Over the years I’ve run the mill of average and poor hosting companies – initially with Host Rocket, who provided OK service, but their plan features quickly become dated.  I then moved to Hostgator, which on the face appears to be fantastic – excellent features at a great price.  But their service and support is poor to say the least.  If there’s a problem with my (or a clients’) hosting, I want it sorted and I want it sorted now.  I don’t need to chat to somebody in a call center who knows less about DNS than I do.  I don’t appreciate having to answer a raft of stupid troubleshooting questions that anybody who has handled any hosting in the past would have tried before calling.  Still, water under the bridge.  I am now with Fused Network.

When I first started evaluating new hosting providers about a year ago Fused looked like a decent option and I contacted them with some questions.  Their response was quick, polite and best of all personal.  David from Fused understood what I was asking and why, which meant that his answers actually answered my questions.  No links to a FAQ or canned response messages.  And the best part is that after signing up with them, that level of service has continued – it wasn’t just pre-sales effort.

So I see this morning that they are installing ffmpeg by default on all their servers.  In the past we’ve built a few sites that let people upload video, and we’ve always used ffmpeg in the back-end to convert the video and export thumbnails.  Getting a version of ffmpeg that handles all the needed file types to compile was always a bitch, so seeing Fused include this in their hosting is great news.

The monthly cost with Fused is a bit more than you can expect to pay with bargain basement hosting companies, but you really do get what you pay for.  So if you’re looking for a suggestion on hosting, I highly recommend you check them out.

Note:  I’m not getting paid or rewarded for writing this, but my link to Fused does include my affiliate code.