servage.net hosting independant review – first impressions

As I mentioned before, for the first time in about 6 years i’ve actually coughed up for some paid-for hosting. This gives me somewhere to host some php/mysql stuff and means that I don’t have to rely on favours to get things sorted out, or be responsible for it myself. After having a quick look through some of the more popular “stack em high and sell em cheap” hosts, I signed up with servage.net. Note that link has a referrer coupon attached to it – if you sign up using that link, I get a couple of free months of hosting and so do you – a win win situation 🙂

I’ve held off on posting that link, because I didn’t want to recommend anything that i’ve had bad experiences with, but so far i’ve been impressed with what i’ve got – an unfeasibly large data transfer and storage allowance, I haven’t noticed any downtime yet and i’m generally impressed with the provided control panel functionality: online file manager – including through the web editing – very useful, phpmyadmin for mysql, cron jobs, ability to set up virtual hosts, email accounts, email forwarders, mailing lists etc.

The only shortcomings so far are lack of access to logs (because of their shared server setup) and lack of shell access. There are some basic statistics available, but nowhere near detailed enough, especially if you were hosting a site for a company who want access to detailed stats for marketing. However, i’ve just integrated google analytics, which seems to be a more than adequate substitute.

So thumbs up so far – if I experience any problems with the service i’ll keep you posted!