Let me just preempt Derek and his apologists by pointing out that this is a 3 1/2 year old criticism of Hostbaby, so possibly it's not relevant to today's relaunch debates, but I'm linking to this because I'm curious and want to know more:
1.) Did Derek sell Hostbaby to Discmakers as part of his sale of CDBaby.com?
2.) Is Hostbaby a subsidiary of CDBaby or is it a completely separate entity?
3.) Compared to other web hosting services, is Hostbaby--at $20 per month or $200 per year--a rip-off?
Leave your questions & comments here. . .
Posts
The Times is broken
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It gives me no satisfaction to say this — indeed it fills me with
trepidation for the nation — but The Times is broken. I know some of you
are thinking,...
2 days ago
1) yes
ReplyDelete2) separate
3) matter of personal opinion
Thank you for the post.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance Hostbaby seems to have good services: uploading of photos, mp3 files, and other things that bands and musicians would want, so it might be a stretch to claim that $20 per month for these services is a "rip-off."
I'm still curious how Hostbaby compares to similar service companies. Is there anything else around that fits the typical web musician's needs as well as Hostbaby appears to do?
I'm speaking as web designer and web developer here, with over 5 years of experience, and one who has worked with a few Hostbaby clients...
ReplyDeleteThere is NOTHING Hostbaby offers you that any other decent hosting wouldn't offer for half the price. Their "wizard" sucks. Their support -- while friendly -- sucks.
The web has moved on. You can use a lot of different user-friendly "blog" programs to set up a site these days (e.g. wordpress.com which hosts blogs, if you are too non-tech to set up your own wordpress site -- wordpress.ORG).
A decent host may even be able to advise you, although that's outside of their scope.
My advice -- if you are a non-techy musician... go around the web to musician sites, and see which ones seem like what you want. Email the site owner -- a fellow musician -- and ask how they set their site up. Chances are you will find a good host/good designer/good blogging service.
Re: "done gone" above -- I don't mean any disrespect (it's not your area of expertise), but uploading of photos and mp3 files or any other kind of files is not a special service. Any hosting company should allow that. If anything, hostbaby makes it difficult to administer a site.
Out of long and excellent experience, I recommend HostGator, but there are many others that are equally as good. Ask around.
I'm thinking HostBaby already has one foot in the grave, regardless of the status of CD-Baby (separately owned, I believe.)
I've used HostBaby for years. They're great and they've been adding lots of new features. Well worth the money. I guess it's just a matter of opinion.
ReplyDeleteHostbaby is ridiculous. A client asked me to design his site with hostbaby and everything there is redundant. It wont even let me install wordpress. Jesus!
ReplyDelete