Your Thoughts About Hosting Providers...

Andrewkar

Andrewkar

...
BuSo Pro
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Nov 6, 2014
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Because our business heavily depends on hosting providers (at least for majority of us) I thought it would be beneficial to make a little rating here on BuSo. I got this idea because I'm furious right now with Godaddy. One of my clients got sites hosted with them and I can't finish work because they experiencing some problems (again...). It's shared hosting plan but still, it's too many problems in short period of time (I can't even contact support because they are "overloaded").

I have a few shared accounts with different companies including Hostgator. Honestly, I haven't had the slightest glitch while using Hostgator (and I have few WP sites there that are really bloated...). Other hosts are less known but they seem to be up to the expectations also. Some of them Hostmastered and Crissic. I'm not saying Godaddy is crap but, my experience is not very good so far.

So, if you care share your experience with hosting providers. It could be shared, dedicated or VPS, Linux or Win based (or any other platform).

If there was a single provider that you had to use, who would that be?

Form me it probably is Bluehost.
And then:
Hostgator + (both VPS and shared)
Solidseovps (VPS, dedicated)
Hostmastered
Crissic
Blastport

All of them are good to go in my experience.
 
I've used Godaddy in the past and was not happy with their speed and transfer rates. With that said, I got a refund from them and moved over to Host Gator for some smaller sites.

Host gator is good for smaller sites, but speed has always been an issue with them. I have not used any of the others you have mentioned, but I can chime in on some that I use now.

for VPS:
Knownhost SSD: very fast and great support. Anytime I have an issue, they have an answer for me within a couple mins. Cost is pretty high, but great support and never had downtime thus far (1 yr since signup)

Shared Storage:
Geek Storage: I just moved a client over to this from host gator. We have seen Great speed improvements using a CMSMS site. I believe they have SSD Shared hosting and plans start from $2.99 a month. Just moved over to them, SO i cannot report on stability or up-time yet. But so far so good, we're very pleased.

ASO (a small orange): I have a site on ASO and have experienced some issues with them, and from what I understand from an Email they sent out, they were be targeted for a DDOS attack. Other than that, speeds are good and im happy.

Stablehost: I've used stablehost for some PBN sites and some other client sites and im happy with them! Good price and no downtime thus far.

Crocweb: I have a local lead site on this and has been performing well for me. Cheap and reliable. Nothing out of the ordinary and im pleased with performance as well. This lead gen site runs SSL and has a CC processing on the home page. Overall performance is good.

Host Gator: I've been using this hosting for over 4 years now and its had its up's and down's. Im pulling all my client sites off of it and moving to faster SSD shared storage and a VPS. Performance is low and its good for smaller static sites.
 
Shared - hostgator or liquidweb

Vps - knownhost or unixy (joe the owner is super helpful/extremely knowledgeable, more of a small town feel support, and expansive service)

Dedi - liquidweb (I don't care much for storm on demand... Tried it when it first came out and it sucked compared to having my own dedicated hardware. Should probably give it another go at some point.

Shitty experiences with:
  • Hawkhost
  • Wiredtree
  • Media temple
  • Godaddy
  • Bluehost
  • Dream host (pretty much any of these nickel and dime hosts completely suck accept for burners)
Currently using:
  • 2 hostgator shared accounts
  • Liquidweb dedi
As always, search the webhostingtalk threads for pre purchase discount codes.
 
Great to see certain names popping up again and again with positive experiences because they'll be the ones that we [redacted] when we launch the BuSo [redacted] in the near future...
 
Oh wait, I tagged you guys because I wanted your feedback on if there were better deals than that out there, but I guess that didn't post #fail.

@MetaData @red_devil010
 
Hmmm...
I do most on shared hosting (I am cheap, especially for run-of the mill sites)

Bad experiences
Stablehost (shared)
Slow as fuck

Digital ocean (VPS)
Good dev playgorund, but as a host, simply unreliable. After some troubleshooting, they'll always advise you to upgrade to simply ridiculous specs for a simple mySQL/Apache setup.
It's a trap: You can not downgrade an existing droplet. Downgrading means transferring all your stuff by hand to a new, smaller droplet - manually.
​
Good experiences
Dreamhost
While I know they get a bad rep, I can not say a bad thing about dreamhost (shared hosting). Yes, they are not the speediest (medium tier in my experience), but I had good support and they just added python support.
As I have read the many bad things said about them - YMMV​

::emp::
 
@Kevin is your host managed? Managed VPS's usually cost more. For my knownhost vps, its fully managed w/ cpanel and 24 cpu cores, RAID10 SSD drives 30gb and 2GB ram with 3TB of bandwidth for 48$ a month (we pay yearly to get 10% off).

If you looking for a Dedicated server, I have heard good things about OVH.com. They are a huge reseller of Dedicated servers and their VPS prices are insanely low for the specs. For instance; Their top teired VPS (VPS classic 4) has the following specs for 21.99$ a month; from my understanding, these are unmanaged:
  • 4 vCores
  • 8GB Ram
  • 100GB RAID (i dont think they're SSD)
  • Up to 10,000GB Data Transfer / month
There dedicated servers have even better pricing IMO - have a look http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/hosting/
Im not affiliated with either of these 2 comanies, just sharing my experiences.

* a side note, i just bought a SSD VPS from ramnode.com yesterday for $108/year and got nginx, mariad and hhvm setup on it for an ultra fast wordpress hosting setup. Everything is cached in Memory (ram) and im very pleased with the setup for the price i paid. time to harden the OS and setup ddos protection :smile:
 
@red_devil010 Time to go into research mode :smile:

Appreciate the help, I think I can cut ~360/yr from my expenses while doubling the value of what's left of my server expenses. GG 2015.
 
Just bought another dedi at Amerinoc today... Never used them before, I'll see how it goes.
 
Great guys. That's a very nice list here. Digital Ocean yeah... this one is bad for regular sites and yes upgrades are ridiculous.
 
@emp Interesting, I'm currently in the hosting space and your feedback on Digital Ocean is completely different from what I've seen and heard. Will take note :smile:

@Andrewkar You need a VPS with Cpanel. Get something with a GB of RAM, decent bandwidth, and SSD if that makes you happy. PM me if you'd like and I'll let you buy one from my company.

Everyone else: If you're marketing, remove as much development and sysadmin from your work schedule as possible. It will only distract, remove you from the marketing focus, and cause issues later on. I have spent years trying to balance the two, only to see mishaps in both. Find a good host, good admin, and be done with it.
 
I use 1&1 for my junk sites and Heroku for my rails websites. Then hook up cloudflare for free sll and speed improvements.
 
Just started using wphostingspot (not an affiliate link) and have been blown away by their support. Open 24 hours these guys responded to me at 9 pm and even offer to help sort out some coding issues. If your not that technical these guys are amazing.
 
Wow, I am completely blown away that Linode was not listed here.....

For shared or client/junk sites and random projects and stuff, I solely use Hostgator 110%.

For important stuff and stuff that matters, I only use Linode. Sometimes I use Digital Ocean as a backup to my Linodes, but nothing beats them for what I need.

If I didn't need 100% control and needed to host something important, it would be LiquidWeb as those guys are top notch and I have used them a lot for ecom back in the day.
 
Knownhost

I've tried ~20 different providers. Nothing has remotely touched the Knownhost VPS's. Their support is insanely fast and basically willing to do anything you ask them to do. When they say "managed" they mean it.
 
Hostigation has been great thus far. If I ever have any issues, the owner himself steps in at times to assist nearly within an hour most times.
 
Amerinoc is working out well, very pleased so far. I'm liking the FreeBSD/direct admin setups they primarily run... Lightweight and fast.

Just got two dedi's and a load balancer at unixy going last week. These guys know what the hell they're doing that's for sure... Blowing liquidweb techs out of the water on optimization/system tweaks.

I see some mentions of digital ocean in the thread... Those of you who like DO/linode may really like Vultr. You get 3ghz cores and the panel is a little cleaner for the same price, only thing you might miss is onboard DNS management.
 
Ryuzaki said:
Knownhost

I've tried ~20 different providers. Nothing has remotely touched the Knownhost VPS's. Their support is insanely fast and basically willing to do anything you ask them to do. When they say "managed" they mean it.
Click to expand...
Hostgator just shut down my money domain for cpu over usaage. I was on a shared plan (yea, i know. learning has occured) and they sucked at taking my money for an upgrade to a dedi. I came here to review what the power players were using and gave Knownhost a call based on your post, Ryuzaki. Their customer support was ridiculously good and so far I am blown away (yea, just 24 hours later). Thanks gents (and ladies if applicable).Your expertise and mentorship is really helping us noobs out
 
I've used several, some I've had more expereince with:

- Squidix
- Midphase

Both are pretty good, squidix is quick, cheap, inexpensive. Midphase is completely unlimited (but watch those CPU spikes). With squidix I've see about 100ms load times on a shared hosting using buso. Some other applications run pretty poorly like piwik and mautic tracking. Both I have SSH access and have a disturbing amount of control and access on what I can...

Privesc in MUCH easier on linux hosts. So if you care about security, don't go with shared. :smile:
 
I've been with Hostgator for around 6 years without any issues.

Was with Dreamhost before them and they were average. Frequent downtime.
 
I'm using Cloudways which is a managed vps solution. You can pick from Digital Ocean, Vultr, Google and Amazon. I'm on an $18/mo Vultr plan. 24/7 chat support, the quality of that support varies depending on who answers. English is a little rough sometimes. Overall not blown away but, it's okay for what I'm doing.

1GB Ram
20GB Storage
2 TB Bandwidth
 
Liquidweb and it's not even close.

Granted I prob pay MORE than everyone but it's worth it. I will pay whatever it takes to reach my goals.

- They answer my calls and live chats at 4 in the morning, instantly. I can talk to someone on holidays on top of that. They don't hide behind a damn e-mail or phone line that takes 30 min to get a human on the phone.

- Their reps never complain or give me attitude. (Even when shit's totally my fault)

- They just fucking do it. Best level support = They do things other hosts refuse or charge for. Security, performance, installs, updates. Even site errors they'll take a look and offer to help knowing they absolutely don't have to. They are passionate; it's beautiful...

- Sure, they are expensive... However, when a new coupon/promo/service price change rollls out, they don't make me cancel my entire account and create a new one to qualify. They just update my billing without giving me shit for it. Love that!

- Their uptime is legit. The other hosts that claim 99.99% are FULL of SHIT! Media Temple comes to mind. I hate them with a passion. Knowing Godaddy owns them now makes things even worse. Track your uptime, and not just what you see refreshing the site. You'l be shocked at the #s...

- I can scale my services with 1 click. If I grew to the size of FB, Liquid Web would be there waiting on me hand and foot to get shit done. They have "personal" consultants that dive deep into your shit. Not sales reps desperate to make coin as fast as possible. I've requested a review a handful of times for upgrading which means more $ for them. Most of the time, they optimize/tweak my server and say don't worry about pay more for the upgrade yet. See if this change we made improves things first. Every other host would be like, "Yeah, you're undersized, let's upgrade yada fucking yada."

- On the downside. There are a FEW bad apples that work there. I've had guys take my site/server offline for 8+ hours trying to modify things WITHOUT getting my permission first. (Or telling me it would take x hours) But that's the 2%. The 98% are great people to work with and ask permission first.

- Not much else to say. I've been with Host Gator, ASO, MT, and others. I dislike them all. The hosting world has changed. MT slowly went to shit. ASO went the same route. And so on...

- One BIG thing I've noticed when it comes to downtime... (Not LW in particular) A lot of hosts play stupid. They'll be like, "I don't see any downtime on our end." "I'm not seeing that in the logs"... TRACK your own shit so you can them out on it! Some of these hosts have all sorts of hiccups.

REGARDLESS of which host you choose.

If you're running a BUSINESS, A REAL fucking business. Don't be a cheap cunt and go with some $9/month plan or $50/month because "you're saving money". It will bite you in the ass.
 
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