p.1 #1 · "Reasonably" priced, reliable web hosting company?
Hello pros.
I'm in the market for a new web hosting company.
I know, reasonably priced and reliable don't really belong in the same sentence anymore, but I still think they should.
My old host of 20 years (powweb.com) was recently bought out by Network Solutions and it's been mostly a disaster since then.
They were reliable with practically zero downtime (none that I ever encountered), unlimited bandwidth and storage for galleries. I've had customers come back to me years later thankful their galleries are still on-line so I want to keep that aspect.
Sadly, those days seem to have gone away.
Looking for a reasonably priced host. I don't generate a huge amount of traffic but don't want to get caught out by something unexpected so unlimited bandwidth is a requirement.
Is there anyone else out there other than Squarespace?
And yes, I also know my website is in serious need of updating. It's wildly out of date for the modern mobile world. Maybe this is the kick I need to modernize it a bit.
Looking for the ability to upload custom HTML and have FTP access for image uploads.
p.1 #5 · "Reasonably" priced, reliable web hosting company?
I use Zenfolio: often slow and unreliable, and the whole "archiving" thing is annoying and might cause image file to be lost forever. So I've been thinking to switch myself. For me, I just need gallery and blog and custom domain, no need for client and commercial functions. Pixieset lets you choose between "client gallery" or "website" and there are different plans and tiers for each, so it seems the best on the surface. Smugmug price seems crazy. Squarespace seems more for general website, not photography specific.
p.1 #6 · "Reasonably" priced, reliable web hosting company?
I prefer Pixieset myself, though it is a bit expensive, I have found it's pretty customizable.
I do run some other sites on Squarespace and I'm not in love with their gallery management. Overall I've found them good for more general purpose websites. I wouldn't use them exclusively for image hosting or client galleries for sure.
I also have just a general purpose "VPS" where you get a server and that's basically it, and can configure it to your heart's content (and are also responsible for support above the OS layer), I use IONOS for that.
TJ Asher wrote:
Both good ideas so far. Thanks!
You'd think so now, wouldn't you. But my experience recently is telling me otherwise.
I think this is probably more of a function of the layer at which you're choosing to operate. The solutions that are more software-as-a-service, such as a Zenfolio, SmugMug, PixieSet, PhotoShelter, etc.. are typically more reliable. I moved my sports client galleries and website over to PixieSet 2+ years ago, and have never once had it go offline or be down. Now I'm sure it has been for some upgrade or something, but they're typically done in such a manner that no one, including myself, was ever aware of it.
p.1 #7 · "Reasonably" priced, reliable web hosting company?
BrandonSi wrote:
I prefer Pixieset myself, though it is a bit expensive, I have found it's pretty customizable.
I do run some other sites on Squarespace and I'm not in love with their gallery management. Overall I've found them good for more general purpose websites. I wouldn't use them exclusively for image hosting or client galleries for sure.
I also have just a general purpose "VPS" where you get a server and that's basically it, and can configure it to your heart's content (and are also responsible for support above the OS layer), I use IONOS for that.
I think this is probably more of a function of the layer at which you're choosing to operate. The solutions that are more software-as-a-service, such as a Zenfolio, SmugMug, PixieSet, PhotoShelter, etc.. are typically more reliable. I moved my sports client galleries and website over to PixieSet 2+ years ago, and have never once had it go offline or be down. Now I'm sure it has been for some upgrade or something, but they're typically done in such a manner that no one, including myself, was ever aware of it. ...Show more →
I agree with this, Pixieset is fantastic for client gallery workflows. Squarespace is better for professional/personal webpages.
These days, if all you need is FTP access to web space, you can't really beat an AWS bucket. The annoying thing is Amazon seems to have the most outages of anyone.
p.1 #10 · "Reasonably" priced, reliable web hosting company?
My Zenfolio renewal coming in a few months, thinking of moving on from them to get more reliable service and my own domain name, so I just tried Pixieset and the amount of customizability seemed impressive at first.
Overall Pixieset does look a little better, but I miss some automatic functions of Zenfolio, such as generation of direct links for each image (at multiple sizes) to share on other websites such as FM, automatic creation and sorting of gallery links, sorting/organization of images, ability to set max image size for display, etc. Even a free Flickr account has these functions...
With Pixieset gallery pages, I notice the horizontal grid layout option crops horizontal images to 3:2 aspect ratio (most my images are 4:3). Why squish 3:4 images to fit the row but crop 4:3 images? I also noticed this crop to 3:2 when I tried to put a slideshow on the front page to match my Zenfolio site. So for Pixieset I decided to go with image carousel instead, to fill more of the page and avoid my images getting cropped to 3:2.
Notice on Pixieset, text in the header and menu bar is all caps, even though I set it not to be all caps, and in the site preview it is not all caps. Ah, yes, you gotta pay more to turn off the all caps text. $24/month, not even the $16/month plan is enough to turn off all caps. So maybe the customizability isn't so great after all.
Pixieset would be $172 CAD per year and right now I am paying $37.50 USD per year with Zenfolio Basic plan. If I want my own domain that badly, I can stay with Zenfolio and switch to their Starter plan which costs extra $39.54 USD per year.
I also tried Pixpa (page editing not compatible with Firefox) and Format (not specialized for photography, very limited customization, slightly more expensive than Pixieset/Zenfolio).
