Speaking of hosts, I got a few emails from readers who asked me why, after expelling so much praise for Segpub, I would host the podcast and short films at Dreamhost. The answer is actually pretty simple: Dreamhost offers a shitload of bandwidth and disk space, and I don't care about support when I'm basically just hosting files.
Here's what I mean: Segpub offers impeccable service and quality, and beyond fair pricing for their services. What this means is that they don't oversell on bandwidth and disk space like other, "cheap" hosting providers. At Segpub I get more than enough space and bandwidth (and it's gone up significantly as Segpub has built business and expanded), and I pay a fair price for it. But that price isn't less than ten dollars a month, which is what most people are looking for. I know you've heard it a million times, but it's true: you get what you pay for. And Segpub really delivers.
But then there's Dreamhost. Where I pay less than sixteen bucks a month and have over sixty-seven gigabytes of disk space and nearly two terabytes of bandwidth a month. Do you understand how ridiculous that is? There's no way in hell Dreamhost has that much space to give to every customer. They oversell like crazy, and, chances are, I'll never come anywhere near those numbers anyway. But they're cheap and the space is plentiful, and that's all I care about for the podcast and films.
Now, if I had to run a large web app, I wouldn't choose Dreamhost. Their support is slow and hard to come by, and their control panel—while full-featured—is extremely slow and clunky. But, for fifteen bucks a month, I'm hosting over ten domains there with tons of files, our films, the podcast, et cetera, with space and bandwidth to spare. Of course, it goes down every now and then and dealing with Rails apps is a nightmare, but it works well enough for my purposes.
So there you have it: If you need good, fast, quality hosting and excellent support, choose Segpub. If you don't care and you just need server space, choose someone like Dreamhost. But don't say I didn't warn you.