[Nana]

I've been researching a few but I'm not very web host-literate.

I don't know which hosts are to be trust and if there's a catch since I don't understand half of the terminology they use.
Two I found were Lunarpages & ixwebhosting
It's hard for me to believe that they offer 200-400GB of disk space/storage along with 2500GB monthly transfer.
I'd appreciate if someone could check them out for me or suggest a host you've used/use and had a good experience with it.

I'm definetly looking for domain and to purchase a host, not a free host.

Thanks in advance.

[apparition]

some hosts like that DO offer all that. but from my experience...

1. they are selective about their clients and you hafta writeup a bunch of stuff about what you're going to do with your site (they probably want a lot of incoming traffic maybe? see #5. just my guess.).
2. other sites are "free" but they require a startup fee.
3. others have no startup fee, but they have monthly/annual fees.
4. they may have a crap load of ads (banner, popup, pop-under, inline, sponsorware, etc)
5. or..you may have to generate a minimum amount of traffic (ie. 1000 users a month...for example?) to stay free

they always have some way of catching ya

then, theres other free ones like angelfire (20mb space, ftp, ads), geocities (ads), etc. I've seen and used free hosts without ads...but they usually go outta biz pretty quickly for some reason. I used to use angelfire (cuz i like to use FTP rather than using their clumsy online programs on their site to upload my files) until I went to university and there, they give me like 100mb webspace, no ads. Maybe check if your ISP provides you webspace as part of your plan?

How much space and bandiwidth do you want? If you need a LOT (200-400GB?? omg!), and you're a serious/pro designer, you should probably consider a nice paid plan and a domain?

[Nana]

How much space and bandiwidth do you want? If you need a LOT (200-400GB?? omg!), and you're a serious/pro designer, you should probably consider a nice paid plan and a domain?

Oh I'm definetly looking for a pid plan and a domain. Sorry I might not have mentioned that.
I'm looking for something that's under $10/mon. But since I'll be paying for it I'm just a little worried about purchasing a wrong host who will have so many limitations or charge for certain things they did not list or mention.

I used to have a host before that my friend and I bought and split the cost, I don't remember the name though. It was about 13.99/mon. As I remember we got 10GB of space and we had to buy the domain seperately.

The links I posted above offer the large space and a free domain plus a couple of add on domains. But it seems a lot for that little money...so I'm a lil shakey about them.

[Muddie Murda]

Well, the catch with those large amount of space is that, they'd never think you'd ever use up all that space.

So never trust those "Unlimited space" host stuff. There IS a limit, and once you reach it, they delete everything on your account. Make sure to read their policies before signing up.

My team members and I signed up for http://www.globat.com/ once.

A lot of space! Good pricing!

Except, it was soooooooooooooooooooooo slloooowwwwwww. I was working on the forum, and I was going to cut my own throat! The page loading was sooo slow, and working on forums, I had to submit my work every few seconds, just to test out a code or a change I made. It was horrible.

I'm currently being hosted for free by a friend who has a dedicated hosting plan. So I haven't really been researching hosting plans for a few years now.

[psquare6806]

http://dreamhost.com

Dreamhost is a pretty popular web host that gives you bang for your buck. one of their plans i think gives you 1 TB (about 1000 GB) of bandwidth and it's $7.95 a month.

http://surpasshosting.com

this is a really popular one too, it comes with cPanel so installing scripts are easier.

[thatguy]

ive been with powweb for three years, their customer support is great. try checkin them out.

[chula]

i have 2 webhosts:

siteground and u2-web. i've never had any problems with both (never really had any downtimes) but i can definitely say that u2-web has awesome customer service - they're one of the highest ranked web hosts in webhostingjury.com

one time i accidentally deleted my wordpress' folder - i thought i lost 3 years worth of entries. within an hour, u2-web restored my blog - they actually respond to your email within minutes