Most of my web design is based around simple HTML pages with a limited amount of ASP and often a lot of media, including my photo galleries and my video portfolio of animations. As a result my requirements for a host aren't that severe and I consider myself a basic user so because of that I really don't like paying over odds for hosting. Thinking back, I've probably paid a lot more in the past than I've needed to for features I just didn't need! Hence, whenever I look out for a new host I tend to be incredibly scrutinizing in terms of exactly what features I'm receiving and love stripped down packages which offer great bandwidth.

Whilst this seems like quite an easy thing to do, it is in fact really quite hard to do! Most hosts love to create a one size fits all solution rather than allowing a basic solution to be built upon as and when a user needs it to be. In the market today there are perhaps a couple of companies that do offer this sort of add-on based hosting plan and the one I decided to go with is easy CGI.

Their basic feature set is quite limited with no support for sub domains or a shopping cart. However, to balance that out there is support for ASP, Perl and PHP as you'd expect. But the real bonus of Easy GCI is their bandwidth and storage amounts. The basic packages comes with 1000Gb of bandwidth coupled with a ton of storage! For me this is perfect as it means storage will never be a concern and I'm not paying a lot of money for things like FrontPage support although I do realize for some the lack of these facilities would be an issue. As a result it's good that Easy CGI offer each of these features in other plans and via add-ons.

Fortunately, the stripped down approach though doesn't apply to their unique control panel and customer service both of which are fantastic. The knowledge base and help section offer a lot of information and can help users out with a lot of their problems. Join this with 24/7 phone and email support you have a really strong package. Unfortunately there isn't a dedicated messaging support service, if there were then I'd be a lot happier but so far I've had email responses very quickly (typically 5-10 minutes) and the service has been good.

In conclusion, a good company offering something a little bit different at a decent price!