An Experimental Life

Paid hosting

Here are a few of the reputable ones:
Who we use
Liquidweb and LawrenceHost.Com
We're our own host now (LawrenceHost.Com) but in the interest of transparency I'll let you know that we use Liquidweb and their datacenters for it. They're the best cost to benefit host we've found so far, and they meet all of the above-listed criteria for a good web host. Reasonable pricing, a fair amount of space and bandwidth, and your own CPanel and copy of WHM, plus 24/7 tech support with real computer geeks manning the phones. But you make your own decision.

We'd be happy to sell you hosting at LawrenceHost.Com, but it isn't our main focus--We just offer that to defray our own hosting expenses. That being said, we have plans starting at five bucks a month on up, that include CPanel, or we can work out a custom deal with you. The downside of hosting with us, as opposed to going directly to Liquidweb, is that there are only two of us at LawrenceHost.Com, and we're not always available on the phone, whereas you can pretty much always reach someone reliable at Liquidweb.

The only advantages of hosting with LawrenceHost.Com are a) if you're a webcomic person we'll help you install and configure webcomic scripts and software for free or cheap (If it's just getting the CMS, database, modules, and custom templates installed, that's free. If you need us to do all of your configuration and stuff for you we might charge from twenty on up for set-up, depending on how much help you need.), including our own customized version of Walrus and/or the latest version of Drupal with the Drupal "webcomic recipe" I'm almost done with, and b) if your site is down, odds are that our sites are down, as well, so I'm pretty motivated to get things working as quickly as possible, even moving to another provider if need be (although so far Liquidweb has been great, so that is unlikely), so that you don't have to do your research all over again. Overall, unless you need help setting up your webcomic, I suggest Liquidweb.

Hostgator.com
Hostgator has a good reputation in most quarters. They don't charge setup fees for shared accounts, and you can pay by the month. Generous bandwidth and storage space allotments for a reasonable price. You could do much worse than to start off with these guys.

Webcomics Nation
Although they may host full domains now, when I last checked you just got a subdomain at webcomicsnation.com--but they do automate a lot of stuff, so all you have to worry about is making comics. Last I checked, they did both free and paid accounts. Unmetered bandwidth , and they're cheap, too (this is one of the few exceptions to the "cheap is bad" rule). I get nothing for recommending them--I just recommend them because Joey Manly is possibly the hardest-working man in webcomics. Also, when you host a webcomic with WebComicsNation (you may recognize Manly's name from there), you get free advertising on the Modern Tales webcomic network of sites.

Enter coupon code BCK1 to get started for as little as $9.90!
I've used DreamHost before with no problems, and only stopped because I had more web hosting accounts with more providers than I needed.

I found DreamHost to be a good, solid, reliable host with lots of disk space and more bandwidth than you will ever need (they increase it for you every month you host with them!) at a very low price. You can host unlimited domains on one account. They do have a fifty dollar setup fee. Since you can pay month to month, though, you can get started with them for about sixty bucks, or even cheaper if you use our discount coupon code above.

The downside: I'm not fond of their control panel, and they are only moderate as far as speed goes on heavy PHP/MySQL sites, but they should be fine for a starting webcomic using Walrus or similar, and are a good place to start if you're on a budget. Support is by email only.

While I haven't used BlueHost yet, they come highly recommended, and I plan to try them out soon as a mirror site. Generous bandwidth and storage at a low, yet not ridiculous, price. You must pay for at least three months to start, and if you pay for a year or more up front they waive the setup fee. All in all, you should be able to get started with them for around sixty bucks. They use CPanel (my favorite control panel) and Fantastico, which makes controlling your domain, editing files, installing scripts, etcetera, a breeze. You can host up to six domains (your main account and five add-on domains).

One great thing about BlueHost, especially if you plan to use any heavy PHP applications (like Drupal) is that you can configure certain settings for your PHP. You don't have to, but you can, if you need to, boost the RAM allocated to PHP functions. They set things up so that any account that uses more then 20% of system resources get temporarily shut out. This isn't a bad thing--it means that no one can screw you out of the CPU cycles you should be able to count on.

From talking to BlueHost users, they've had only one major incident of downtime. It lasted 45 minutes, and the CEO of the company announced it in his blog and took full responsibility. That alone makes me like these guys. They also have 24/7 phone support, and their tech support people are geeks, which is cool.

MidPhase and AN hosting are owned by the same people. They use cPanel, regularly win awards from unbiased source, have excellent third-party-verified uptime, and are listed with the Chicago BBB. Lengthier review to follow.

Free comic-specific webhosts
Both of these have more downtime than a good paid host. Comic Genesis seems a lot better than the old KeenSpace about uptime, but Drunk Duck seems to go down a lot. Still, if free is all you can afford, they're your best choice for webcomic hosting. They even provide the update script for you.

Comic Genesis, a service of Keenspot. Keenspot watches their Comic Genesis sites, and often promote the most heavily trafficked ones to the Keenspot site. IF your comic gets promoted, you get paid for your work. Schlock Mercenary used to be a Keenspot site before Howard Taylor went solo, and is an example of a comic that got promoted from Comic Genesis to Keenspot.

Drunk Duck