Like most folks here I find it very difficult to get a reliable, moderately priced hosting company. You want my business? Here are a few thoughts to help you out. I can't afford crack companies like rackspace, so I am not talking to you. But, I don't expect absurd prices for impossible specs either. I want something that is obviously deliverable for the price quoted, with room for reasonable support (but not 'fanatical' - I am prepared to do some work for myself to keep the cost down).
So here it is:
1) I don't want absurd lack of limits - I want limits that make sense. And AFAICT, those are: disk space, bandwidth, processor time, and memory. Maybe particular services that involve effort in setting up. Any others? Please let me know if I have left anything out.
2) What I DON'T want is arbitrary limits on stuff that costs you little or nothing in the hope of making me upgrade to a higher plan. Heading the list here is "20 domains" or some such. As well as my main site I have a moderate number (half dozen to a dozen) community sites that might be lucky to get three hits a week, so hosting them with you is money for peanuts. If they fit within my overall resource limits, I don't expect to upgrade to be able to host them - and then there is the fact that one needs to have .com, .org, and .net for the one site in order to catch traffic, which costs the hosting service nothing but triples the domain usage count. Adding a domain is a line in a control file, so maybe "500 domains" to stop me using your /etc region as data store, but not 20. When I see "1 GB data", I compare your $10 plan with your $20 plan and maybe I'll go $20 if I need the extra. But when I see "20 domains", I compare your $10 plan with your competitor's $10 plan. Same goes for "5 databases".
3) Don't mess with my email. Sure, I know you (and we all) have a spam problem, but find some other way to deal with it than restricting email or, as one host does, not providing a sendmail daemon (which messes with cron jobs and other stuff). I asked a specialist web services computer scientist friend about email, and he assures me that machines have no more problem resource-wise sending out a meg of email versus serving a meg of web pages, so absorb email into your general bandwidth limits. I have bona fide mailing lists (opt-in, with confirmation) that are absolutely not spam. I'll fit in with any reasonable system for assuring the hosting co that my emails are genuine, but I want free ability to send out those emails.
4) If I hit a limit, I expect a soft limit that will absorb minor overruns for short times, but if things get serious I'll upgrade. Don't disable my account for overruns.
5) ssh access (and linux OS, of course) are non-negotiable. It is just SO much easier to back up my work on a local machine with rsync, scp and friends, to restore big DBs that phpmyadmin won't read, etc. And I want it right out of the box. No "on request" stuff - unix machines have been offering safe multiuser access under this security model for over 30 years, so please don't tell me you disable ssh 'for security'.
Well, that's what comes to mind right now. Anything I've forgotten? Any hosts want to respond and win my business?
Ron.
Comments
Reasonable Requests
That all sounds reasonable to me.
You can click on my profile and use the contact to send me an e-mail with your phone number, I will be happy to call and discuss your needs.
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Steve
HotDrupal.com
VPS
A VPS sounds like a better fit for your need than a virtual host. This is where the money comes in. If they provide virtual hosting for 500 domains instead of 20, they get 500 support requests per year instead of 20. A VPS lets you perform the domain work yourself and you call them only for your first few domains. After that, it does not matter to them if you use 20 or 500 or 5000. A VPS can have unlimited limites in places that virtual sites do not.
CPU is the most expensive resource. Selling virtual sites 20 at a time is profitable because 19 out of 20 are rarely used and they may be able to stuff 500 customers on one server. A VPS gives you a guaranteed minimum slice of the sever, perhaps 2 percent, which means they can place only 50 customers on the server. VPSs cost the ISP more initially because of that guaranteed CPU, perhaps $30 per month instead of $10, but then cost less for support and they can let you have unlimited this and that.
Most ISPs do not state a minimum CPU slice for a VPS because they still want to put 500 customers on a server. Look at provps.com for an exception. A few lines down in each plan is Guaranteed Mhz. Most hosting companies do not publish anything like that. Some say 1/20th of the CPU or similar, which is great if they also tell you the CPU. Guaranteed CPU is so rare that it should be the first thing mentioned in a review.
SSL! You occasionally need an extra IP address for SSL. My current host says $1 per month for an extra IP address. A previous host charged $5 per month for an extra IP address.
petermoulding.com/web_architect
petermoulding.com/web_architect
ANHosting and Bluehost is a
ANHosting and Bluehost is a great choice for you. Both of them are Drupal optimized web hosting with less than $10/month.
All shared hosting has its limit, and for Bluehost, once you hit it, you will be suspened temporary, and your account will be resumed within 10 minutes. This is very friendly. Unlike some other companies, your account will be suspended till you find it and send the tickets for resuming - this really takes times.
Another good reason to use bluehost or anhosting is that your Drupal is going to run very fast in their environment since they MySQL connection has been well optimized.
I'm new to the forum and I
I'm new to the forum and I didn't find anything in the rules about self-promotion. The customer is asking for a host, and I think we fit the bill -- for real. Take a look our service, I think you'll be pretty impressed. The URL is: http://www.uptimehost.com
** Mod's if I am incorrect about the rules, remove the post.
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read: http://drupal.org/node/317873
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