Hi guys,

I would like to share with you my experience selecting a hosting company.
After a lot of research who is best according my personal criteria last night I registered in Ervixe.

My criteria was:
Hosting Drupal site
Performance
Price
Features
Drupal recommendation
AND
generally best choice value for money.

After hours spending in google and compared most known companies like (a2hosting, bluehost, justhost, inmotionhosting, greengeeks, hostgator, godaddy) I finally chose Arvixe for the following reasons.

1. It was one from the Drupal recommended companies from drupal.org
2. Price (67 dollars for 2 years and free domain name registration)
3. Cpanel with many features
4. Performance is very good, the page is loading fast
I am not sure about the support but I read from forums etc that are good enough
In 15 minutes from the time I registered my site was live (JUST AMAZING!!!)

I am not used to advertise companies especially when I don't know them but I am so happy with my decision thats why I shared my experience in this topic.

Thank you,

GP

Comments

yngens’s picture

It is already high time to rename this section of forums from "Hosting support" to "Hosting advertisement".

gp1179’s picture

Hi,

As I have already explained my intention wasn't to advertise Arvixe.

But after your reply I noticed your signature as Drupion.com
I accessed your page and I compared your prices to others.
Your prices are far away from your competitors.

Monthly fee= $9,99 ? ? ?

I wanted 24 months X $9,99 = 239,76 (really expensive for my standards)

And as I already said I payed only $67 for 2 years in Arvixe.

I saved $172 (That once again proves that my decision was the best ! ! !)

I don't want to mention about the features you provide compared with your competitors

Finally you are not in the list that Drupal.org advertise. (sorry again)

My finally list was between Arvixe, A2hosting and Inmotionhosting
Great companies and the 3 of them ! ! !

Sorry to hear about advertisement ! ! !

Good luck with your business ! ! !

yngens’s picture

We are here to support any hosting enquiries and questions and not praise oneselves and blame others. So no comment and good luck with everything!

John_B’s picture

Finally you are not in the list that Drupal.org advertise. (sorry again)

I do not know how that list is complied, maybe anyone can pay to get in, but it is not a reliable guide to who is good at hosting Drupal. It looks to me that they will let anyone advertise who pays, without any check on quality.

Many general hosting companies claim to be Drupal speciaist but are not (I speak from experience). If the service you have suits your needs, it is clearly the best for you. If in future you find your site is unacceptably slow, or encounters hosting-related bugs, paying the higher rates for a company like drupion.com or civihosting.com which is focused almost entirely on Drupal would be a sensible upgrade.

Anyway it would be interesting to get your views on how Arvixe perform when you run a moderately complex Drupal site in production there. If you can come back and say they are great, I look forward to being proved wrong: my Drupal experience tells me that cheap hosting never works well for Drupal (and that advertisements claiming it does cannot be trusted). If you have discovered the one company which can prove me wrong, and combine low price with great quality, that is fantastic :-)

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

JamesOakley’s picture

That list is a combination of a number of things (someone in the Association correct me if I'm wrong here):

  1. Careful checks by members of the security team that a hosting account on there is suitably secured.
  2. Minimum specification.
  3. A financial benefit to Drupal in return for being listed.

IMHO, Drupal needs to tread carefully here. As I'm sure you know, the web hosting advertising world is spoilt by numerous sites that claim to recommend the top 3 / 10 / 20 hosts. In practice, the same hosts always come top, and they just happen to be those who pay their affiliates most for referrals. Basically, the website owners are simply listing those hosts they will do best out of recommending. Not only does that mean the list bears no relation to quality of hosting. It tends to have an inverse relationship, because hosts that pay vast sums (sometimes over $100 per sign-up) for a referral have less money to spend on servers / networking / staff.

Drupal's list isn't that. For a start, the links aren't (normally) affiliate ones such that Drupal benefits per sign-up. And also there are some checks on suitability other than just how much Drupal is paid. But where I'm saying Drupal needs to tread carefully is that what Drupal stands to gain from those hosts is not nearly transparent enough, which means the end-user cannot judge how many pinches of salt are needed with the list.

The important thing here, as John_B rightly says, is that price isn't everything. You can save a fortune, but you just may get what you pay for. While some hosts charge high prices to try and make it feel that they offer a premium service (when they do not), there are also a number of hosts who charge more because they invest in good hardware, don't put too many clients on a server, and employ staff who can spend quality time handling support requests carefully. Doing that costs them money, so the only sustainable way to do it is to charge more. As you say, at the end of the day, going for a budget host is a money saver but also a big risk. The Drupal-specific support that a premium host can offer is probably worth it, and the sites should hold up well when the number of visitors / number of modules starts to grow.


This signature is currently blank
John_B’s picture

Thanks for the additional information.

My own journey with Drupal hosting has been that every 'bargain' turned sour (and I have tried various hosting companies, managed VPS, unmanaged VPS, low-spec dedicated, high-spec dedicated). Having learned something about what it takes to set up hosting, I have grown sceptical that any company can make it work both well and very cheaply. I now spend an inordinate amount of money (and time custom-tuning and maintaining) a top-dollar VPS for a handful of low traffic Drupal sites. I would not be spending this if the cheap offerings I tried had been adequate. This is only one of the reasons I now never recommend Drupal to clients for individual or very small business sites, although I am a Drupal fan, and for companies who have at least a few thousand a year to spend on maintenance and hosting, it can be the best tool. Just a personal view, I know Dries as keen for Drupal to meet the needs of smaller sites as well as enterprise-level sites.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

yngens’s picture

Please read http://drupal.org/node/1955290 and http://groups.drupal.org/node/206978 to see how much Drupal Association is screwed up with its controversial policies, which are very much protective towards a syndicate of just several hosting companies listed there for big money and not because they are the best and most suitable for Drupal.

TagGit’s picture

We have some feedbacks from Arvixe customers that their server is slow when accessing it outside US continent. But any way, the price value of Arvixe is really high, if you are a drupal beginner or your site don't have good traffic now, Arvixe is definitely a great option.

Triumphent’s picture

Advertising or praising a hosting company should be banned. No matter what the reason is.