One Year Under The Oak
Posted: 10 August 2010
Finding the right webhost is hard work, especially for the inexperienced. It's easy to get misled by tall claims and unrealistic promises. In short, deciding on a reliable webhost can be a frustrating experience. Fortunately, I was lucky to get it right the first time around. Today, I'm pleased to announce that it's been one year as a proud customer of Little Oak Hosting.Karlito And The Search For The Little Oak
Exactly one year ago, I sought out to find the perfect webhost. One that would ensure my fledgeling professional career got off to the right start. But hope and anticipation soon turned to worry as I discovered that all of the companies I had in mind had a lot of unhappy customers. This list included all the so-called "best" and "recommended" webhosts like Lunarpages, GoDaddy, Bluehost, Hostmonster - you name it and you have just have to Google it. I was surprised to find even established companies like MediaTemple (yes, I so wanted to be a MediaTemple customer, and yes, I still find loads of customers still complaining about their Grid service, even today), A Small Orange (Google it) and many other reputed companies.Fate it seems would have its way with me. I was browsing through a CSS gallery looking for inspiration, and there it was: a thumbnail of the Little Oak website. "A webhosting company? In a CSS gallery?", I thought. "There's something you don't see everyday"...
Promises Kept
And boy, what a year it's been! I was expecting issues here and there. But not a single one. A little downtime? Nope. Over the course of the year, I learnt a few things:Little Oak Cares
Most importantly, not all hosting companies are out to make money by cheating customers. Most companies have cheap hosting plans but force you to pay extra for essentials like extra MySQL databases or add-on domains or email accounts. Little Oak places no restrictions of any sort. All their plans have reasonable limits, and I am yet to even come close to exceeding any limit. Their Customer Support is kind and helpful. They are a real company, which means they exist in the real world, so they won't disappear with your data. The owners are web and graphics designers themselves, and take a personal interest in their clients. Over the past year, I've communicated directly with Christopher on many an occassion, and I often discuss my Textpattern obsessions with Giuseppe. True gentlemen.
100% Uptime? You Bet!
Their 100% uptime promise has lived up to the test of time. One year and counting, to be precise. This inspite of being featured on Smashing Magazine three times, of which two were in the same calendar month. Not a moment of downtime, even when my bandwidth peaked to 520MB within 24 hours.
I know this diagram says nothing about uptime, but trust me, I have never felt the need for monitoring tools. I had hundreds of friends checking out my site during those days; and never once did anyone say my site was down. I too have never found my site down even once this entire year. Believe it.
The Ratings Lie
You may ask, if Little Oak's so damn good, why don't most people know about it? Well, it so happens that advertising is not their way of functioning. And it really saves unneccessary expenditure. It's a known fact that the so-called ratings for webhosts are nothing but eyewash. They act as nothing but affiliate links to attract inexperienced customers. Little Oak relies solely on word-of-mouth for spreading news about their services. Something I have tried to do as much as possible during the year.
Moral Of The Story
So if you're just another frustrated customer who has been left stranded by your hosting company, and you've stumbled across this while searching on Google, I strongly recommend Little Oak. I can guarantee this will be the last time you will change your webhost. Some readers may question the authenticity of this article. Rest assured, I am very real: feel free to email me if you have to, I can confirm everything written here in person.
This is not a review, nor a testimonial. No exaggeration. No affiliate links, though I could have sneaked in a few. Just the plain truth coming from your average 22-year web developer. And I don't see myself going anywhere anytime soon. A big thank you to Christopher, Giuseppe and all the guys over at Little Oak. Thank you for a perfect year. Keep up the excellent work, and God bless you all. Cheers!
