johna's blog

Best value Windows shared hosting - ASPnix review

2025-03-09T12:00:00+10:00

I've hosted my personal sites and my customer websites with ASPnix for over a decade now.

If you are looking for the best value Windows shared hosting then they should be on your short list.

Here is why I like them...

Value for money

For US$10 per month I can host up to 25 websites. As a web developer with a few clients and my own personal projects, this means that I can host everything I need and have space for extra projects, demonstration and test websites.

Adding a website is as simple as adding an extra domain or create a new sub-domain of an existing domain.

Aside from the 25 website limit, there are no bandwidth or storage limits. You can even have unlimited MySql databases or if you use Microsoft SQL Server then you can have up to 25 databases up to 10Gb in size each.

There is also a US$5 per month plan which allows 5 websites, 10Gb of storage space, and less databases (5Gb maximum for SQL Server), although it has a lower dedicated RAM limit.

A dedicated IP address is available for US$3 per month, if needed.

SSL support is impressive. You can purchase a certificate from ASPnix, buy one elsewhere or use a free LetsEncrypt certificate.

They also have a cheaper US$5 pm plan, which is still very useful and can host up to 5 websites and their email and databases, although there are a few limits. The more expensive plans have greater memory allowances and allow more websites and larger limits for SQL Server and email.

Features

You can host everything from Classic ASP to the latest .NET and .NET Core. You can also run PHP, and you have full access to your websites through both S/FTP and a web-based file manager.

As I already mentioned, they also offer MySql and SQL Server.

You also get email, of course, with very reasonable limits and plenty of control over domains, aliases, forwarding and domain security.

ASPnix use a customised version of DotNetPanel (later named WebsitePanel) which in my opinion is the best control panel for Windows servers.

You can pretty much control anything you will ever need on a server -- websites, DNS, FTP, email, databases. DNP has great scheduled tasks too, which makes it really easy to set up things like web pages that need to be run on a schedule, and database backups whenever you need them.

For SSL, ASPnix have a great feature where you can easily set up a free Lets Encrypt certificate, and their system will automatically renew it regularly so you don't have to do this laborious process yourself. If you do want to use any other type of certificate then the process is also simple, but you will need the dedicated IP address option.

You also get access to IIS logs and can add statistics to websites if you favour that over Google Analytics.

If, like me, you still maintain a Classic ASP website, then you will appreciate that ASPnix support Classic ASP and have many components installed that you might need.

Support

Like every other hosting company I have ever dealt with, ASPnix do have occasional outages due to upgrades or technical problems. From my experience, they have always dealt with these quickly and efficiently and they have a real-time status page so you can see if anything is down.

I've needed support a few times and have always been impressed with the speed of response and their ability to resolve any issues I have had promptly. Once when I moved a new customer's website and database to ASPnix, they went to a great deal of effort to help me migrate a problematic database.

ASPnix -- https://www.aspnix.com/

Disclosure: this is my affiliate link, so I get credits I can use towards my own hosting costs if anyone signs up using this link.

How to enable URL rewriting using the Turnkey Linux LAMP stack

2023-12-27T12:00:00+10:00

This post is a follow-up to my original post on How to set up a website and database using the Turnkey Linux LAMP stack.

If you want to use an .htaccess file to manage URL rewriting on your Turnkey Linux LAMP stack server, there are a few steps you will need to perform to make this work.

First you must enable mod_rewrite for Apache.

Log in it to Webmin and press Command Shell from the Tools menu.

Enter the following command then press Execute command.

a2enmod rewrite

Next you need to allow overrides so that Apache will allow URL rewrite rules in a .htaccess file.

In the Servers menu, press Apache Webserver and then find your website in the list of existing virtual hosts and press the edit button (globe icon).

Then from the Virtual Server Options page press Edit Directives.

Add the following line inside of the Directory section:

AllowOverride All

Finally you can create a .htaccess file in your website folder with the rewrite rules you need. Following is an example that will load the index.php page for any request for a file or folder that does not exist.

Options FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

Make sure you include the first line, Options FollowSymLinks.

How to set up a website and database using the Turnkey Linux LAMP stack

2023-11-18T12:00:00+10:00

If you need to host your own website for the purposes of web development, Turnkey Linux LAMP Stack is an easy to install all-in-one solution that you can set up on a spare computer or a VM (Virtual Machine).

I recently wanted to do this so I could locally test a website project I have been working on, and do PHP debugging. I had a spare old Celeron PC that I used for this purpose.

Step one is to download the ISO and install it on a computer or VM. I used Rufus to copy the ISO file to a USB drive but you don't need to do that if installing on a VM.

Installation of Turnkey Linux is simple and the questions that get asked during guided to install should be easy to answer. Once installed you can log in with root and the password you chose during installation and then set up your network with either DHCP or a static IP. I chose a static IP so that I could set up a local domain name I could use when accessing my website locally.

In Windows you can set up a local domain by editing the file C:WindowsSystem32driversetchosts. Note that you will need to run Notepad as an administrator to be able to save this file. Then just add a new line with the static IP address you chose and the domain name, for example:

192.168.1.100 mywebsite.local

For many of the next steps you will need to log in to Webmin, a built-in website that allows you to administer the server. The default address is https://192.168.1.100:12321 (change the IP address to the correct address for your server). You will need to bypass a security warning as the website uses an untrusted self-signed certificate. The user name is 'root' and the password is the one you chose during installation.

Next step is to create a folder for your website. Go to the Tools menu and then press File Manager.

The default websites are located in the var folder, and I would suggest your website(s) also be created there, so select Create new directory in the File menu near the top right corner of the page, and type in a name for your website, eg "mywebsite".

You can now go to the Servers menu and press Apache Webserver, then press Create virtual host. There are many options for setting up a website, but I entered 80 for Port, chose my newly created folder for Document Root, and entered my local domain for Server Name.

You can now navigate to your local domain in a web browser and you should get a "Forbidden" error message as you don't yet have any files or pages to serve.

Most websites have a database, and the LAMP stack includes MariaDB, a MySQL compatible database server.

We can now create a database and a database user.

From the Servers menu, press MariaDB Database Server, and then press Create new database. On the form enter a name for your database and optionally choose any other settings you may need, or just leave the defaults.

Once the database is created, press User Permissions and then Create new user. Enter a username and password and select Permissions that your user will need (I selected all of them).

After the user is created you can give the user access to your database. Press Database Permissions and then Create new database permissions and then select your new database and enter your new user name and then create the permission.

You can check you have database access by going to https://192.168.1.100:12322 (change to your IP address) and logging in with your new database user. Once logged-in you can also import or create your database objects and data if you are ready.
Although you can manage files using the built-in file manager, you will most likely want FTP access so you can deploy code changes from your web development IDE. For this you will need to go to the System menu and create a new user. Enter a username, select your website folder as the Home directory, and enter a new password as the Normal password.

Once your user is created you can connect using SFTP to your server's IP address or local domain and using the user name and password you just created. You will need to change ownership to the folder to your FTP user and also change permissions.

In a future post, I will document how to configure Xdebug and debug from Visual Studio and/or VS Code, and deployment via SFTP.

Telstra BigPond and the message content rejected due to suspected spam error

2020-12-09T12:00:00+10:00

Recently I've been noticing that emails generated from some of the websites that I look after that are hosted on shared hosting plans are unable to send messages to Telstra BigPond email addresses.

The error messages indicates that they were rejected due to suspected spam. Here's an example:

<[removed]>: host extmail.bigpond.com[removed] said: 558
    5.7.1 [removed] Message content rejected due to suspected spam.
    IB704x (in reply to end of DATA command)

This happens despite the emails being sent with all possible safeguards including SPF, DKIM, DMARC and list-unsubscribe header. Emails have been scored 10 out of 10 by the very useful mail-tester.com service.

This also happens despite the receiving party white-listed the sender. So Telstra are block emails without any consideration of their customer's wanting to receive email from the sender.

I believe the reason for this error is that the shared mail server is blacklisted as most likely another user has used the server for spamming of some sort.

But is it reasonable for Telstra to block email from all users of the same server because of another user's bad activity?

It might be practical for big business to operate their own mail server but it's not practical for many small businesses, and even a service like Office 365 can be cost prohibitive for many small businesses.

There's plenty of talk on forums about similar problems and Telstra's response (example) is to send a request to the Telstra Postmaster (postmaster@bigpond.com) with the following information so they can investigate for you:

Exact dates and times of when the error is happening. Preferably in the following format (dd-mm-yyyy) (hh:mm AEST).
Sending domain/address
IP address at the time of attempt
An approximate of the volume of emails that are attempting to send per hour to us.
The exact Bounce back messages
A copy from the message they tried to send to BigPond domain (including signature and attachments)
Justification of the request
Contact details

I am not sure if anyone has had success with going through this process, although I did hear that one person tried but got the same delivery failure when they tried to email the Postmaster. I might give it a try and report back here with the outcome.

What other possible solutions are there? You may have better deliverability with a free Outlook, Gmail or similar account which you can set up to send email from your website.

There are email servers that you can pay to use that may have better deliverability. Amazon SES is very cheap but has shared servers so may suffer the same problem (you also have the option of your own IP at extra cost).

The main reason for this blog post is to express my opinion that it is very bad practice for a company like Telstra to block emails based on shared server blacklisting as I believe it is a disservice to their own customers and they should instead look for other spam indicators and allow their customers the choice on who they want to receive emails from.

There needs to be more WDIMPFS hosting options!

2016-09-29T12:00:00+10:00

What is WDIMPFS? A server with Windows, a DNS server, IIS, a Mail server, a control Panel of some sort, an FTP server and SQL Server.

A WDIMPFS server is a good hosting option for people transitioning from shared hosting to VPS. People who like the benefits of shared hosting - they don't need to configure or manage their own server - but need or want something that has more performance and is less affected by other sites on the same server.

Some companies, most notably Arvixe, provide WDIMPFS VPS hosting. Their Windows VPS servers come full configured and ready to go with Windows Server, BIND DNS server, IIS, hMail Server, WebsitePanel, FileZilla Server and SQL Server Express (they also have a bunch of extras like PHP and MySQL).

But note that I wouldn't recommend Arvixe, as their support is next to useless.

Perhaps there are other hosting companies that offer similar pre-configured, all-in-one VPS hosting but if there are they don't do a good job of promoting it.

I think there would be plenty of demand for a well marketed WDIMPFS hosting plan.

Moving to the cloud - web hosting options for Classic ASP and ASP.NET

2016-09-15T12:00:00+10:00

Including a review of Gearhost and my experience so far

Lately I've been looking at options for hosting various Classic ASP and ASP.NET websites that I am responsible for. Some are hosted on VPS and some are on shared hosting plans with various providers.

Shared hosting isn't always great because websites go down fair often with all of the providers I am with, which could be as a result of one bad apple on a shared server that could be hosting 1,000 websites (and in the case of Arvixe the same server could also be hosting 1,000 databases and a 1,000 email domains and 1,000 DNS zones and a 1,000 FTP accounts, etc etc).

Also I seem to have gotten in trouble for being a resource hog on occasions with shared hosting, and some hosting companies seem to sneak in and do things like block IP addresses (including my own once) and add database indexes (not such a bad thing but I prefer to manage this myself).

VPS is an inexpensive way to manage your own hosting (somewhat) independently of other websites. But with this comes hassle. Some providers will set it all up for you with everything a web server needs and take care of the ongoing management for you. But this will add to the cost and many providers will provide your VPS with the operating system only, possibly with an installer for the various applications needed. There may be a lot of configuration required and then you've got the ongoing maintenance: updates to the operating system and applications, installation of new technologies, and then what if something goes wrong?

The other issue with shared and VPS hosting - you may have experienced it - is when/if the server fails. Generally your website is down until the problem is fixed and if it's a big problem and a server needs a rebuild or your site/server needs to be migrated to a new server, then it can be down for hours.

So with all of this in mind I went looking for options where management is left to the hosting provider, and there is better availability in the case of server issues. It would also be nice to have the ability to add or reduce resources as needed to accommodate increases and decreases in website demand and allow for growth.

The first thing I found after looking at tens if not hundreds of web hosting company websites is how bad most of them promote their services. Most have little explanation as to why to choose them over competitors. Many might have actually offered a kind of service that would have appealed but if they did they didn't make it clear.

I also think there is a bit of an opportunity in the market for someone to come along and come up with a VPS hosting plan where the server comes fully configured as a web server with everything needed like Windows, DNS, IIS, SQL, MySQL, mail servers, etc - all the services you would normally get with shared hosting - plus a control panel, full management, and NO remote desktop access. It could be promoted as a step-up from shared hosting without the maintenance overhead of VPS or dedicated. Separate database and mail server configurations could also be offered. Arvixe already do the fully configured web server, although they don't promote it well and they do allow RDP. However Arvixe has next to zero support since their takeover.

I looked at "semi-dedicated" hosting which is really just shared hosting but with much less customers per server. It has all the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting but should be faster and more reliable as not as stressed due to the lower number of sites. Also there's little or no scalability or and no redundancy.

Microsoft's Azure is the go to choice for "cloud" hosting for Microsoft developers. With Azure you can host a website or your own server and you get load balancing, redundancy and scalability. However as someone not very familiar with these services I found the Azure system and pricing structure a little complicated and overwhelming.

Azure lead me to alternatives like Amazon AWS, which seems to have all the maintenance issues of VPS (but with benefits of cloud hosting), and Google Compute Engine. Again, like Azure, the way these services are promoted is not so friendly to people not experienced with this type of hosting.

Then I found Everleap and Gearhost. I don't know much about Everleap but I thought I'd give Gearhost a go as they had a lower price entry point and they also offer lifetime free hosting for low resource demanding websites, which is perfect for both trying out the service and also test sites. They also review very well and management and staff often post replies to reviews and in forums.

Gearhost use the Microsoft Azure Pack so is similar to Azure, but I much prefer their simple pricing structure and friendlier way they promote their service.

I deployed a couple of my websites using Gearhost's free accounts and both ran without issue. One was an ASP.NET 4.x Web Pages website, and the other an old website with a mixture of ASP.NET 2.x Web Forms and Classic ASP. Both have run without modification and even on the free account they also appeared to run noticeably faster than their current shared hosting plans.

The control panel is real easy to use and provides access to everything you need such as .NET versions, error modes, FTP, database, email, SSL and scheduled tasks.

So what is Gearhost offering?

Basically you get your own instance of IIS that is load balanced and has redundancy. You can add and remove various resources or change plans at any time and pay by the hour for these (or month in case of some resources like database space). There's no downtime when you make changes either.

For free (for ever) you get a website with limited resources that you can use for low volume unimportant websites - probably just for testing. Disk space is 100MB, bandwidth is 1GB, CPU/RAM is limited and there's no support for SSL or 64-bit processes.

For US$5 per month you get a website with more resources including 1GB disk space, 1TB bandwidth plus SSL and 64-bit support.

For US$25 per month you get a reserved web node, which is further isolated and has more resources.

All plans come with a (tiny) 10MB MySQL or MS SQL database limit. You can increase this to 1GB for US$5 per month and beyond that it is US$1 for each extra GB.

If you need more hosting disk space it's US 25c per GB.

Email is an option on the paid plans, at US$1 per mailbox per month with up to 25GB storage (US$2 per GB over that). Although the FAQ says you need to use a third-party mail service if you want to send email from your site, you can use one of these mailboxes instead. However, Gearhost recommend you use a third party service and Mailgun seems like a good choice where you can send 10,000 emails a month on their free plan.

For SSL they use SNI where you don't need a dedicated IP address. This is fine for all except for some old browsers (most notably IE on Windows XP). Apparently they will be offering dedicated IP addresses in the future, possible at US$10 per month (pricey compared to the usual $2 or $3 most hosts charge). You can buy a certificate from Gearhost or any other provider and it is easy to install.

For one website I need to have the site's server IP address white-listed with a third party payment gateway and I was worried that with cloud hosting there might not be a single IP address. Fortunately Gearhost informed me that there is one outgoing IP address so this would not be a problem (I better not tell the gateway people that there could be tens of thousands of websites on the same address).

Although they don't have a simple control panel option to schedule SQL Server database backups, they do have an API and it is possible to write some code that runs within your site that will do a backup and make it available in one of your site folders. The control panel does have a scheduled task option that can call a specific URL on schedule (as little as 10 minutes).

Anyway, so far so good with Gearhost. Although to host a small site with a database and email account it's going to cost US$11 per month, its money well spent over US$3 per month shared hosting.

Visit www.gearhost.com.

Everleap

Everleap offer similar Azure Pack based hosting. There pricing is a more expensive and starts at US$25 per month.

The only downside to Everleap compared to Gearhost is that Everleap's database servers are single servers, not high availability cloud servers, so your database could be a single point of failure. Visit www.everleap.com.

Applied Innovations

Applied Innovations also offer managed Azure Pack hosting. Their plans start at US$24.95 and you can host up to five websites. They have other plans up to US$99.95 and beyond, depending on CPU and memory allowances and number of web workers.

They have their SQL databases running on high availability servers.

Visit www.appliedi.net.

How Arvixe set up their Windows shared and VPS hosting servers

2016-09-09T12:00:00+10:00

This post is not meant to be a review of Arvixe, it is to describe the unusual way that Arvixe configure their shared and VPS Windows servers.

But let me say that I would not recommended Arvixe at all. I like their hosting services but their support is awful. It wasn't always bad but recently it had deteriorated to the point where it is actually almost impossible to get support at all.

Anyway, back to their Windows hosting set up.

When you take out shared hosting you will find that all of your services - web, FTP, database and mail - are all running on the same server.

This is quite unusual for shared hosting. Most hosts operate separate web, database and mail servers at least.

It's kind of the same for their VPS plans too. When your new VPS server is ready for you you will find it fully installed with DNS server (Bind), web server (IIS), FTP server (Filezilla), mail server (hMailserver), database servers (SQL Server Express and MySQL) and a few extras like PHP. They also install WebsitePanel to allow you easy control of all services.

I'm not sure this set up is great for shared hosting, although it is probably much easier for Arvixe to administer and manage, but I think its great for people wanting VPS hosting for average web sites that don't see a huge amount of traffic. You don't have to install a bunch of software yourself and Arvixe can better support your VPS because the configuration is standardised.

The downside is that you may have things installed you don't need, but if you aren't using them then they are probably not slowing things down, just taking up a bit of space.

This type of VPS hosting certainly wouldn't be good for high volume websites but is great for websites that are coping in a shared hosting environment but you want to step up to the next level where you're not sharing services with many other websites but don't want to have to set up and configure a server yourself.

It's just a shame Arvixe's support is so bad now, and that other hosting companies aren't offering a similar service. Maybe some do... Do you know of any hosting companies that offer this type of all-in-one VPS hosting?

Review of popular ASP.NET shared web hosting plans

2015-01-16T12:00:00+10:00

This post has been updated and rewritten on October 21, 2016

Looking for an inexpensive Windows web hosting company for an ASP.NET (or Classic ASP) website? I have experience with five of the most popular shared hosting plans: Hostek, Arvixe, SmarterASP, ASPnix and RDO Servers. Here are my recommendations.

#1 ASPnix

I've hosted one of my customers website with ASPnix for a year or two now and have just moved another over there. They have plans from US$5 per month. There's are differences in amount of memory between the Personal, Portal and Business plans and limits on the number of sites you can have, databases, and email accounts.

Disk space, bandwidth and domain limits are unlimited (within reasonable use) and the only database size limit is for SQL Server and is a generous 5Gb (Personal) 10Gb (all other plans) per database.

ASPnix use a customised version of WebsitePanel so there's plenty of control over your website and good options for scheduled tasks including database backups.

There is a dedicated IP option for US$3/month. They make it very easy to install a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate which automatically renews upon expiry. Their control panel also makes it easy to enable email security like DKIM with just a couple of clicks.

They have myLittleAdmin for managing SQL Server databases via the web rather than having to use SQL Management Studio which is a handy feature.

If you have an old Classic ASP website you will probably appreciate the components they already have installed, and they are one of the few hosts to have ABCpdf installed for both Classic ASP and .NET (which I needed for two customer sites).

They have been a very reliable host. I did experience one recent issue where their SQL Server went down and needed restoration from backup. It was offline for quite a few hours as a result, but they handled it well.

Support has been excellent, and for one of my customers, they went way above and beyond what you would expect of a US$10/month unlimited hosting plan to assist with getting a difficult database migration done.

Based on this experience and the service my other customer has been receiving, I would have to say that ASPnix is one of the best providers of inexpensive shared hosting.

Update: I have been using ASPnix for several years now. Support has always been excellent and quick to respond. There have been occasional short outages, but this is typical of every host I have used.

Find them at www.aspnix.com (disclosure: affiliate link).

#2 RDO Servers

Recently I was looking for a new hosting plan to host three of my websites and I came across RDO Servers. Although there's not many reviews out there for them, the reviews were good and I noticed that they post on the Web Hosting Talk forums which is a good sign to me.

Looking to reduce my hosting costs, their plans appealed because I could run multiple sites and use SNI for SSL, so no need for dedicated IP addresses for each site.

They answered a few pre-sales questions well so I took up one of the their Windows shared hosting plans. This was also my first experience with Plesk as a control panel.

I had a few issues in setting up my sites, but (almost) each issue was solved quickly and support was quick enough and helpful. The issues were minor, such as not being able to add domain aliases, and some issues with backups.

Overall their service seems well above average and I would definitely recommend them if their service suits you. However, because of some limitations of Plesk I did not going to continue to move my websites there.

The limitations that affected me were to do with backups. Plesk does not seem to allow me to schedule separate database backups. It can only do a combined scheduled backup of the website files and database. As I have a few GBs of website files this makes one long, slow backup that is quite large. Also each backup gets a new name and doesn't overwrite old backups so have to be manually deleted.

The Plesk backup and restore system is actually otherwise good, and if you trust your hosting company to store it safely then it is good enough.

Visit the RDO Servers website.

#3 Hostek

I have been with Hostek for some time and I have an older personal unlimited plan which costs around US$70 per year, and includes a dedicated IP address.

The dedicated IP had to be requested through support but once activated I was able to install my own SSL certificate without additional cost.

Hostek have their own custom control panel which is good and provides access to most features you would need.

They do not offer SNI so you will need a dedicated IP for each website if you want to use SSL. There is no option for scheduled database backups.

I have found support to be fast and helpful. The service has not been fully reliable however, with occasional website downtime, MySQL outages and some unusual website errors.

In the control panel there is an option to block IP address and Hostek themselves seem to occasionally add blocked IP addresses. For what reason I do not know but probably for my protection. However it does worry me as once they blocked my own IP address. Also, I was once warned about excessive MySQL usage as I was doing daily dumps to a backup service but I reduced this to a less regular schedule and they haven't contacted me since.

Visit their website at hostek.com.

#4 SmarterASP

I signed up to SmarterASP because they have a very generous free trial period, and the cost of their least expensive shared hosting plan was only US$2.95 per month plus US$2 per month for a dedicated IP address. Since then the dedicated IP is no longer an option on the "Basic" plan, only on the "Advanced" plan and above (US$4.95 per month).

SmarterASP also offer "Semi-dedicated" plans which are similar shared hosting but with less sites per server, plus a matching database server with less databases per server. I don't have any experience with these plans, which start at US$29.95 per month.

I have found the shared hosting service to be very reliable so far, and support have been quick to respond and helpful.

The drawbacks to this hosting is in some of the extra costs. I originally thought I could purchase the dedicated IP option and then install my own SSL certificate (I usually buy basic certificates for less than US$10 per year). However when I came to do this I found there was a US$19.95 charge to install your own certificate, so I ended up purchasing a certificate from SmarterASP themselves for the cost of US$29.95 per year. Note that they do not support SNI so a dedicated IP is required.

Also when I came to back up my database I found that although I could manually take a backup at any time, if I wanted to schedule automatic backups I had to purchase quota (US$35.40 per year).

There is a limit of 50 emails per hour being sent from their email server. This includes emails sent in code, and emails sent in webmail or a mail client. You can pay US$35.40 per year to increase this limit to 100 per hour, or pay US$30 per year per email address to use their bulk email server to send up to 10,000 emails per day from code only (not webmail or a mail client). I signed up for the 10,000 per day limit out of necessity only to find that they say "DO NOT send email to your own domain name" and more importantly "DO NOT send out more than 10 emails per minute to avoid any performance problem". What kind of bulk email server is that?

I did have some issues setting up sending of email through code. I found out that you can only send email from an account you have set up in your account. This may or may not be a problem for you.

Note that the email limitations could be avoided by using an external mail service such as mailgun.

The control panel is a custom panel and works well with access to most features you would need. There is remote IIS management access too, if required. A useful feature is the Webbase MS SQL Server Manager which allows you to modify the database structure and data via a web interface, rather than having to use SQL Management Studio.

On the subject of SQL Server, where most hosting companies allow you to see a full list of all databases on your shared SQL Server, SmarterASP list only the database(s) you have access to. Although this means you can't see how many other databases are sharing your server (you probably don't want to know), it does mean you don't have to search through many databases to find your own.

Visit their website at www.smarterasp.net.

Note that SmarterASP, hostbuddy.com and mywindowshosting.com appear to be the exact same company with the same prices although the later shows more detail about each plan in regards to concurrent users and available memory.

#999+ Arvixe

Arvixe used to be such a good host, until they got bought out by EIG. Under no circumstances would I recommend hosting with Arvixe (or any other EIG-owned host). Support is next to useless so if something goes wrong, expect to be offline for a long time.

I've had experience with several websites hosted with Arvixe, from the cheap personal plans to their business plans and VPS.

A while ago I needed to get a hosting plan for a new project and I chose Arvixe's Personal Class ASP plan as it is US$5 per month including a free domain name (for as long as you keep the plan). SSL is an extra US$25 per year but no dedicated IP is required as they offer SNI. This means a year's hosting including SSL is US$85 which is very reasonable for an "unlimited" plan.

I also have one customer on Arvixe's Business Class ASP plan which for US$29.95 per month I expected to be on servers with less websites. I didn't see any evidence of this though, and I suspect it is the same servers as personal plans, just with a higher price tag. I could be wrong. The business plans do come with dedicated IP and free SSL though.

Arvixe appear to set up their servers differently to most hosting companies. Most have separate servers for web, database, email, DNS, etc. Arvixe seem to lump everything on the same server. There are some good things about this, and some bad. They also use the Express Edition of SQL Server which has some limitations on memory and CPU usage.

They use WebsitePanel for managing the website and it is very good and provides excellent access to all features, including scheduled database backups. I do seem to get logged out of the panel often though.

Arvixe have an email limit of 100 per hour so you need to ensure your code does not send more than this.

Aside from the almost complete lack of support, I also don't like Arvixe because once all of the sites on the same server as mine were hacked (a conditional redirect was hidden in web.config).

Visit their website at www.arvixe.com. Actually don't visit it.

Other options

I've been looking into "cloud" hosting and have been impressed with GearHost (see my post Moving to the cloud - web hosting options for Classic ASP and ASP.NET). They offer hosting built on Microsoft Azure pack but with a much simpler and user-friendlier pricing structure. They even offers some free plans useful for trialling the service and development. Cloud hosting offers scalability and availability that isn't usually available in regular shared hosting - it's a bit more expensive but far superior and suitable for websites where you don't want any downtime. There's also Everleap and Applied Innovations which are also built on Microsoft Azure Pack but are a bit more expensive.

Update (November 2016)

During my continued search for a suitable host for all of my websites I came across Peoples Host. Although only around for a year or so, they review well and seem focused on providing quality hosting and customer service.

Their plans start at US$10 per month (for 2 years, US$15 if paying monthly).

They use WebsitePanel and offer SNI.

I've only been trialling them for a short time and so far so good. The only negative has been that you must go through support to setup SSL (they will install your own certificate and there is no installation cost).

Like Arvixe, they appear to have all services on the one server - web, mail, SQL Server, MySQL. Some people may not like this but I have not found it to be an issue and there is actually some benefit to having some services on the same server, such as application to database connections.

For SQL Server they use the Express Edition (64-bit). This could potentially limit database performance depending on how busy the server is.

So far I found support to be very quick to respond and very helpful.

Visit www.peopleshost.com (disclosure: affiliate link).

Update (November 2016)

Recently I was able to compare the performance of one of my websites on Arvixe, ASPnix and Peoples Host.

Strangely I found Arvixe to be significantly quicker for serving pages, but ASPnix and Peoples Host to be equally quicker than Arvixe for database queries (despite Peoples Host using SQL Express and ASPnix using the full version of SQL Server).