[generalj]

Hi all,
We are currently using godaddy but find it hard to use on a daily basis with apparel. I do all the website work myself and am not a techy at all so I need something easy Does anyone have any suggestions on a great place to run our .com through? If it helps to see what we do our website is allspiritwear.com
When I looked up suggestions on here most of the posts were a few years old. Thanks for any help
Jayme

 

[street454]

We are using Host Gator. I have no problems with their cpanel, maintaining the site, etc. I have written from scratch HTML and I have used templates. My only complaint, they have gone down 2-3 times in the last 6 months at which time their customer service is lacking in communications. When they are down, no customers, no sales, no emails.... Is there any host that is up 100% of the time?

 

[jen2swt]

That's the problem you will come across with web hosts. Most say they are up 99.99% of the time. While I do agree it's inexcusable that the communications stink, they will go down from time to time.

It's all about communication. I myself use Host Gator. When we launch our site, I plan on using an e-commerce site for my store front since I don't have to deal with the headaches of a payment portal other than Paypal. I don't want to be limited to just Paypal.

 

[LuluStar]

Hi!

I have to say that I love love LOVE! Bigcommerce!

They start at $25 / month - which is probably more than what you're paying now but I think it's worth it. I guess I should mention that no - I do not work for them in any capacity and I'm not related to the CEO or anything! lol I just had a terrible exhausting time trying to get a decent store / cart / website up and running for a decent price - when I finally found Bigcommerce it was like the ecommerce Gods were smiling down on me...

Good Stuff:
- really nice modern free templates (and some paid too if that is what you want)
- 100% customizable templates - seriously - you can change pretty much everything
- gift certificate feature
- they don't take a % of your sales - just the monthly fee
- integrates with lots of processors like Stripe (love Stripe!) for one page checkout!

But the most important thing for me was their mantra - if the sellers do well we do well. So what makes them different is that they will answer your questions for free and are always there to help you out. They have excellent tutorials, videos, documentation, to help you get your site up and running. Plus they even have a forum with staff answering questions and troubleshooting for you. And they're nice. Oh- and they're always asking for feedback and ideas for improvement - and then they actually do the stuff their customers want. They just added a built in blog feature - a lot of people wanted that.

You can get a free trial here: Ecommerce Software & Shopping Cart Solutions | Bigcommerce

Good Luck!

Edit: I don't know why the link is weird - it looks like an affiliate link - which it's not... If you want a free trial just go to their website: bigcommerce dot com

 

[generalj]

thanks so much for your feedback! I will definitely check them out. At godaddy the fee is around $50 a month so $25 will be a steal of a deal!!! Again thank you!!
Jayme

 

[gotshirts2ink]

HostGator.com 10 bucks a month worth every penny

 

[akar]

We use Hostgator and they're great.

 

[BidsMaven]

HostGator has been excellent for us. They're prices are good and their customer support is stellar.

 

[plan b]

If you are going to host your own and need enterprise level hosting have a look at Crucialhost

 

[generalj]

Thank you all for your advice As of now all signs point to the fact that I have to leave godaddy. Their server went down and they never let me know. Is that common or am I being to demanding? As if that wasn't bad enough they had "business to business" relationship problems with Comcast and yahoo. They have worked things out with Comcast but not yahoo. This relationship problem has been going on for 2 months and they again never informed me. I found out 3 days ago that yahoo will not send any godaddy emails. So any customer inquiry or order we get is not emailed. I now posted if you have yahoo call and do not email. Had they let us know 2 months ago I would not have been losing customers. They informed me they are not able to send out email blasts to alert customers of these issues! Really?!?! They don't have a problem sending me an email every morning to upgrade or give me a discount code but to alert me my customers cant email me or get order confirmations is not important information. So frustrated Has anyone else had these problems?

 

[iamtheniko]

I've used godaddy for hosting and domains for over a year now with no problems. Built my websites using wordpress. And the emails work fine too.

 

[generalj]

agreed they have been great up until 2 months ago You must not have yahoo email but it is the whole company so if a customer tries to contact you they will get a mailer-daemon email. I only found this out when a customer facebooked me this problem. I have tried to go on my website to the contact us section and send a request to 4 different yahoo emails and they all failed. Godaddy knows this is happening and has not notified any of their customers. Maybe I'm expecting too much but most customers will just go somewhere else. Same can be said when their server went down and all their customers websites had a page that said "a cool website is coming soon". To me it should of said our server is having technical difficulties please try again later. I had 3 customers wondering why we sent out a list serve thru the school to order spirit wear when we didn't even have a website up and running. That was pretty embarrassing and made me wonder out of the 900 parents they sent the email to how many other parents thought we were not an up and running business. Does anyone have any advice on what I should do? I don't mean to sound like a Debbie downer but these issues, in my opinion are pretty major and will cost me lots of money.

 

[dhearn]

I use Host Gator and love them! Getting ready to move another existing site over to them.

 

[EddieM]

i have over 50 sites with Host Gator spanning 4 accounts no problems and good support if you need it.

 

[generalj]

Thank you much for the information I am definitely going to look into host gator

 

[LuluStar]

You should take advantage of any free trials the different sites offer - that way you'll figure out right away which is the best fit for you!

When you get everything up and running I hope you'll post a link here - I would like to see the final site!

 

[PyramidPrintWrx]

I use BlueHost. Great USA based customer service. Easy to use cpanel and backend services. One-click installs of many site-building, ecommerce, and other tools. Some occasional downtime but they all do at some point. For me one of the most important aspects of a hosting service is to have 24/7 USA-based customer service (since I'm in the US).

I also have several sites on Yahoo Small Business - stellar cutomer service, 100% uptime, and only recently have there been issues with the email. Expensive, though. A colleague runs his ecommerce store on YSB with great success, easy backend.

Years ago I had 30+ domains and sites on godaddy and they were awful. Despicable, actually, the things they did to me and other customers over the years. Would never use them again, ever, even if they paid me.

BTW - you can sign up for a free monitoring account at Pingdom and they'll notify you if your site goes offline.