Ugh. Migrating my websites again. This time from MDDHosting to HostMantis.
I’ve been with MDDHosting for three years, and they are awesome. With one exception (bad things can happen even to great hosts) it has been a great three years. MDDHosting is fast and reliable, with support more polite, prompt, and knowledgeable than I have found anywhere else, and don’t expect to find again. Price until now was very reasonable, and still is for shared hosting. I have recommended them to others and will continue to do so.
So, why leave such a great host? Price. Not MDD’s fault. The evil, greedy bastards at Oakley Capital are to blame. The cost of my reseller account will more than double in a couple of months. It was supposed to double last year but MDD owner Michael kindly grandfathered me on the old price for a year. I encouraged Michael to offer a lower-cost Domain Admin alternative, but he patiently explained to me that for him it does not make business sense.
OK, I understand business owners gotta make tough decisions that won’t make every client happy. No hard feelings at all – Michael and MDD have treated me very well. Just – gotta move on.
But to where? I am hopelessly addicted to LiteSpeed Server. Other than Buyshared, HostMantis offers the lowest cost LiteSpeed reseller hosting I have found. I’ve tried Buyshared and am a big fan of their super-low-cost shared hosting, but I could never get their reseller offering to work right. HostMantis is remarkably low-cost, has been in business a long time, and as far as I can tell has a good reputation.
Migrating websites is a chore and fraught with possible “Oh, sh*t!” opportunities. I purchased a new reseller account from HostMantis roughly three months before my existing MDDHosting account expires. This should give me time to figure things out, migrate everything, recover from the inevitable mistakes I am almost certain to make, and have a reasonable evaluation time at the new host. If anything goes horribly wrong during the three months, Plan B is to simply renew my account at MDDHosting at the higher rate on a monthly basis till I get it all sorted.
If it all works out, I will have to get used to using Domain Admin instead of cPanel. I first test-drove DA a year ago and found it to be kinda shitty. Either DA has improved or my motivation and attitude have adjusted – probably a bit of both. As far as I can tell so far, DA will work fine for me. It is not as polished as cPanel, not as full-featured or intuitive, is a bit cartoonish-looking and a bit glitchy – but it works.
I will cover the nuts and bolts of the migration in another post.
