Looking for a new hosting company...

[SpikeTheLobster]

Ah, well... it happens to us all at some point, I guess. I have over 40 domains hosted with iPage at the moment but have discovered that their database hosting strategy is completely unsuitable for my needs.

 

I have a Drupal site in development and the queries are clocking anything up to 2000ms each at certain times of the day - given that Drupal can run over 100 queries per page (much like any CMS), that's unacceptable, of course. Especially when you consider it's currently in development, so there are only 3 users. Scale that up to 30, 300 or 3,000 and you can imagine the nightmare.

 

iPage use the standard load-balanced cloud approach, which is normally fine for small sites, but they have NO possibility of switching a high-impact site to any other setup. This means that my site's going to suck for response times.

 

Of course, their response is "run it on a virtual machine through our sister company...". To which I have just replied "No thanks. I'll find a decent host who won't try to screw me for 10 times the cost because they suck."

 

So I'm looking for a decent host who has a better approach than "one size fits all" and caters to small businesses' needs.

 

Any suggestions?

[Nathan]

What's your budget?

 

I've had a VPS through Godaddy for years now. They have incredible customer service and I get anything answered within just a couple of minutes of hopping online chat with one of their techs.

[Shole]

GoDaddy is good and HostGator I think has some decent plans that would suite your needs

[Nathan]

The only thing with HostGator, at least with VPS, is that I looked at them and they were almost 40% more than my current server for the same stats.

 

With Godaddy too each month I get a monthly statement about my server with a 25% off coupon code. So each month after I receive that I login and pay my server bill with the 25% off code

[DarkGizmo]

Have you checked Hawkhost? They have really good reliable shared hosting and I've been happy with them so far. I've used MANY hosting providers in the past with nothing but headaches (i'm looking at you Godaddy & hostgator >_<) And Hawkhost has been a dream with their experience so far. If there's a problem they have it fixed in a timely manner. I'm convinced they have people sitting at their computers just waiting for something to break so they fix it right away It's fantastic service and if you can get by with a shared hosting account I highly recommend it. Not sure if they are offering VPS hosting anymore but depending on your budget you may be able to work out a deal with them.

[bryce12]

Well my vote goes with hostgator but as Nathan has already said it is not the cheapest service around. I have been using their services for last few years and I am pretty happy with their service. You can also check the following resource to compare different VPS services:

 

http://www.bestvpsproviders.com/

[ChuckTesta]

I use hivelocity and am quite happy with them.

 

Let me know if interested, I'll send you an affiliate link.

[SpikeTheLobster]

I've heard horror stories about HostGator, to be honest, and I have no clue how much GoDaddy cost (and I'm wary since their whole "We support SOPA" mess).

 

I don't actually need top-end VPS services. I need a provider who has decent database response times, preferably through a fewer-people-per-server option that doesn't cost $50 a month for a whole pile of useless other crap I don't need.

 

To be honest, from the research I've done so far, I'm disgusted by the jacked-up prices, terrible limitations (5gb max? Hello? That'll fill up in a couple of weeks...) and useless junk being offered JUST to have a VPS, when I don't need one.

 

ll I want is decent database response times. Is that really too much to ask?

 

Incidentally, to the folks who say "I'm happy with xyz hosting" - thanks, but it's no help without knowing what kind of thing you have running and the load you put on the servers. I'm perfectly happy with iPage for basic (low-traffic, low-load) stuff but this is different.

[Nathan]

Specs on my VPS: Premium Package: http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/virtual-dedicated-servers.aspx?ci=9013

OS: Linux CentOS

• RAM: 4 GB

• Storage: 60 GB

• Bandwidth: 2,000 GB/mo

 

My server uses about 1500 GB/month between all my sites, so I would say it get some pretty good loads on it.

 

Between all my sites, it is serving approx 1.5 Million pageviews per month.

[SpikeTheLobster]

That's nice to know, Nathan... how heavy are you on the DB side? I mean, are you just using the web server side heavily or do you have SQL-intensive apps running (like Drupal and co.)?

 

I can't seem to get any stats from anyone at the companies I'm asking: they all talk bandwidth and space - neither of which I give a nutless monkey about unless the DB server's up to scratch!

[Nathan]

Well all my sites are Wordpress and IP.Board, so they all store and retrieve data from the DB to do anything really.

[SpikeTheLobster]

Well all my sites are Wordpress and IP.Board, so they all store and retrieve data from the DB to do anything really.

 

Very light usage, by comparison. I'm running about 25 blogs off the same service as the Drupal setup and they're all fine (though occasionally burp and seize up). Darn.

[Thrill]

Recently moved to Hostgator to host a couple of low traffic, newly started websites. Fantastic customer service (live chat, email & phone) and decent prices. I've always seemed to go for the smaller companies in the past, but obviously with the larger companies their support is much more effective. You may have to wait a couple of hours via Email Support using Hostgator, but they do reply with great specific answers and it's usually fixed within a couple of Emails.

[MustangV10]

Generally, I wouldn't recommend going with a big company such as HostGator, FatCow, etc. The reason being is that you won't get dedicated, 1 to 1 support like you will with a lot of smaller companies. Normally they're unreasonable and won't help with the majority of requests. For example, if you ask to have a certain PHP value adjusted even very slightly, they'll just come back and say no.

[dojo]

I wouldn't use anyting that doesn't have cpanel and Godaddy's hosting is a nightmare. it takes me way more time to do ANYTHING there than it would do on cpanel based hosting. Really really hate them. You can try a small reseller account at first and see what's causing your high loads. I wouldn't pay for a dedicated unless I really had a huge traffic (and ad revenue). A reseller plan with $25/month can take you a long time to 'fill'

[SpikeTheLobster]

Generally, I wouldn't recommend going with a big company such as HostGator, FatCow, etc. The reason being is that you won't get dedicated, 1 to 1 support like you will with a lot of smaller companies. Normally they're unreasonable and won't help with the majority of requests. For example, if you ask to have a certain PHP value adjusted even very slightly, they'll just come back and say no.

 

Never had that problem, since I'm always quite blunt about being willing to move to another provider if they don't do what I want (assuming it's reasonable, of course). Although iPage's shared server response times suck totally for Drupal (my dev guy's doing everything offline at the moment), their tech support is extremely fast and efficient. I asked for a php value change on 1st January this year and it was done within the hour, despite it being the middle of the night over there. I was pretty impressed by that.

[Microsuck]

Never had a problem with 1&1!

[mrnothersan]

I have used HawkHost for shared hosting and they have been brilliant. I'd highly recommend you give them a try. They also offer Reseller and VPS hosting, although can't comment on those two, as not used HawkHost for that.

[MustangV10]

Never had that problem, since I'm always quite blunt about being willing to move to another provider if they don't do what I want (assuming it's reasonable, of course). Although iPage's shared server response times suck totally for Drupal (my dev guy's doing everything offline at the moment), their tech support is extremely fast and efficient. I asked for a php value change on 1st January this year and it was done within the hour, despite it being the middle of the night over there. I was pretty impressed by that.

 

Wow, I'm surprised about that. I would of thought that iPage would of had a php.ini settings editor in cPanel - a lot of large hosting companies do these days.

[SpikeTheLobster]

Wow, I'm surprised about that. I would of thought that iPage would of had a php.ini settings editor in cPanel - a lot of large hosting companies do these days.

 

They probably do - I didn't look for one.

[MustangV10]

They probably do - I didn't look for one.

 

Alright, might be worth taking a look, could save you a lot of time in the future if they do.

[DevilKid]

I've been doing some research and I do think that Hostgator is quite good and I also found out about StableHost. They are quite good as well, and their plans are cheaper than HG's. I'll suggest you try them out. They have different servers which have quite good speed.

[SpikeTheLobster]

I've been doing some research and I do think that Hostgator is quite good and I also found out about StableHost. They are quite good as well, and their plans are cheaper than HG's. I'll suggest you try them out. They have different servers which have quite good speed.

 

I contacted both of them when I was looking around for a host. Neither of them could tell me anything useful about their DB servers. Hostgator was, if I remember correctly, the one who - when I asked how fast their database servers are - said "lightning fast". That put me off them instantly.

[ChuckTesta]

LOL @ Lightning fast! That's pretty quick!

 

I've been using Hivelocity for a while now and am very pleased with it. I've not had one down time yet! I've been with them about 9 months and am very pleased.

[Collin1000]

I'm not really a fan of HostGator because they oversell their services and can't really provide what they promise. Unlimited isn't physically possible.

 

 

If you need good database services - look into mediatemple. mediatemple.net -they are great.