I’m going to do something I rarely do – plug a service I really like. I’ve been suggesting these guys for years when friends or associates have looked for excellent hosting with minimal efforts required. Enter ICDSoft.
To qualify this, I’ve been with them for going on seven years. That’s a darn long time, internet wise.
1) They have 24/7 knowledgable, dedicated support staff and their services are incredibly redundant.
As I am both a programmer and CIO of an Internet Marketing Firm, this means they know a heck of a lot more than what most people would require, or expect. I’ve asked them to do bizarre things (Install 64 bit Perl SSLeay support; upgrade packages they have on their system, and so forth.) It took them minutes.
When I asked them to migrate me from iAdvantage to Savvis, it took them a few minutes (and a couple of hours for DNS to propagate everywhere). When my email contact bounced, they actually called to reassure that my ticket was being handled.
2) They have a proprietary, functional administration panel.
If you enjoy cPanel, you’ll probably be a bit put off, because ICDSoft’s product actually works, and you don’t have to click through cumbersome half-brewed wrappers around GNU software.
It’s so intuitive – I was able to train my parents how to register domains to ICDsoft and setup subdomains in minutes. They’re is always adding features to it. They were the first to my knowledge to offer a fully-functional database upgrader; it took me one click to migrate my CMS. They also have the ability to automatically download and migrate your sitex from the control panel via FTP, and they even have a cPanel import system, just incase you decide that you’d prefer form and function.
3) They’re still incredibly thrifty.
When I initially signed up, I was paying $3.33/mo for 300MB of storage, and 2GB of transfer. Again, in 2002, that was a lot – and it’s still more than most folks need. Even when actively pursuing GNU projects (I spent a few years porting UNIX utilities to MacOS X when it was still young), I never paid more than $10/mo, and I used to host such things as DosBox.
So, there it is, my plug for ICDSoft. They’ve more than earned not only my praise, but my continued service. They’ve spoiled me; I wouldn’t consider hosting anywhere else.