things changed after EIG purchased acquired them.

Little things at first. The server would go down a few times a year. Email would go down. Load times were slower. Hold times in support became longer. I saw the writing on the wall and it was time to make a change. But where to go next?

Well, I started meeting people who work at hosting companies via the community I was becoming a part of. From the meetup I started, the podcast I produced and WordCamps I attended, the more time I spent in the community, the more I got know the people at these at the hosting companies.

I met Corey & Ben at from A2 Hosting during WordCamp Ann Arbor, hung out with Jason Cohen from WP Engine at CaboPress, and have broken bread with the team the from Siteground during many WordCamp events. Recently I've met and become friends with Claudia and Jay at Pressable as well.

In thinking about all of this, I realized that business, any business, is about relationships. It’s all about the people and I don’t know anyone at HG.

Additionally, I wasn’t feeling all that good when something was amiss with my HG interactions. It wasn’t the support person’s fault directly when I would go out on the support chat queue. Things got resolved, but the overall feeling in the whole time to get longer and longer and longer.  I’m a fairly patient person but eventually, something’s got to change. I deserve support. I believe I’m paying for something, aren’t I?

So where does that put me today? Well like I said, it’s about relationships. So I currently use and recommend the following companies for hosting as they all have great people working there.