By Korchkidu on

Hi,

we are currently on a shared host and we want to switch to a VPS. We do not want to bother with installing, configuring, optimizing and maintaining the LAMP stack so we want a FULLY managed VPS (I mean really FULLY managed with LAMP patches).

Which one is good?

Thanks for any recommandations.

Comments

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

I think you can use a well-optimized hosting from Hostgator for your drupal site. And they will help updating LAMP patches. In terms of optimizing your Drupal application, it will be your own tasks, there is no web host including this service as free, you can pay additional money to get a better support, which is usually very expensive.

I have my core business site on Hostgator. I haven't done any optimization, the default configuration looks a quite good fit to my Drupal site.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

Another option is JaguarPC, they have pretty impressive VPS deals for the money (512MB @ ~20/mo). Tech support is only by tickets, and live chat is only for sale/pre sale during business hours.

I am considering them, but am open others.

Anyone with experience with A2Hosting, specifically their enhanced 512 fully managed VPS service? What's their support like?

mkmagu’s picture

mkmagu commented

I can't reccomend JaugarPC they maybe mananged but you will wait days for a response. I have my sites on Linode it's not managed but at least they respond to support tickets quickly. You could go with Linode then hire someone to set up the server for you. I have shared hosting at A2hosting, support is ok can't really speak of the VPS hosting.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Thanks for your answers. Indeed, fully managed hosts are quite expensive... We are still investigating new options...

Best regards.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

I am currently giving JaguarPC a go with their VPS plan. So far its been a little rocky with tech support taking several hours, they say they will fix it soon but we'll see. Will update.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Still testing and investigating what would be the best solution. Managed solution adds a lot of constraints. It is hard to have ssh access. I believe thus it is impossible to use Drush on "classival" managed VPS too.

We also found getpantheon.com. Still waiting to have a beta-test invitation to see how it works. Also, we did not find any pricing on their site... I found however this on rackspace.com:
http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/tools/applications/pantheon-mercury-on-de...
"Mercury hosting services start at $50 a month for a dedicated virtual server with 512MB of ram. The Mercury software is open source and free."

For us, I believe the ultimate solution would be something like a VPS with SSh access and Drush:

--- Managed stack ---
Linux
Apache
MySQL
PHP
Mercury
---- Unmanaged stack ---
Drupal custom and contributed modules
---------------------------------

Any suggestion is welcome.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

JPC has been pretty so far, after the initial and lengthy issues, it seems to running fine. Haven't been doing enough with the site to confirm whether it's been up 100% or not, will report back. I think for the money at least even despite the slow tech service, JPC is not a bad deal. I'd say a beginner/first VPS option.

Once I get a handle on server management I will look into a comparable Linode package - unmanaged.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Do they provide Drupal specific features (drush, mercury, etc)?

Best regards.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

Sorry, I wouldn't be able to answer that. JPC does have live chat (business hours - M-F) if that helps. When I was shopping for hosting - ram, storage, bandwidth, root access, fully managed, Drupal support/friendly.

steve hanson’s picture

steve hanson commented

And so do a lot of other VPS providers --- drush and ssh isn't rocket science.
http://cruiskeenconsulting.com/node/211

Steve Hanson
Publisher Eye On Dunn County
https://eyeondunn.com

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

Perhaps, but pricing and reputation matters. JPC supports SSH, not sure about Drush.

steve hanson’s picture

steve hanson commented

There's no particular reason to "support" drush in the current versions. We do install it on our VPS systems as a convenience for people, but you don't have to have drush on the server to use it --- you can have it on your own local system.

Steve Hanson
Publisher Eye On Dunn County
https://eyeondunn.com

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Hi,

so here are the current state of my research of a FULLY managed VPS (after browsing here and there and chating with support teams when needed). I just note those that are really interesting according to my opinion. I tend to avoid "classical" VPS hosting solutions and focus on those who are trying to offer something optimized for drupal.

Webenabled, Linode

Seems to be really great but do not offer managed VPS. You have to do it all by yourself.

getpantheon.com

Well, it seems to be the ultimate solution for drupal development. All the workflow is directly managed by them so it should provide a tremendous increase of productivity. They seem to integrate VCS, drush and deployment tools.

However, they are still in beta and are not accepting new testers for the moment... There is not price plans too. Hard to start testing something without knowing if it is 50$/month or 500$/month...

DrupalConcept

Seems quite drupal oriented too. They managed their VPS server with mercury. DEV dedicated hosting for 1 euro/day is possible.

Pricing plans start at 41$/month

However, they seem really new (knowledge base is empty) so hard to tell if they are reliable or not.

omega8.cc

Provide "Drupal on steriods". Seems to handle drush too. Their offer is quite complicated. I am not sure why I should install Aegir on one single drupal site though...

However, their overall website does not invite me to host my websites with them...

GetCadre.com

They provide drupal oriented managed VPS servers with a Performance Pack Add-on (mercury like optimization).
Their sales support is very responsive and great.

Site5

Offers managed VPS with drush and SSH access.
They do not offer optimization similar as mercury. However, depending on the size of your site, this could be somehow overkill.
Their support is great, extremely responsive.

At this point, I still have to investigate when I have time to. I will also have to make a decision between 3 of them and test to see how they REALLY works.

Any experience, suggestions, comments is welcome.

Best regards.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

Although I can't speak personally about Site5, from the reviews I've come accross here and on the web, it is quite a mixed bag. Be advised most of the reviews dealt with shared hosting.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Hi,

well, most of the bad reviews are quite old now I believe. Recent ones seem to be ok. Anyone having bad experience with them here?

Best regards.

yngens’s picture

yngens commented

Drupion.com

Drupion.com is a Drupal-specific hosting company, that offers managed shared, VPS and Dedicated Server hosting plans with Varnish, Apache Solr, APC, Drush, GIT.

berenddeboer’s picture

berenddeboer commented

Hi Korchkidu, what is your reason from wanting your own VPS? Drupal shared hosting, if done properly, can give you all of the advantages you mentioned.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Hi,

well, we must run cron on a daily basis (backups and indexing mainly) and it systematically exceeds scripts execution limits (15sec)...

Best regards.

berenddeboer’s picture

berenddeboer commented

In that case, why not compromise a bit and use the very flexible shared hosting environment at https://www.xplainhosting.com/?

We work with our clients to find the proper balance. cronjobs are fully supported (submit them to support to enable them), and script execution limits can be negotiated. Obviously it's a shared environment so a site dominating all resources would not work, unless they pay a lot of money to expand the resource pool.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Hi,

thanks a lot for the suggestion. They seem great! I will try to test them too and see how they do. I will keep you informed.

However, their pricing plan is not that clear. Is it auto-adapting depending on your usage? Also, we do not have any information about the hardware and limitations. I am not sure if there is any free trials available... Finally, I tried to chat with them but nobody seems to be there... Wait and see;)

Best regards.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Hi,

so it seems you can easily adapt your hosting plan on a monthly basis to take the cheapest one. They should also warn you if you need to.

Support is quite fast as I received a really detailed answer.

Finally, a great point: they DO offer a free trial. This is a great advantage as testing VPS (even paying one month) can prove to be quite expensive at the end. For example, average is something around 50$/month (included set up fees).

They also offer a set of tools dedicated to drupal development. I will test them and I will let you know.

Best regards.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

Several hosting companies offer a money back guarantee. I believe HostGator is 45 days and JaguarPC is 30 days. At least in the case of HostGator, you pay upfront, but you can cancel anytime. You are charged monthly.

Does a free trial mean no upfront fees? So setup and transfer is free?

mkmagu’s picture

mkmagu commented

I found this out the hard way.

Stomper’s picture

Stomper commented

Please explain, I'd like to know.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Free trial means that you do not pay anything upfront. It is different from the refund I believe. At least, this is how I understand this...;)

Best regards.

mikeejt’s picture

mikeejt commented

I know you're asking for a fully managed solution, but those are a bit expensive, unless you've budgeted for it.

I recommend MediaTemple's (dv) as a solution:

http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/dv/support.php

You'll notice that they provide a semi-managed solution, meaning they'll make sure to keep the os and and any security updates current, basic server admin, etc. And when you sign up most everything you need will be pre-installed (*note: Plesk is installed and not cPanel. If you want cPanel you'll have to install yourself).

I previously had their (gs) hosting (grid-service shared hosting) and it's horrible, to say the least, for Drupal. They claim 99mb php memory limit, but it's 41mb from the extensive tests I've done. Because it was highly recommend by our adviser, especially because of their support, instead of moving to another hosting company, we upgraded immediately to (dv) at $50/month. It's not the cheapest on the market, but you get what you pay for. They aren't the best customer support I've dealt with (best goes to HostGator), but they're up there. The quality of their tools and their hw performance has been good as well.

Compared to the (gs) hosting, it's like night and day. For example, w/ their (gs) hosting I couldn't even install the Devel module w/out running into issues (seriously!!!). But the (dv) hosting, because it's a dedicated virtual and you have no limits (based on your plan) you get good performance.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

For 50$/month, site5, getcadre.com, drupalconcept.com and others can provide you with much more drupal oriented features I believe. However, I did not have time to test them thoroughly so wait and see.

Best regards.

Korchkidu’s picture

Korchkidu commented

Hi,

here are some infos I gathered during the last few days about some hosting dedicated to Drupal. If you have any info, experience or if you own a hosting company offering special Drupal feature yourself, you are free to participate...;-D

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AuWJrdBX3oltdDRIaTRSUGhjUXNUdEN...

I do not guarantee any information and I could have missed a lot of things during my trip^^.

Thanks for your understanding.

Best regards.

missWilder’s picture

missWilder commented

Thank you for sharing your spreadsheet!

JGO’s picture

JGO commented

Hi,

I don't know which area you live in, but if you prefer Europe hosting you can most definitely test out our VPS'es for drupal (Starrting at €14.95/month unmanaged) We develop with Drupal ourselves, so we know quite good how it works and can give good support. I would suggest you take the optional "Advanced Support" if you want a completely managed VPS.

More info here: http://www.hosted-power.com/en/vps
And here: http://www.hosted-power.com/en/drupal

Anyway best to contact sales for specific requirements so we can help you choose the best solution.

Did I mention you can test out the VPS for 2 weeks to see if it fits your performance and reliability requirements ? :)