.NET hosting for demo projects

Question

I am a Java programmer looking to learn .NET, particularly C# and F#, to improve my employability. Toward this goal I am creating a website which will have a few demo projects. My hope is to learn C#/F# and the .NET framework by creating this website and then have a finished product to self-advertise and to show potential employers.

What I need is a good host.

My priorities are cost, stability, and capability. I might be willing to pay up to around $10/mo, but I don't really want to pay more than $5/mo. Stability and performance have to be reasonable. I want access to all the commonly-used .NET tools (SQLServer, LINQ, C#, F#, VB, MVC, any other stuff I might reasonably need that I don't know about yet). Basically I don't really know what I want besides room for my projects to grow as my expertise grows.

EDIT: Some have expressed concern that I shouldn't pay for time before my project is ready-to go. However, my hope is to get it up in less than a month, so I'm not too worried about paying for time before that.

Answer 1

What time frame do you have? I would strongly suggest not purchasing hosting until you have your project ready to deploy, because you may waste a month or two of hosting money.

That said, I highly recommend DiscountASP. They stay on top of the MS stack really hard. I had ASP.NET MVC installed the day it was released, for example, and they have a lot of experience tweaking the environment to match your needs.

EDIT: To more clearly answer your question, ASP.NET, MVC, Linq, SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (choice), SQL Server Express, etc. are preinstalled. I know someone who runs F# code there as well, but I cannot say whether or not he requested it. I do know its not costing him extra.

Answer 2

I'm also just learning, and I'm using reliablesite.net for my asp.net projects. They have a coupon section that is real easy to overlook, will give you 80% off your first bill - so I signed up for a quarterly cost of around $30, just paying $6 for my first 3 months. Take a look, I think they may right up your alley.

As for discountasp.net, yeah, they are good, but the surcharge for MSSQL alone puts the cost around $20 a month to start, and then you are restricted to quarterly or annually bills - no monthly. Basically, $60 up front.

Edit: One of the major features that got me to sign on to this host, even after looking at tons of others, was the dedicated application pools. Wasn't something I saw everyone offering.