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I use Dreamhost.com as my hosting provider. USD110 per annum includes a nominal 450GB of hosting space that you can partition however you like. If you need more space for a legitimate project, (as far as I can tell that covers basically anything except porn, or illegal (copyright breach) music or video streaming) they say they'll give it to you at no extra charge.
The $110 pa includes one domain, extra domains can be registered and added at $10 pa per top level domain eg .net and .com domains. Some domain types are more expensive to register.
You have full control via a control panel to manage domains, users access and passwords. They don't seem to have limits on bandwidth, or at least none that have affected me. I get between 150000 and 250000 IP address visits to the site per year.
I've been with them for 7 years. In that time they had one security breach. They detected it and within hrs had reset every users password and were very forthcoming with a report on what happened and what action they took. I haven't needed much support but whenever I've asked, they answer. Their prices have not increased since I started my package other than the effect of the devaluation of the Aussie dollar which is not their fault.
They have one click formatting for Wordpress. Maybe the same for Joomla I'd have to check. Or you can format the space to do HTML coding for yourself.
The difference is that these packages provide a piece of software that allows you to upload content text and images straight to the website. Other packages, dreamweaver, Kompozer, and others mentioned mean you can edit a copy stored on your hard drive then upload to the site. I've always used an offline editor then upload but it's just a personal preference. When I coded my site I didn't forsee the explosion in smartphone and tablet access and so my site is only formatted for computer/laptop sized screens. This lowers your search engine presence. Joomla and wordpress, are basically preformatted. There are limited templates but I believe that they interrogate the device and reformat content for the device. If starting now, I would either go for software that is device aware or else have to code it myself. I am not an expert in this area and so can't tell you what the best packages are. Do some research of your own and see what's around now.
Basically I've been very happy with the service I've had from dreamhost as a domain host for the past 7 years, no complaints.
Before I switched to them, I was paying more per annum to a Canberra based provider before that and they would only let me have 100MB. I ran out of that space and had to bridge to other server spaces for a couple of years. I spoke to them about it and for an extra $300 per annum, they offered me an extra 25MB of space. Wow! When I decided to leave, they refused to give me access to my control panel and so I couldn't move my old domain joecali.net. Rather than take expensive legal action, I decided to give up the domain and found joe-cali.com was available and registered that instead. With dreamhost, I have access to the panel and can move it if I ever want to change providers.
Cheers
Joe
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