Web Hosting Discussion Thread
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 - 4:48pm
Web hosting discussion.... go!
To start off, I've been on Dreamhost for a while. It's actually been decently good to me, but it has a reputation for being slow with web apps like Zen Cart, and I'm bumping my head against that right now.
So, I'm now shopping for another shared web hosting service. I've got a list of possibilities, but I'd like to hear any positive/negative testimonials folks here might have with their hosts.
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: Blast Processing - www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB | PSN: Legion_SB
"Damn, your comedic timing is awesome." -- Spaz, *Legion* Fan #1437
I'm currently using A Small Orange for my needs, no wierd CPU limits (I'm looking at 1and1 here) and support is decent, they even have a decent user community/forum.
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
I've had nothing but good experiences with my current host, Bluehost. When I've had a support question (via email) I've received an actual answer from an actual human (usually within an hour, and never longer than 4), and not a pre-scripted BS answer. My site's been down maybe twice, for less than an hour, in two years, which seems pretty skippy to me. Plus, whenever they upgrade their package deals (e.g., more stuff for the same price), if I send them an email, they'll update me to the latest & greatest space/bandwith allowance, without any extra charge. Wheee!
8-bit quizzes: http://www.pucemoose.com/g-quizindex.htm
Xbox Live: aFifthofGin aFifthofGin + Frank Sinatra's Hotdog Hut
BlueHost is on my radar. What I've seen is a long track record of good reviews and a troubling flurry of very recent negative reviews, a lot of "they used to be great but they're not keeping up with capacity" type of chatter.
It's always hard to separate the legitimate moans from the people that freak out the instant something falls below 100% uptime, or someone takes more than 5 minutes to respond to their email, etc.
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: Blast Processing - www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB | PSN: Legion_SB
"Damn, your comedic timing is awesome." -- Spaz, *Legion* Fan #1437
Anyone ever try VPS hosting? You get what basically becomes your own box with root access, and the package is scalable if need be. I've not tried the above company, but am considering it.
I generated a virtual world in the toilet bowl this morning.
-- Podunk on the PS3's mystical, magical abilities
I have a small site on Dreamhost, and I don't think much of them. They're okay for basic file transfers and picture hosting, but I would never try to do anything serious with them. They're just too overburdened. About the best transfer I can pull from them is 600kish/sec, which as far as I'm concerned is a damning indictment of their infrastructure quality. Even ssh access is a little sluggish; you can tell those machines carry a hell of a load routinely.
I had very good luck with a Servermatrix machine; it was $130/mo, and was on absolutely kickass bandwidth. If you have enough to afford a dedicated server like that, you'll be extremely pleased at the result. The project I had in mind ended up not happening, so I eventually let it go, but damn it was impressive. Only needed support a couple of times, but they were prompt and very helpful.
That VPSLink host looks very promising; I haven't worked with OpenVZ, but they make it sound pretty good. It looks like the $40/mo option is a very solid combo of memory, disk space, and bandwidth.
Jakeleg mentioned Slicehost as being good; they're another VPS service.
For actual web hosts, like Dreamhost, I haven't a clue... except to say that Dreamhost is for lightweights only.
My personal stuff is on DreamHost. It is cheap, and I don't ask much of it.
Our company stuff is at CISP/YoColo here in Toledo. Not cheap, but they are very good at what they do. I admittedly don't know anyone using their "Virtual Servers" though. We're all co-lo.
They host some large financial institution servers there. Plus, they have biometric scanners and a man trap. How cool is that?
For my personal hosting, I also use Dreamhost. It's pretty nice for futzing around.
But if you want a fully scalable solution, there's always Amazon S3+EC2.