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Review by jlatham
Posted: 6.6 years ago
(review was emailed from domain jlathamsite.com)
 Oklahoma City,Oklahoma,OK
 $8 per month (12 month contract)
 "Reliable company, lots of space, unmetered data transfers/email."
 "No MySQL support, no anonymous FTP. Weak PHP setup?"
 "Good value for the typical site. But if you need MySQL - look elsewhere."
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ReadyHosting – A Review
I use ReadyHosting ( »www.ReadyHosting.com ) as the host service for my own web site. I chose ReadyHosting because it was recommended to me by some web site developers I knew who used it routinely as the hosting service for small businesses they dealt with and developed web pages for. Those businesses had no complaints about the service.
For many (most?) people wishing to put up a site, the service is much more than adequate. At the time of this review just some of the offerings in their single $99.95/year package are:
* 500 MB Web Space
* Free New Domain Registration (free as long as you continue to host with
them)
* Unmetered data transfers
* Unlimited email accounts
* Unlimited email aliases
* Web based email
* Toll-free Tech Support (8-6 M-F CST)
* Password Protected Directories
Oh – I must inject a bit of ironic humor at this point. When I purchased my site space, the pricing was $99.95 per year. I notice in preparing for this review that at this moment they have a special offer “Buy one month’s service, get 11 month’s FREE!” but that one month’s service is priced at $99.00 – a savings over their regular offer of $0.95. Heck of a deal there, K-Mart Shoppers!
For the more “technically” inclined, their service also includes such things as:
* 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
* FrontPage Extensions
* CGI/Perl Support
* Cold Fusion 4.5
* Server Side Includes
* PHP Server Extensions
* Real Audio/Video
* SSL Security and
* e-Commerce shopping cart.
ReadyHosting uses servers running Windows 2000 Server and they are essentially a Windows/Microsoft-centric hosting service. Get too far away from Microsoft and you can get into problem areas. More about that later.
You may manage your website using their provided FTP account or with a web site development and management package such as FrontPage. I have used two separate site development tools to set up content and haven’t had any trouble with either. I would presume that most such packages, like Dreamweaver, etc. would work just as well.
ReadyHosting offers two database options for those needing database functions on their web site. Option One: for an additional $25/year per you can set up your database in their Microsoft SQL Server database. Option Two: place your own Microsoft Access database inside of your web space and use it free of charge. There is absolutely NO support for MySQL. Nor is their any support for anonymous FTP accounts.
Offsetting Your Site Space Cost: ReadyHosting does offer an automatic reselling feature. When you purchase a second account, you automatically become a “reseller” and you get that second, and subsequent accounts, for about half-price of the initial account (plus any setup and domain registration fees). This means you can resell to your friends and neighbors at less than full price and at least partially offset the cost of your own web site.
THE UP SIDE: For someone needing more space than the typical 10MB space offered by many ISPs and/or desiring unmetered data transfers who only need a “typical” web site, it is actually a pretty good deal. It is really difficult to find the features offered for under $9.00 per month elsewhere.
The tech support people are friendly and most requests for special setups such as a new protected directory or setup of a Microsoft Access database are handled within a few hours, if not almost immediately. Up time is very good, but I’m not completely convinced that it is at the 99.9% level they guarantee – but I haven’t monitored it closely enough to actually dispute the claim at this point.
Their tech support is always friendly and when they are able to solve a problem or take care of a request, it happens right away. The time on hold to speak with their tech service is minimal. I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait more than a minute or two, and most of the time I get right through to them.
The email offerings are very good – allowing you to manage your accounts through a web page and to get your email anywhere in the world that you can get a hookup to the internet. Having both unlimited email addresses and unlimited aliases can make life very comfortable for you at times – and even permit you to easily determine who you deal with that also sells/passes on your email addresses to others.
THE DOWN SIDE: Most of the down side issues have to deal with things that
many people are beginning to get in to these days: BLOGS and small Bulletin
Boards. Most of the problems come from ReadyHost’s complete lack of support
for MySQL – which many of the BLOG/BB software packages are based on. A
secondary problem area is what appears to me to be either an incomplete or
at least a poor implementation of PHP support. There are at least 3 other
BBR members that have purchased accounts at ReadyHosting through me on my
reseller deal, along with two small businesses in my local area that I’ve
resold to.
The two businesses have had no complaints at all. But their sites are of
the on-line brochure types – a home page, a couple of pages of “what we do”
and a contact us page. Neither does any eCommerce, so I have no comments to
make about that side of the picture.
Oddly enough, the biggest headaches have come to the individuals purchasing
space with them through me that had what should have been very easy special
requests to fill. One person wished to set up a BLOG. But the BLOG
required MySQL as the database and so that ability was instantly
unavailable. Another BBR member wished to set up a forum using one of the
favored forum software packages: YABB (Yet Another Bulletin Board). YABB
prefers MySQL as a database and uses PHP to exchange data with it. In
theory, YABB can also connect to an SQL Server database, since PHP supports
ODBC. Even with the direct assistance of ReadyHosting Tech Support
personnel, they were never able to get any of two or three separate bulletin
board packages to work. Not only did the lack of MySQL support provide a
formidable hurdle, but it would appear that they do not have a sure and
certain methodology of installing the needed software to interface PHP with
their own SQL Server database.
My own personal “down-side” opinions: As I said earlier, I have my doubts about their claimed 99.9% uptime. I notice an inability to connect to the site or to my email for very short periods relatively often – often enough that I know it is not 100% there. I wouldn’t call these lapses frequent, but they are noticeable, but maybe I'm a little critical because it's my website.
I use a Microsoft Access database installed within my own webspace for my database needs. I interface to it using PHP. In my development environment here, the pages are instantly responsive – click a button and poof! The page is almost instantly generated and displayed. In the real world I caution people that those pages are going to be slow to load. I don’t know exactly where the slowdown originates – whether it is in their implementation of PHP or in the way they have things set up for PHP to interface with the database. I only know it’s slow. It works, it just isn’t fast.
BOTTOM LINE: Good value for the money as long as you’re aware of the potential problems caused by a lack of MySQL support and the apparently less-than-optimal implementation of PHP extensions. If you want to set up a BLOG or bulletin board package that hinges on MySQL for operation, you’d best look elsewhere. But if you can use their SQL Server database or your own Microsoft Access database to satisfy those kinds of needs, and you don’t get too heavy into PHP pages, it is definitely worth considering.
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