Soluna Enterprises is also extremely cheap (for FIRST teams especially) and has quite a lot of experience. We also pride ourselves on reliability. Our servers have so far had literally 100% uptime, and the ISP through which we are contracted have incredibly high standards. We run FreeBSD systems because of their security and stability.
Having spent four years as the webmaster for my team (and having been the runner up for the website award numerous times), I know what it is that FIRST teams need with their web hosting, which I have passed on to the people under me in the company, and we at Soluna Enterprises look on the FIRST teams with special interest.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I love FIRST and think that everything about the program is amazing, and as such I was to give back to the program. We're willing to give special treatment to the teams, especially during the competition season when we know how vital it is that the teams have their sites up. We also know that a lot of teams use their sites for more than just placement of information. This is why we give FIRST teams unlimited MySQL databases, email addresses, and FTP accounts, along with large amount of control over their account. We expect teams to take advantage of this to develop web-based tools for their sites, and are even willing to help with that- while we can't devote all of our time to helping teams code, we love everything about it and plan on looking at the sites constantly to see how things are going, and even helping out when needing to. We're interested in hosting FIRST sites as a way to build upon and be part of the FIRST community, not just so be some lame company trying to stick its nose in.
I still remember the first national I went to, down at Epcot, and Dean Kamen gave a speech that has stuck with me ever since. He talked about the responsibility of companies to give back to the community, and how every person has a responsibility to change the world for the better. Dean Kamen is my hero, and part of what I'm doing here is attempting to follow a little more in his footsteps and to also give back to the community that gave me so much.
Again, if anyone has any questions, just ask them here or email me at
rhafner@solunaenterprises.com