By foredoc on

Hi,

I am about to build a SNS site, and may choose one of the following:

GreenGeeks 512MB VPS
HostGator Level2 VPS

And I am a little bit lost here. Any suggestions on how to choose between those two will be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

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Comments

foredoc’s picture

foredoc commented

some details:

GreanGeeks VPS 512MB HostGator VPS Level 2
CPU Equal Share CPU 0.84 GHZ
Memory 512 MB 576 MB
Dist Space 25 GB 22 GB
Bandwidth 500 GB 375 GB
Dedicated IP 2 2
cPanel Support Yes(additional $10/m) No
Price $29.95/m $29.95/m


Seems to me that GreenGeeks has less memory but more disk space and bandwidth, and it also support cPanel ( additional $10/m will be charged for the cPanel license if you want to add cPanel to VPS )

I am still not sure which one to choose, since I do not know:

1) How to compare the "Equal Share CPU" with 0.84 GHZ
2) Which is more important for a SNS site, memory or disk space/bandwidth
3) How important is the support for cPanel
4) Which of the above two companies provide better VPS service.

Thanks.

DaveSmall’s picture

DaveSmall commented

One more thing about Hostgator VPS level2 is that it's unmanged. Managed service is offered starting from VPS Level 3, but the good thing with hostgator is that their Plesk is free, and Greengeeks will charge $10/month for cPanel or Plesk. So from price perspective, what you really need to compare with are GreenGeeks VPS 512MB and HostGator VPS Level 3.

wudang2’s picture

wudang2 commented

I think you should compare GreenGeeks VPS 512MB to HostGator VPS Level 3. Why? Because you get a control panel - Plesk (free for 1 year ). So the total cost would be 39.95$ (44.95$ starting the second year) with a control panel (similar to the other one).

You should compare the following fully-managed plans (considering you want a control panel):

GreenGeeks VPS 512MB HostGator VPS Level 3
CPU Equal Share CPU 1.13 GHZ
Memory 512 MB 768 MB
Disk Space 25 GB 30 GB
Bandwidth 500 GB 500 GB
Dedicated IP 2 2
Control Panel cPanel Plesk
Price $39.95/m $39.95/m (2nd year 44.95)

Also note:

  • CPU:  it doesn't matter the frequency (Ghz) but also the type of the processor. So even is the Hostgator's is more detailed you cannot say much thing about performance. It might be a pentium 4 processor running at 1.13 GHZ or a intel xeon 1.13 GHZ. Same processor speed but very different performance. You need to look more into detail here.
  • Memory: same thing like the CPU, is specified the amount of the memory but not it's speed. Usually there is not a big performance difference.
  • Disk Space: 10 GB should be enough for a standard website. A webpage is usually around 300kb in size. Considering you will have a mail service running, maybe some backups (for development only, backups should be kept on a different system for your peace of mind - have a look at Amazon's S3 service).
  • Bandwidth: Not to worry about it. If your average page size is 0.3MB and a GB has 1024MB, 500GB should be enough. That is 1.7 million pages per month. If your requirements are greater you can afford a better plan so upgrade it! If your average page size is less than that you imagine what happens:).
  • IP: not much to say, a dedicated IP is very good from a SEO point of view.
  • Control Panel: doesn't matter it's name, but if it satisfies your needs. Price is an important factor. Don't overlook the impact on systems performance (e.g. a control panel might use 100 MB of Ram without even having a website running). More RAM, less trouble.
  • Price: it all comes to price. The principle is simple: you get what you pay for. If it is too good to be true that it is!
I was in the same position a couple of months  ago. What I have learnt? Facts!  No matter what they say test it and do your research beforehand. It will pay off.  Do a plan an test the best(in your opinion) 2 or 3 webspaces. For  example you can test hostgator VPS 3 (fully managed) for 1 month for 31.96$ (as 27.05.2011). As it is a pay as you go plan (no commitment for more than 1 month) you can cancel it any time. Speed is very important as Mr Google says:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html. If your site is faster than your competitor, you ranked better in one of the over 200 factors that Google takes into count, you have only 199 left to go :) .
For my hosting needs I have short-listed only the following top hosting companies : hostmonster.com, bluehost.com, hostgator.com, ipage.com. I ended up choosing hostgator because of : flexibility (9 VPS level, easy upgrade if needed - hope it will), largest hosting provider (+5 million domains), reviews (read a lot reviews) and because I can at any time change my hosting provider since I am not tied for a full year with them. I expect in the future to test Amazon's  Elastic Compute Cloud service which looks promising I must say.
To answer you questions in short:
  1. Cannot be compared whatsoever
  2. All are important, you should have plenty of each otherwise: not sufficient RAM - slow website, no sufficient HDD space - no space for pages, no bandwidth - hosting provider will cut you off (no visitors above that limit)
  3. A control panel makes your life easier - imagine browsing with only with: a) keyboard (no control panel) or b) keyboard and a mouse (control panel)
  4. I never heard about Green Geeks, Hostgator I am currently using and recommending
Hope it helps
Tip: I used hostingdisco to get a further $9 off when I registered for Hostgator VPS Level 3.
seanray’s picture

seanray commented

For "flexibility (9 VPS level, easy upgrade if needed - hope it will), ". For each level of HostGator VPS, what Hostgator do is to cancel the previous one and create a new one for you. If you want to upgrade your VPS, then they will do the migration for you, and no downtime you will feel. But if you plan to download VPS, then, you have to do all the migration by yourself.