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By Manamarak on
Right, I host a website at http://illustratedphotography.com, and I've recently moved from a shared hosting account at Siteground to Godaddy.
Big mistake.
Very very slow and the site goes down daily for about an hour or two. And when I go in to report this, the helpful young man on the other end of the phone blames it on my code, then an hour later, magically and without me changing anything, the site comes back up.
So I'm going back to Siteground for the short term, but I'm going to have to upgrade to a VPS.
So I have two questions: are there any performance (i.e. speed) gains, from being on a VPS over being on shared, and second, who would you recommend as a solid US based VPS at a reasonable price (under $35/month to start with).
Siteground looks good, but they don't disclose the amount of dedicated RAM, and because the site is photography based, I have people uploading loads of pictures, which means loads of RAM.
Ideas and thoughts welcome.
Comments
hawkhost
Another Drupaler recommended Hawkhost to me a year and a half ago. I have two accounts there and am happy. In that time I have had only two outages and both were because I underestimated our needs and both were resolved within the hour. They fit your budget: http://www.hawkhost.com/VPS/compare
They don't have phone support, but their ticketing system gets addressed immediately. I have no affiliation to them and I suppose there are other hosts that support Drupal.org more directly.
A list of some of the Drupal sites I have designed and/or developed can be viewed at motioncity.com
Impartial host comparison site wanted.
That's great, I've had a look at them, but there are two disadvantages that I can see, first, they charge extra for CPanel, which comes as standard at Siteground and second, they are a bit tight on RAM.
What makes it difficult to compare is that Siteground does not tell you how much RAM you will have available, I assume that means you don't get any dedicated RAM, only burstable RAM.
Is anyone hosting on Siteground VPS?
Or is there maybe a good IMPARTIAL host comparison site around?
Well, I found HostMonk, which
Well, I found HostMonk, which appears to be impartial, but I have to say that overall Godaddy's Virtual Dedicated Servers compare quite well on specs. Does anyone have any experience hosting there, is it as bad as the shared hosting? I'd like to stay if I can because that would save me the trouble of transferring addresses.
I'd have to pay for CPanel though.
I don't think there's any
I don't think there's any impartial host comparison site. I know some at least definitely take kickbacks from hosts to get higher ratings. Others, hard to say, but I wouldn't be surprised. The best place to go is www.webhostingtalk.com and do a search for the name of the host you're considering. You'll find lots of actual customers talking about their experience with that particular host, good or bad. Some bad results doesn't necessarily mean the host should be off your list (though "lots" of bad probably does)... some times it's the customers being silly or unreasonable, other times they do have legitimate complaints - so you have to judge for yourself.
Siteground sounds pretty bad (just had a look). Anyone who promises "unlimited" anything is immediately on my blacklist.
So far as GoDaddy VPS... I doubt it's good. A quick look in WHT didn't reveal anything good, and some bad, though I didn't look long. I think they have VPS options only to bump you up to when you surpass their shared hosting limits. They're an ok domain registrar, but I wouldn't trust them with anything beyond that (and in fact I'm even hesitant to buy domains from them... I go elsewhere).
** Edit: Looked at GoDaddy's VPS page... they don't mention server-class hardware (when a host has it, they brag about it, so GoDaddy probably does "not" have it). That means they may be using cheap servers to keep costs down. Also looked at the HostMonk review site... looks a little useful, but not a lot. They basically just list tons of hosting packages, collect some data about the hosts... but they're missing most of the ones actual customers on WHT recommend to each other, which seems fishy to me ;)
VPS options
I have experience with both ServInt and WiredTree, which tend to be among the usual top VPS recommendations on webhostingtalk.com. Both perform very well, though I've got better results from ServInt when benchmarking with a heavier traffic load. Neither costs under $35 (they're both $49), but I'd definitely recommend them. I don't have experience there, but I also see lots of recommendations for KnownHost - and they do have VPS options starting at $25 (though I'd personally lean toward the $35 package since the $25 one doesn't have enough RAM... and if you pass that point, I'd switch back to looking at ServInt or WiredTree for a better deal). One downside I see on KnownHost is the control panel cost is not included - so add $6-7/mo to the price. A quick look at WHT also revealed some common recommendations for VPSLatch.
Be sure to check here if you sign up for a VPS, as many post coupons and special offers in this forum: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104
You mentioned "loads of pictures, which means loads of RAM"... not necessarily the case for that reason. You do need RAM to accommodate big file uploads with PHP, since they're stored in RAM until saved to disk when the upload completes, however after that what you need is disk space. You do want to get as much RAM as possible though, as a happy Drupal site is a Drupal site with lots of RAM :)
Hope this helps.
Semi dedicated hosting?
What is semi dedicated hosting and how is it different from VPS's?
Haven't really heard that
Haven't really heard that term before. I see it now on Siteground, and the description makes me think it is probably less powerful than a VPS. It only seems to refer to increased server resources, though not having a true VPS environment.
Thanks.
I think you are right, I think it is shared hosting, but shared with less others.
So it's CPU's I'm after not RAM, interesting, I'll look into that.
I had a look at ServInt and I like what I see, also got a 50% off coupon, so that's great.
Does being on a VPS definitely give you a speed boost over shared hosting, though? That is my main concern, because the site is unbearably slow at the moment.
Both CPU and RAM are needed,
Both CPU and RAM are needed, and fast hard drives are important too (for MySQL). Yes a quality VPS is a big improvement over shared. If your site has lots of visitors who aren't logged in, then be sure to check out Boost module, which will make the site lightning fast for non-logged-in visitors. Look into memcached and make sure you have an opcode cache installed for PHP such as APC.
Thanks a load
Dave, you're a genius.
This is the best advice I've ever been given in the Drupal Forums, and that is saying a lot. ServInt is great, the staff are friendly, the setup was a breeze. They definitely have my vote of confidence.
Another solution
Another possibility is to use HotDrupal. http://hotdrupal.com/hybridvps.html They aggregate multiple users under one shared VPS. I know I mentioned Hawkhost and I am very happy with them. But I also have a couple accounts with Hot Drupal and for these smaller sites it is a good solution. You don't get WHM, but you do have cPanel access and can create your own accounts under the main domain. Their servers are tuned for running Drupal and I have been very happy with them. Support is also pretty quick.
If you need a lot of disk space or dedicated processor power or ram, this is probably not the solution for you. But if you are looking to step up from the big hosting companies that cram multiple accounts (hundreds) onto one server [cough iPower], then this might be a good solution.
A list of some of the Drupal sites I have designed and/or developed can be viewed at motioncity.com
Thanks Mcfilms, I'm a bit
Thanks Mcfilms, I'm a bit power hungry at the moment, so I'm going to go for the full VPS, I might up my budget just a tad.
+ 1 for ServInt, I have had
+ 1 for ServInt, I have had them for over two years now and they are amazing. Their essential VPS for 49.00 a month is good in many instances. Trust me you will never want to use crappy shared, oversold hosting again once you have your own VPS. I also recommend having ServInt install Config Server Firewall for you at no extra charge, just make sure to go into WHM and activate it once your VPS has been turned up and apply some basic rules. You will also want them to adjust PHP memory to 128 mb.
Danny Englander | Twitter | Instagram
I have had great results with
I have had great results with HotDrupal. That said my sites only get a few thousand visitors per day.
I have the same experience
I have the same experience with siteground. I had previously looked for recommendations for VPS, read every comments about VPS, and obviously missed some, and found Hotdrupal and siteground are the most recommended. So I recommended both to my client after making sure that it is also listed at http://drupal.org/hosting. Although Hotdrupal is my top priority, they took siteground instead.
Its VPS. Week I, all is slow from the very beginning. At drupal install, I had to repeat several times. The problem mostly aroused due to corrupt FTP files. Week II, I found out that they dropped memory_limit from 128M to 96M without any info.
I have enabled all performance recommended settings, but alas still slow.
I wonder why their VPS is even slower than a shared hosting in another hosting provider with mem_limit 48 of mine? Is siteground a real hosting provider?
love, light n laughter
i find an good place to look
i find an good place to look at and chat with other people about webhosting is www.hostingbuster.com/forums/
its nice and friendly and has no bios reviews on there
You should try
You should try http://cleverkite.com. Search them up on web hosting talk. They have a great reputation on there