As an application developer specializing in Active Server Pages, I have had the opportunity to work with sites located on a variety of NT/IIS web hosting providers. Some have been horrendous (see my review on XO Communications), others decent, and some have been an absolute pleasure to work with. Innerhost falls into this last category.

Innerhost provides both high-end services to enterprise customers, as well as turn-key solutions for small to medium size businesses. They offer dedicated and shared hosting solutions; this review will cover the shared hosting options.

Connectivity
Innerhost's network has been built with speed, efficiency and quality of service in mind. Innerhost uses high-speed network cards and hubs, Cisco routers, and multiple connections to the internet backbone via UUNet, Cable & Wireless USA, Sprint, and Qwest. What does this mean to the consumer? It means that care has been taken to ensure the fastest connectivity possible. The redundant connections to the internet allow Innerhost's network engineers to reroute traffic as needed to allow for the greatest speed and fewest bottlenecks. My experience with site reliability on Innerhost has been very good; server speed is generally very good.

Features
Innerhost has several different hosting options, ranging from $22.95/month for Plan 1 to $169.95/month for their highest-level plan. Disk space and allowed data transfer varies with the plan selected, but starts at 40Mb, with 3Gb of data transfer per month. The basic plan includes 7 pop3 email boxes, and this ranges up to 37 for the high-end plan. All accounts include the following:

- Domain registration/transfer
- Unique IP address (some hosts do not offer this)
- Mail control panel, unlimited email aliasing, other email options
- Real-time web stats (these are very good!)
- Active Server Pages and Perl/Perlscript
- Personal cgi-bin directory
- Anonymous ftp
- Frontpage and Office 2000 extensions
- 24/7 monitoring
- Daily tape backup (a must!)
- Shockwave, MIDI, RealAudio/Video support
- Shared components (see Components below)

Components
Innerhost has definitely taken into consideration the needs of application developers, and has installed a plethora of ASP components that make development much easier. These include upload, security, authentication and database components:

- ServerObjects bundle
- ASPStudio
- ASP-db Pro
- ASPLogin 2000
- Authentix (not available with all plans)
- ASP Encrypt

While this might not seem to be a big deal to non-developers, it is a huge bonus for developers with deadlines - and can translate into shorter completion times for site owners.

Technical Support
Innerhost offers 24/7 technical support, and my experience with them has been quite good. The one drawback here is that they want you to email tech support first instead of calling them directly. I haven't had to use Innerhost's technical support extensively, as there have been few problems. However, when I had the need, they were extremely responsive and helpful, and the problem was handled promptly, even when the issue was quite complicated and resulted in a couple of phone calls. They really impressed me at how helpful they were. I have heard others say the same thing.

Room to Grow
Perhaps your hosting requirements are modest today, but what if your site becomes wildly successful and your requirements change dramatically? Innerhost can handle it! They have shared hosting plans that, depending upon plan selected, offer these additional features:

Depending on plan selected, the following may also be available:

- MS SQL Server database hosting
- Index and Transaction Servers
- SSL Secure Server
- Shopping cart and Cybercash support
- Mail list support
- Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) support

They also offer dedicated hosting plans starting at $499/month. They can also provide clustered servers and MS Exchange (email) hosting to fit the needs of larger businesses.

Summary
In my experience, Innerhost has been very reliable and the support excellent. They are reasonably priced; while there are other hosts that are a bit cheaper, they don't have all the features offered by Innerhost. All in all, I highly recommend Innerhost for those requiring NT hosting services.



Recommended: Yes

Monthly fees (US$): 22.95 and up
Platform used: Windows NT
Hosted on Secure Server: Yes
Database used: MS-SQL
Main focus of Web site: Sales/E-commerce