Some Hosting suggestions please?

Posted by ms1 on November 6, 2007 at 10:19am

I am looking forward to move my website from local to a live server, but I am unable to decide where and on what plan?

Here are my specifications:

1. I am using a lot of modules like - Views, Panels, Image, Flashvideo, Embedded Media field, JStools, CCK. Does that mean I need a VPS.
2. I have videos, images and written content in the site. (Hence I believe that I would need a VPS). So something around 10GB space with large amount of bandwidth is desirable. With time I may expect 100-500 users online simultaneously.
3. I need FFMPEG. (and I see that it is available only on the virtual and dedicated server plans, hence my idea of starting with a shared hosting plan and later converting it to a VPS cannot materialize)
4. Also I need a solid support, because I am new and this will be my first installation/hosting. And I do not have any knowledge of FFMPEG installation, so I need help.
5. Things like C-panel are desirable.
6. Also I do not know that should I go for a managed VPS or an unmanaged one and also I do not know that should I decide for linux or windows hosting.
7. I would also like to give more weightage to those who have been in the market for long and that allow me easy upgrades to any other plan. So that someday I do not wake up to find that the hosting provider vanished with all my data and setup.

Some interesting options have been,
1. http://www.micfo.com
2. http://www.hostIcan.com
3. http://webhostingbuzz.com
4. http://ixwebhosting .com

I have been reading about Dreamhost and ANhosting in the forums, but found that the reviews are a mixed bag.

So please suggest me that what all could be a suitable option. And also if you have any discount coupons , then if possible please share it.

Please help

Regards.

Comments

I'm running over 20 sites on 1and1.com and am very happy.

Posted by seanenroute on November 6, 2007 at 12:17pm

I went through a lot of different hosting companies before settling on 1and1 (http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=6434541). The basic linux/apachie/php/mySQL package for $3.99 a month comes with 10 mySQL databases, 1 free domain name, 10 GB of hosting space, 300 GB of transfer. And that is just the basic baby package, you can go full out servers with them.

But the most important thing is that I never have any problems with them. They treat it as a business. Which is more than I can say for a lot of other hosting companies I've used for myself and my clients. Avoid anyone with a gimmick, this is your business and a small company will cause you nothing but headaches in the end.

In Uk we get only 2 dbms for about £11/month

Posted by marco88 on November 6, 2007 at 1:05pm

I use 1and1 in UK. They are fine. But surprisingly they are not so cheap here.

Note that there is a special offer currently for £5.67/month instead of £11 (still just 2 dbms).

Maybe I should move my site to US.

Cheers,
Marc.
http://www.weiersmuller.org

Sell your house quickly with http://www.Mega-Quick-Sale.co.uk

I read some negative reviews, did you encounter the same?

Posted by ms1 on November 6, 2007 at 4:43pm

Sean, thanks for your input. But I saw some reviews for www.1and1.com on http://www.webhostingtestimonials.com/hosts_name.php?id=1and1-reviews-ra....
As I see the initial reviews are fine but as time progressed things have gone a little weary (according to the reviewers), especially with their support and website running speed.

Did you encounter any similar problems? And also do they host the site as well as database on the same server?

Regards

I've been extremely happy

Posted by Chad_Dupuis on November 6, 2007 at 3:00pm

I've been extremely happy with midphase/anhosting ( http://www.midphase.com/newaff/redir.pl?a=0.437680357442336 ). I now have a number of sites with them and most of my clients are on their servers as well. I switched my main site a long time ago from ipower (and I'm switching another site soon) and have been nearly 100% satisfied.

When I needed to move one of my relatively large html-based sites to a server with mysql 5 (for my first switch to drupal) they had me moved to a new server within about 5 hours which I thought was pretty good.

I think they went through a bit of a rough patch during a large growth phase and a big relocation project, but even through that things went pretty well. I don't believe any hosting company is perfect, but they have always been responsive in both time and the quality of their answers - and the prices are pretty decent for what you would need. The uptime has also been quite good - and most of the downtime was related to fairly serious system moves and the like not day to day operational errors from my perspective anyway.

All I know is that they are better across the board than the few other companies I have tried, particularly ipower and I would be hard pressed to move from them.

Cheers,

-Chad.
Yin Yang House Media Services Group

Answers

Posted by Michelle on November 6, 2007 at 3:36pm

1) You don't necessarily need a VPS but it does help when you have a lot of modules. I have nearly 100 modules and it tends to choke my shared hosting a lot.

2) "100-500 users online simultaneously" That's probably a lot for shared hosting on a media heavy site.

3) "I need FFMPEG" Site5 installed that for me on my shared hosting.

4-6) Sounds like you'd be better off with a managed VPS unless you want to spend a lot of time learning. I'm in the same boat. I'd go for linux. You can use Drupal on Windows but you'll have more community support with linux.

7) Site5 is is nice for shared hosting. Their tech support actually has a clue. :) If you would decide to go with them, I have an affiliate link on my website. ;) I don't have a reccomendation for a VPS as I can't afford it yet.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

Thanks Michelle. Few more questions

Posted by ms1 on November 6, 2007 at 5:05pm

Hi Michelle

Thank you for catering to my queries.

1. As you mentioned that Site5 installed FFMPEG on shared hosting means, I can simply start with a shared hosting plan and test my site, and upgrade gradually once I have the traffic. So the question would be that is upgradation easier and smooth on site5?

2. Also I would like to know about the learning curve for VPS, is it prolonged or too steep/difficult. Approximately that may translate to how many hours/days ( I know this is a relative question, but still any ideas). Because I believe the cost difference for a managed VPS and an unmanaged ($35, 10GB) is quite a lot, maybe double (please correct me if I am wrong). Hence beyond my reach for now.

3. Is community support the only criteria that I should consider to opt for linux over windows or any others as well?

4. Lastly do you recommend Site5 for a VPS (but I am unable to find the plan on their site). So anything particular, I mean the pros and cons of site5 that you have experienced?

Thanks and Regards

For What it's Worth...

Posted by silverwing on November 6, 2007 at 8:52pm

Site5 announced (sorta) that it will announce VPS and dedicated servers sometime in the near future. Whether that means by the end of the year or sometime next year, it's anyone's guess.

(Of course, they've been talking about this for over a year. No idea on pricing or features.)

~silverwing

___________________________
MisguidedThoughts | tvTonight

________________________________
_{MisguidedThoughts}

Interesting...

Posted by Michelle on November 6, 2007 at 9:52pm

I wasn't aware of that. I'm looking at other hosting but I'll keep an eye on that as well.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

Thanks Michelle

Posted by ms1 on November 7, 2007 at 10:18am

For answering my issues.

I approached Site5, and I see that they are quick to get in touch. But tell me, is it too much of a hassle to change the webhost?

As for VPS, I found about the 10GB space/300 GB bandwidth managed plan with www.micfo.com is for ($35 for hosting + $8 for a Cpanel) per month. But they do not provide ffmpeg on shared hosting, hence they insisted me to start with a VPS. Other good ones for VPS that I came across were www.knownhost.com, www.servint.com and www.futurehosting.biz (the first two are a bit expensive)

But lately "toman's" suggestion that I can do with a shared hosting has made me rethink, actually I am back to square one. Since you posted that Site5 installed ffmpeg for you shared hosting, can you please share the kind of data and bandwidth that you use with that site, also what amount of videos are you hosting?

Thanks

...

Posted by Michelle on November 7, 2007 at 1:51pm

I find it a bit of a hassle to change. It's sort of like moving apartments... You need to pack everything up and move it over and make sure your mail is delivered to the right place...

Weird that they won't provide ffmpeg. It's not that big of a deal for them to install it.

I don't use a lot of bandwidth on my site. I just needed ffmpeg for Gallery 2 to make thumbnails of my videos automatically. That's on my family site which doesn't get a lot of hits.

As to whether you need a VPS, I think you're on the edge. Hosting videos can take a lot of b/w. So I think your best bet is to find a place that has shared and VPS and ffmpeg so you can grow as needed without having to change hosts.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

I could use a beta tester

Posted by HotDrupal.com on November 7, 2007 at 3:28am

Hey ms1,

I'm looking for some beta testers for some web hosting stuff. I'm not selling anything, just looking for a few people to help try things. If you're interested contact me via the contact link in my profile and we can talk some more.

Just to clarify we are talking about no charge, free hosting. I am trying to get some more experience with how Drupal impacts systems in various configurations and under different usage scenarios.

A biased suggestion

Posted by toman on November 7, 2007 at 5:41am

I host my sites at http://lillibilli.com, but that's because it's my site ;-). Honestly though, the prices are reasonable, I haven't had any problems with the tech support, and if you host a Drupal site there I'll kick 10% of what I get in to the Drupal Association. Somebody has to pay for this software. And if I vanish in the middle of the night, your data will still be there, on the servers of my upstream provider. But as to your question, I'm not sure you need a virtual server either. Except for the FFMPEG thing, your needs are not that demanding, and if they become demanding you can always buy more bandwidth. As to FFMPEG, are you sure you want to base a production system on a project that hasn't made it to 1.0 yet? All I know about it is what I've seen on their site just now, but it looks,well, new-ish. I could be wrong, it could be the swiss army knife of streaming media tools, but it's amazing what bugs users can find when you release code into the wild. Just a thought. Anyhow, does your site use the FFMPEG code as cgi? Most every hosting plan gives you cgi-bin access, though I notice that Dreamhost already has it installed, so that one less thing you would have to do there. I'm still not convinced you would need a virtual server, at least not initially. YMMV

---------------
http://lillibilli.com
Big Honkin' Servers, Low Prices, 24/7 Support

Can I do with a shared hosting?

Posted by ms1 on November 7, 2007 at 10:27am

Hi Joseph

I am just exploring. I think you are the first one to point out that I do not require a VPS. Well I would be really happy if I do not have to shell out extra dollars, but hopefully not at performance costs. (I do not know this, but please tell me if I have 200 users watching live video simultaneously, can a shared hosting handle it).

Even I do not believe that I need a virtual server to start with, but with time I may have a requirement. So I would prefer a host that allows me easy upgrade.

As far as FFMPEG goes, I think that is an easy solution that allows me upload videos in various formats and perform conversions. Although I agree it is not very friendly to install (for me who has almost nil knowledge w.r.t linux). And even I cannot predict what users can find out, but things have been good for me on my local. And if not FFMPEG, then are there any alternatives that you are aware of.

(Well as far as paying for Drupal Software, the community is very strong and growing. And I think we all owe a lot to Drupal and all the drupallers out here that have made things interesting, easy and productive, and if you too find it beneficial you are welcome to pay back.)

Thanks

Can I do with a shared hosting?

Posted by toman on November 7, 2007 at 5:24pm

What I was trying to say, apparently not very clearly, was that you could start with shared hosting and scale up.
Do you really have 200 users chomping at the bit for you to take this project live, or is that more of a goal you're aspiring to? If you really think that out of the gate you'll have that sort of load, I think you will burn through the monthly bandwidth allotment of any shared, virtual, or dedicated plan within a day or so, and that you're talking major bucks to even get started. I could be wrong, do the math and figure out what your requirements are, given the expected load.

I'm sorry, I don't know any substitute for FFMPEG, so far streaming media programming hasn't been an interest of mine.

---------------
http://lillibilli.com
Big Honkin' Servers, Low Prices, 24/7 Support

Thanks Joseph

Posted by ms1 on November 7, 2007 at 6:40pm

Thank you for the insight.

Surely I do not have 200 users waiting but thats just a hypothetical scenario. But I do expect to reach atleast something around a 1000-2000 videos viewed daily.This along with a high page views of other content (hypothetically) can suck out the bandwidth pretty soon. But I recently saw something like an unlimited bandwidth on hostingican.com (http://www.hostican.com/hosting/cpanel-vps.php). So do you think that if the need be, then just using a plan like this may save the day, or are there other issues as well to consider?

Since you are in the business, please tell me about a webhost, where I can start with a shared hosting along with FFMPEG, and change to VPS or any other high-end plan if required?

Also browsing through VPS plans, I have seen the terms 'Guaranteed' and 'Burstable' memory, can you tell what are they?, how they differ and how to figure them out for your requirements?

Regards

I think I know this one

Posted by Michelle on November 7, 2007 at 7:09pm

My understanding is that "guaranteed" means just that: you're guarnateed that much. If you need more in short bursts and there's some extra free, you can go over what you're guaranteed up to that limit.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

-----
_{Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.}

Adding my $0.02

Posted by sopia on November 24, 2007 at 7:42pm

We've used a lot of different hosts over the years. I've been very happy with site5 as a static site and beta server. Running Drupal 5.2 in a beta test with about 1K visitors a day and 100 or so registered users seems to tax the system a bit, looked like we had a shutdown once before we started caching.

I think the guys who started site5 have sold it, though they have some kind of emeritus status there still, and I get a feeling that the servers are getting more and more oversold. "7.5T traffic" is hard to serve when you're sharing CPU and RAM with 1,000 other sites, but it makes a great sales hook. And that's kind of the point with all of these places.

You get what you pay for whether you're talking shared or VPS (or dedicated for that matter). The astounding deals aren't really that astounding when you read the fine print. There are file limits, CPU% limits, ridiculous RAM limits, etc. Then read the TOS. Does it say something about them being able to arbitrarily judge your content and dump you without a refund? They'll say it's about "porn," but I've seen high-bandwidth sites pulled because of bad language. Stick with a server who says that you can't do anything illegal, but doesn't have some weird loophole giving them the ability to yank you if you upset their view of morality (or approach their advertised bandwidth).

Right now, I'm trying a slice at slicehost.com. It's a steep learning curve, to be sure, but it's something I really feel I should learn. Heck, starting from scratch (which at slicehost is your choice of OS, I chose ubuntu), I had Drupal 5.3 installed and running in one day... for five whole minutes! That's building a LAMP stack, configuring mySQL and Apache, running the Drupal install and everything. The tradeoff at slicehost is that it is bare bones, and that their support is community based... we all know how that goes! ;-)

your are right about the 7.5Tb sales hook

Posted by socialtalker on December 15, 2007 at 1:05am

i fell for it myself lol.... before i signed up, i asked specifically about CPU/ram limits, and i got a non answer. but i signed up anyway, because i would thrilled if we outgrow it. i am setting up an online encyclopedia (with tikiwiki)
but one of the subdomain will be in drupal so i can make forms.
no if all goes well it will have to have its own server, so as long as we got anywhere close to enough space for a 100 or so people to be on it, i am happy for the moment. i guess.

And here's the answer...

Posted by sopia on December 19, 2007 at 10:12pm

http://wiki.site5.com/Resource_Usage_Policies

Discount coupons

Posted by infowarp on December 14, 2007 at 4:40am

Since you asked for some web hosting coupons there is a list here:
http://www.hostingdiary.com/2007/09/web-hosting-cou.html

Andrew

Reliable Hosts

Posted by maanst on December 18, 2007 at 11:25am

Well the main problem in finding a good host is the fact that many are said to be the best just because they pay a nice amount of money to web hosting review sites owners. I personally recommend hostinglair.com. Think that hosting providers presented there are not being selected only because of the money. There are some decent hosts to be found there.

9 ways people are making money on the Internet

IXWebHosting

Posted by decomposer on May 18, 2009 at 4:23pm

As I sit on the phone for the upteenth time, waiting for ix tech support, I see that they have had problems with their database servers as far back as 2005. The html sites I have on ixwebhosting are quick to respond. I have one drupal site and the fastest page load I've ever had is 4 seconds.

I've had page loads as long as 500,000ms. Greater than that results in a white screen timeout.

Forget working with the 24/7 chat. It's outsourced "help" that does not tell the truth. They say the database server is "great" and paste a copy of a ping report. It's all bogus. They are just marking time to bill ixwebhosting.

The people on phone tech support do try, but I think they know it's a losing battle. The database servers are way overloaded.

Right now I'm 9th caller in the queue -- started as 16th about 15 minutes ago.

This has been going on for over two weeks now. Average page load time is 2.5 to 3 minutes. Ridiculous!

Should drupal sites even use shared hosting? I don't think so.

As far as leasing a server and maintaining it yourself. I did that several years back. Can you say "full time job?" There's always one critical patch or another to be installed. Eventually the server got hacked.

ixwebhosting for html sites -- fine!

ixwebhosting for databased sites -- forget it!

decomposer

that's why you would go with

Posted by madjr on October 29, 2009 at 8:20pm

that's why you would go with linux managed vps or servers

of course they go from $30 and up

also i recommend everyone running drupal to learn the basics of linux and nothing better than testing Ubuntu linux (which i find is easier than windows just after 2 weeks and support/reviews are everywhere)

easy guides to get you started:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/

in the end it's your site and your business, you'll save tons of $ and won't be totally clueless of the basics and avoid being cheat on

Hosting

Posted by nanatulip on May 29, 2009 at 7:08pm

I see that this post is very old. I am curious as to which host you decided on & if you are satisfied. My site has a lot of the same requirements as you mentioned in your post and I am looking for a host also.
Thanks,
Tami

Tami