A2I Communications

Looking for a new host

General
#1

ex-Bestie who’s been on rahul.net for over twenty years (since whenever it was Verio acquired Best) seeks a new hosting provider to which I can point my personal custom domain name. Email flexibility and configurable spam filtering paramount. Also want to host my miniscule-traffic personal old-school html web site, and a shell-account because ssh and ftp is what I’m used to.

So far, Panix Shell Services: Features appears the best potential fit. I’d appreciate any feedback on panix.com, or any other provider I should be considering.

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#2

Sonic.net may also fit your needs; may want to reach out to them (support@ or by phone) for more details. It’s possible to have a basic account without DSL; I kept mine after moving out of their area since my domain was registered through them. I’ve really only been using it as a secondary email address since then, but do see that there are a couple of layers of spam filtering options. I know they offered shell access upon request in the past but haven’t yet looked into details of that or web hosting offerings.

Edit: From some quick checking in the member tools it seems that shell access is available, but web hosting requires that you have a connectivity service. Hmm.
Edit2: Well, that was for “personal web hosting” which I guess/assume is included with connectivity service. They do have add-on web hosting services at $10-20/month, although it also says “Please Note: Web Hosting services at Sonic are considered a legacy service. While we’re still allowing customers to add new hosting services at this time, we encourage you to seek out a reputable hosting provider that will better be able to meet your needs.”

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#3

To my surprise, an email list which was created 23 years ago by people leaving Best when it was acquired by Verio is still running! I got lots of suggestions, and now https://www.pair.com is the top contender for my needs.

#4

FYI, Panix is eager to take on anyone migrating from rahul.net. Per Alexis Rosen via RT rt-support@panix.com

" Ok, here’s the offer.

If you sign up for any of our services, put “rahul.net special $20 credit” in the “additional notes” field. We’ll issue that credit, so you won’t be charged until after you use that much (two months, in the case of a regular shell account).

In fact, for all our services except VCs (virtualized server rental), you don’t even have to give us a credit card number until you have to pay your first bill.

Please convey that offer to other rahul.net subscribers by whatever means you think best."

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#5

Thanks for all the suggestions for shell providers.

Any others?

#6

Here’s a summary of suggestions I received from my inquiry on the Besties list:

DigitalOcean.com $5/month FreeBSD cloud server “swimming in the same IP pool as some baddies”

Pair.com since 1995, then bought by libsyn “Shell accounts. Responsive support. Wordpress. Up to date packages. SSL. procmail.” $8/mo w/15GBdisk

IONOS.COM (formerly called 1AND1.COM) Wordpress.

hawkhost.com Canadian host “dependable service, configurable spam filtering, C-Panel based.”

sonic.net “slowly degrading their hosting services”

acornhost.com “Green Web Hosting” discounts for non-profit customers

panix.com NY host “dialup access” shell, web, IMAP, SquirrelMail, Roundcube, Majordomo, $150/yr w/6GBdisk

linode.com cloud computing (since browsing their site, they’ve been spamming my Facebook news feed with ads)

he.net Colocation facilities “have always had good support from them”

cloudiance.com “Zimbra” email hosting ONLY

lmi.net small local (east bay) provider since 1994 “shell accounts and old school bits like ssh” $10/mo w/1GBdisk

#7

FWIW, a couple other contenders from the previous time I conducted a search:

https://www.tigertech.net since 1999, IMAP, WordPress, shell access, $10/mo w/20GBdisk

https://www.swcp.com NM since 1994, dialup!, $15/mo w/1GBdisk

http://www.rawbandwidth.com since 1999, dialup!, shell access, $22/mo w/3GBdisk

I’m done shopping. I’m signing up with Panix, sold from their impressive support response.

#8

Thank you, Panix is looking very good so far—not very, just http://www.panix.com/~flash/nicht.txt at the moment. Scp seemed to work for all my web pages, but I want to remove cruft first.

#9

I’ve been fully migrated to Panix for several weeks now, and I’ve found it very satisfactory for my needs.