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Secure, Shared Hosting?

Posted by Cliff on from the finding-a-secure-and-comfortable-nest-for-your-boxen dept.

skrysakj asks: "I have been searching high and low for a hosting company that can provide SSL encrypted POP3 or IMAP at an affordable price. I'd like something that is shared, not dedicated, to keep costs down. I believe that pghoster.com is a good option, since they offer a personal SSL certificate, a dedicated IP address, and more. Has anyone else found another viable and cost effective solution? Other features, such as SPAM filters, control panels, PHP, MySQL are all 'standard' but I just can't seem to find a company that offers that extra mile for paranoid security freaks such as myself."

4 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Massive pimping but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    But it says you're not taking new customers!

  2. Dreamhost by attaboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've had great luck with Dreamhost. They offer both SSL POP3 and SSL IMAP. I can't rave enough about their hosting. I did a lot of research into hosting companies, and they consistently came up as one of the top companies in the business.

    Link to learn more

    Fair disclosure: If you use that link and end up buying from them, I get a small "referral" credit on my own hosting bill. However, I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't think they were absolutely the best.

    --
    The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
  3. Forced Spam Filtering? by Goo.cc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm sure that I am in the minority here but I don't like hosting providers that force a spam filter on me (although the option of using one is a nice feature). I want to receive everything sent to me.

    Let me decide what is spam.

  4. It's not pimping ... by fm6 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...if you're honest about it being your own service, and about what the service offers.

    JVDS sounds like it would be a good option for skrysakj, since his main reason for avoiding dedicated hosting is the expense. He assumes that a non-dedicated solution means he has to take what the provider gives him. But a UML provider lets the customer have it both ways -- the cost structure is like a a shared provider, but the level of flexibility is like a dedicated provider. Which should appeal to a lot of people.

    On the other hand, cost is not always the crucial issue. Even if you can afford a dedicated box, you may not want the hassle of administering such a system. Even if the provider delivers a nice turnkey solution (as you do), the whole point of having a dedicated system is being able to install your own stuff. But if you do that, you better be prepared, skillwise and timewise, to maintain that stuff. And not all of us are.

    I personally would much prefer to have a provider that does all the donkey work for me. The problem with that is the provider always seems to have priorities that are not quite compatible with mine.

    The closest I've come to an ideal shared provider is DreamHost, where I currently host my web site. The big points: even low-end accounts get shell access (often an expensive extra, if it's available at all), IMAP (most providers consider POP sufficient), and being CGI friendly (maybe a little too friendly). But:

    • They insist that users keep their mailboxes small to avoid overburdening the mail server. This is enforced by a script that moves old messages from the mailbox to a regular file. Makes sense costwise, but it also defeats the main purpose of using IMAP -- having a central mail repository that you can easily access from multiple clients and systems.
    • They support SSH and encourage people not to use telnet or ftp. But their web console doesn't include any key generation utility. So you have to do it on the command line. Which, since I don't do it very often, I have to study up on each time. A real pain.
    • They're still on Perl 5.6.1, which has a lot of libraries that aren't taint-safe. They currently have no plans to upgrade to 5.8, citing massive version dependencies in their own software. Less of an issue, as I've learned more about writing secure CGIs, but it bothers me that their Perl is 3 years old.
    • A lot of their docs suck. Plus it's all on SSL pages, which can be darned inconvenient.
    I'm sure people can point me to other providers that do better than this on one or more points. I've found a few myself. (Love Google!) But taken as a whole, I've never found anybody who does even as well as Dreamhost. They solve some of the above problems but not others. They charge too much. They don't do IMAP. CGI support is iffy.

    I'm pretty impressed with SourceForge. But they don't do web hosting except as a part of their overall service.

    Oh well.