By wb54321 on

First, I am not locked in to finding a hosting provider that provides Drupal-specific support: I am very open to configuring, installing and managing my own Drupal installation. I'm not a Linux guru, but am a quick study and not afraid of the command line. I understand some of the advantages of a provider with strong Drupal support, but am not convinced that is the only way to go.

I am working on a social networking site (aren't we all?) which may reach 10,000 registered users quickly (within 2-3 months). Expecting much more than that eventually, but for now those are the numbers I'm likely to have to deal with. I also want a service that will handle eventual growth and spikes. One feature is a weekly update email, and every member will get a registration / welcome email. My geographical location and user base will be in the USA: I assume a US-based provider is the way to go.

I am looking for a Virtual Dedicated Server hosting service that will handle the bandwidth with fast and consistent access, and the e-mail volume, at a reasonable cost. I have researched numerous reviews of hosting providers and have not found any that give me that "green light" feeling.

References are certainly welcome, but the sharing of research methodologies used by those of you who have successfully found a quality VPS hosting provider may prove more useful in the end. For example: do you weigh the ratio of good vs bad reviews (every provider will have some bad reviews)? Or even factor reviews in at all? Are there any truly independent reviews out there (magazines, techie sites like Techcrunch, etc) that are useful?

The last thing I want is to have my site take off and visitors getting 'unavailable' messages or painfully slow load times. Any direction or feedback greatly appreciated.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

druper’s picture

druper commented

We used GoDaddy's shared hosting to get started and, while it was never quick, it's gotten dog slow and we keep losing the DB connection. I, however, am a linux dope, so a drupal-centric host would be nice.

dunklea’s picture

dunklea commented

I used Slicehost to host 4 Drupal websites on a 512MB slice. So far my experience has been pretty good, they have everything you need as long as you are wiling to set it up all yourself.

Keep them in mind as you research different options.

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

There are some good VPS hosting you can use, such as liquidWeb, Inmotionhosting, lunarpages, etc.

dlouis’s picture

dlouis commented

(Even registered on this forum just so I could post this).

I've hosted Drupal sites with them for ages. The support is quick, and they seem small, so you get personal attention. I tend to favor VServer VPS's, but the new KVM-based VPS's look very interesting too, I might start one for a Debian site.

~d

cvining’s picture

cvining commented

I've tried the VPS route. It worked fine and I did like the complete control of the server, but I got a little tired of maintaining everything myself. It's kinda fun at first, but gets old when all you really want to do is host drupal websites.

I've been using hotdrupal.com for just shy of two years now and found them just fabulous. Their servers are specifically "drupal-centric". You still do the drupal installs yourself (well, I do) but they keep the OS updated and ready for drupal.

My sites don't actually get all that much traffic, but they do stretch drupal. Lots of modules, including CIVICRM. Everything runs flawlessly. And I've always gotten fast, professional responses from support. Seriously: zero complaints about them.

Hotdrupal.com is the best host I've had since I used pair.com back in the mid-1990s. I only left pair.com because their shared servers really couldn't handle drupals execution time and memory limits (part of the PHP configuration). Hotdrupal.com limits are excellent and I've never had a problem.

No, I have no association whatever (beyond hosting with them) with Hotdrupal.com and I get no discounts for saying this.

Ela’s picture

Ela commented

I agree, hotdrupal is great!! :)

chrys-dupe’s picture

chrys-dupe commented

So, the "super" plan looks good at $25/month, especially since I could host a couple of D6 instances there... but, only 7GB of disk space???

Canine Coaches’s picture

Canine Coaches commented

Infrenion.com is great. I have been using them for almost a year. Their support is instant (24/7 chat) and and if they can't solve your problem on chat and you have to actually open a ticket it is still faster than most companies I have dealt with. Their servers are very fast and they have US and UK servers.

Chris

jonathan sloan’s picture

jonathan sloan commented

I have tried liquidWeb and lunarpages for Deupal. Both are awesome!

Jon

francekorea’s picture

francekorea commented

Try this one

http://www.internetbrothers.co.kr/webpromotion/english/virtualdedicateds...

And for the rest of your life you will never need more space and traffic. :)

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

You could refer to this list of VPS hosting for Drupal