web hosting for artists

hello,

I am looking for anyone who has some feedback on the best web hosting sites for an artist on a BUDGET interested in starting up a portfolio site.

I have been working in flash and wanted something that could host a number of larger files, like swf's, and other video.

Any information is helpful, as I have little experience in website building and in the sea of hosting sites its difficult to figure which would be the best to choose.

thanks!

oddible May 21 2009 12:23Reply

You've posted a pretty wide open question that has a lot of options. There is a conflict between 'budget' and hosting video - that is if you ever get a sizable amount of hits on your site. Most providers give you X amount of bandwidth to use per month. When hosting video, the likelihood of approaching that limit even with moderate usage increases. The way around this is to host your website yourself and use an offsite source to store your video - like YouTube or Archive.org (probably better for licensing issues). Then just link to those sites from your own site. This is an optimal solution because the quality of service (QoS) of those sites is typically very high and you won't have to worry about poor streaming or bandwidth limits.

As far as cheap hosting goes, the first place to check would be your ISP. Most DSL / Cable providers offer you web space with your account. Then just buy a domain name and point a CNAME DNS record at the URL to your site. They don't typically offer a lot of space so you'll just be hosting simple html and images there and link offsite to video and large files. You also can't typically install an app like Wordpress or something because they won't offer you a database without paying extra.

If you really need to go out and find your own host I'm sure you'll get lots of recommendations. If you expect to host a lot of video on your own site, then look for a host that has an unlimited bandwidth package - though these may suffer from QoS issues. I've used Dreamhost (LINUX) and WehHost4Life (Windows) and have found them both reasonable for unlimited bandwidth accounts. Dreamhost in particular has a good package that will auto-install Wordpress, Mediawiki, and many other content management apps for you for free so if that isn't in your skillset, that may be something to consider.

Nick Hasty May 21 2009 16:26Reply

I've heard goood things about:

http://www.bluehost.com/

http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/

I can second Dreamhost too, thought they've had some bad moments.

Cheers,

nh

Angila Jones May 22 2009 03:15Reply

I personally use http://www.liquidweb.com and http://www.slhost.com

They are cheap and the support is absolutely very fantastic with both of them. I like them both and cannot quit one.

Holly Thompson Aug. 5 2009 15:22Reply

May I suggest www.promotingartists.com
Its affordable and easy

Alex Zitzmann Aug. 12 2009 20:58Reply

i use cdmon.com. they have a promotion for artists. you can apply via promsite.org and get the professional hosting for free. though: it's spanish and there is no english translation on the site…

Samuel Monnier Aug. 13 2009 02:02Reply

I use http://www.greengeeks.com . Except for one major outage, I'm completely satisfied with this host company. They offer "unlimited" space and bandwidth. I do not know what exactly "unlimited" means, but now I've about 10GB of data on my website. Moreover they are offsetting three times their carbon emissions.

Best

Sam

Oliver Wise April 9 2010 12:51Reply

The Present Group recently began an affordable web hosting project where a portion of the hosting fees go toward an artist grant. http://www.thepresentgroup.com/hosting . Hostees are offered the opportunity to nominate and vote for the recipient of each grant.

Owen Mundy May 23 2010 16:12Reply

yourarthere.net provides web hosting for artists, musicians, and art organizations. Just launched a new site: http://yourarthere.net

Helmuts Meskonis May 24 2010 13:18Reply

I can suggest my services for UK artists - http://www.webdesignnet.co.uk/index.php/domain-hosting

I am offering affordable prices for maximum satisfaction ;) … incl. 24h support

Rosa Suen May 24 2010 13:34Reply

I use bluehost for my piano website and host a lot of my videos so they are great for artists and musicians who need to put up a lot of videos to show the world.

Emma May 31 2010 06:38Reply

Very Cheap and Effective Web Hosting Plans from Globat…..

abre Oct. 26 2010 14:41Reply

use vpn

jpkelly April 20 2011 15:18Reply

Take a look at smallGod hosting. http://smallgod.net They are friendly, helpful and inexpensive. They have a one click installer for Indexhibit.