If you want to host any type of blog or database driven website (like Wordpress) I don't recommend pair. The minute you start getting significant traffic (even on a high-volume account) they'll disable your site without warning. Then they'll act like it's your fault for using Wordpress, and they won't re-enable your site until the traffic goes down. Their 'high volume' accounts are only good for static html based websites.

pair Networks exceeds even the best of standards for customer service which outweighs any price concerns that I have ever had.

We go through a reseller of pair, but get really poor excuses to explain 6-7 months of smtp/pop3 issues. User/pass issues and the tech support seems to lack the ability to read details of tech tickets to actually fix the issues at hand. Tech support = redundancy.

We've had a number of service interruptions for our pair service, particularly POP/SMTP mail. REcently, we received an email telling us our service was to be migrated to a new server. On the day that happened, we instead lost all service and spent half a day on the phone with their tech team trying to diagnose why our account had been deleted from the old server but not moved to the new server. This was a pretty typical event -- things operate ok until they have to make a configuration change, then all hell breaks loose and we're the ones who have to step in to tell them there is a problem because they don't monitor effectively.

I have been using Pair Networks for several years and agree with a lot the the above positive comments. However, I have had serious email issues that have not been resolved. Business emails have not been sent nor received and I was not notified. I was informed when clients told me they have sent emails &/or they have not received, you just can not conduct business like this. Pair Networks is aware of the problem that have with SquirrelMail and I am now waiting to hear back from them.
So if you are using their webmail you may want to double check important emails you have sent.

In an industry of relentless mergers and acquisitions, pair is unique from the starting gate: they are still privately-owned even after more than a decade of extraordinary growth. This allows for an environment of truly supportive staff as well as management. CEO Kevin Martin is perhaps the single most accessible executive I've ever met. Either he truly enjoys spending his time in the message boards, email, or phone with his customers, or he truly realizes how brilliant such a strategy is. My guess is both: he, and the entire staff at Pair, are among the most customer-driven I've seen in more than 15 years in technology. That doesn't mean every request from every customer gets honored; that'd be impracticle. But it does mean serious consideration, and an ALWAYS open ear. Pair listens to their customers--intently and constantly.

I've been with Pair since their second month of operation. They started out with a single T-1 line a couple systems and a $10,000 family loan. Today they are the largest privately owned web hosting company in the world, and consistently profitable. Their services are almost unmatched in terms of features and value, and their services are very scalable. As my sites have grown (or in some cases gotten smaller), their service has been accomodating in both directions. On the fly as system demands dictate, or upon request.

What REALLY sets Pair apart is how intricately well balanced their features and value are with security, reliability, and consistent network and system performance. Don't be lulled by the marketing of other hosting providers--pair is well intentioned, well managed and consistent in their promises. Other vendors habitually over-promise and under-deliver, or offer features that on the surface sound fantastic but fail to sufficiently serve and protect behind the scenes. The result with those vendors is relentless frustration, hours upon hours of customer service calls, unpredictable security, and bottleneck performance that affects EVERYONE on a system, much less a broader network.

With Pair you know what you're getting, and you can always rest assured that it will be delivered in the best possible way. And if you ever have your doubts? Just email them. They are surprisingly and consistently transparent with their operations and performance metrics, and incredibly open-minded.

It is worth checking out and kicking the tires for a month. That was my plan, and here I am 11 or so years later still using their services. I've been with Pair more than twice as long as I've ever been with any other IT service vendor.

I've hosted with pair.com since they first came on the scene in '96, and I've never seen such an insane commitment to service. I don't think I've ever had a site down in 10 years without weeks or even months of prior notice (they moved their servers once in all that time, and it was about an hour's worth of downtime). Their connectivity is hugely redundant, their facilities bulletproof, their ability to scale for large events is amazing, and their list of available apps is perfect.

There are only two real downsides to pair.com. One, they're definitely pricey, which only recalls the old saying 'you get what you pay for.' Two, there's no question they can be a shade on the slowish side when it comes to the webhost response time to a browser. My clients far prefer slightly slower and steady to the long-term outages you'll find elsewhere, and if those two mild downers haven't put you off, you'll love pair.

pair networks in my opinion is the best web hosting company out there.
other competitors may provide more disk space at more affordable prices,
but when it comes to downtime and support pair is a winner:

they provide telephone support

their servers run on unix (much more stable than any windows server)

network downtime is very low

urgent issues are handled in a very timely manner.

support requests, depending on the complexity of the problem, are handled
on average within an hour

they have a newsgroup and detailed support documentation to assist customers with support issues as well

My domain, Kaufman.net, has been hosted on Pair's servers for nearly a decade. During this entire time, I've never noticed any down-time or service outages of any kind. The great thing about their service is their support for third-party resellers of their service.

While you can order service directly from Pair.com, they have an army of resellers who can provide value-added support. I use Gigawatt.com/PowerData.com and they (for a small fee) manage user accounts, email, web shares, etc.

My service plan includes the one web domain, an IMAP/POP3 email server and a MySQL database server with as many databases as I need. There are, of course, limits as to how much space can be used by web, mail and data files - but the initial limits seem to be high enough, and they can easily be bumped up for a very small fee.

From my experience with them so far I can say that I seriously doubt I will ever need to find another host. These guys have their act together and they know what they are doing. I'm so impressed with this host that I can't even find words to do my feelings justice. I just don't know how anyone could do it better than pair. I could go on and on about all the things I'm impressed with but I'm sure most of you already know how good they are. If you haven't seen them and you need to find another host (or a new host) you owe it to yourself to check them out.