Hi guys. I know web hosting is so unreliable nowadays. Sometimes it's even difficult to find good web hosts with great support.

Do you guys know which web host company has good knowledge in Drupal, so that whenever problem occurs, they can troubleshoot at no time?

Comments

sumitshekhawat7331’s picture

for Drupal I think

Go Daddy web hosting and linux server

vicgray’s picture

Is their support good?

Sometimes those web hosts would ask us to solve than solving for us.

biefking’s picture

Godaddy's database queries have been very slow for me.

irisharris’s picture

I think Godaddy is very good provider.

mike_sandes’s picture

me too - I thought it was problem with my site - but no it's the host database server.

escoles’s picture

I find their hosting environment EXTREMELY difficult to work with. Server config options are limited, and they nickel & dime you on every little thing.

Find a good cPanel based host like HostGator, ANHosting, BlueHost, or the like. The time you save in admin tasks will more than make up for the extra $10-20/yr it will cost you.

Taiger’s picture

Anhosting is horrible. Slow and lots of downtime. Don't believe John Forsythe.

picxelplay’s picture

Ha, I have to give Godaddy a big fat no. They are terrible on everything except domain regs. Just because they are popular because they pushed billions into marketing does not make them a good host. I would stay away.

----
Sudo Kill Cylons

inogenius’s picture

When someone asks me, I always suggest going with an actual web host, and not a company that offers web hosting as a secondary product. Domains are godaddy's bread and butter, not web hosting.

asharpvision’s picture

Hi,

I have been using SiteGround Web hosting for the past 1 year and i find it very reliable. Although comparing with other plans like godaddy i find it bit expensive, but data transition is much smoother in Site Ground then Godaddy.

Thanks
Varun Mathur

DigitalWheelie’s picture

I've been w/ Siteground for about four years now, and I like what they offer. Have just started w/ Drupal, but so far it's been really smooth and easy (small shared hosting account).

One complaint is that to get tech support there are a lot of hoops to jump though. For example, they make you test your e-mail connection before submitting an e-mail ticket, and so on. They also moved my site once from one server to another w/o notification and that created some duplicate e-mails and files, but it wasn't anything horrible.

I've read some "Siteground SUCKS!" comments and am not sure how much was due to out-of-date service limitations (they're pretty robust now with lots of "unlimited"s in their offerings), bad luck, legit issues, or problem users, but my experience has been really solid.

--Ted

TonyV’s picture

I've been using Siteground for about two years and have been really pretty happy with them.

Magarna’s picture

Hi, thanks for all the great comments on this thread and elsewhere about this issue.

I'm taking in some of the comments made recently about the PHP memory issue, and would like to rehearse here that issue with respect to Bluehost. I'm thinking of going with them but please feel free to advise otherwise if you think I should go another direction.

If you've used them, and have a similar usage profile as I do, please help me out by reporting out what you're finding.

The 3.95 deal and the 2.50 (per month) option to have a dedicated IP seems like the best I'm going to find at my level. What is my level? Let me tell you a little bit about what I'm trying to do.

I've been toying around with Drupal since 4x and am about to upgrade to 6, launching a site complex reflecting some of the advances I've made in my skill level, mostly involding css, themes, etc. -- I'm planning a class website and will probably have 100-200 students on it eventually, perhaps as many as 400. But this doesn't mean concurrently. The max there might be 20 or so, and a Bluehost rep told me in chat that there is a limit of 20 -- so I can imagine that having a students working lab all in their drupal accounts would probably test that capacity, even if most of the kids will be writing not performing actions -- at least not all simultaneously. Now, if "simultaneously" is not REALLY simultaneous but means something like within a one-minute, 5-minute, or 10-minute span, etc., then I am going to have real problems. I understand that and so may add dedicated IP once I'm up and running (Sept 2009). The dedicated IP allows for more traffic in this way. Without that, I understand that my students will see white screens as requests are quietly killed by site admin (by rule). If I grow beyond the needs of what dedicated IP can provide, then okay, by then I'll have some support to pay real money for real server power. If I'm not getting subvention from my school, a grant, or some other support, I should let someone else do it, LOL

Finally, the PHP memory thing. The sales rep at Bluehost said it was set at 128. Does this sound right? What do you think? Does anyone want to report on this issue with Bluehost? Any advice?

I don't plan a very chunky website, but I don't want to be too restricted with respect to Modules. For example, I will certainly be running Views. How many I cannot say. I see people on these boards describing having 50 or 100. I don't really have a sense of this in practical terms, but right now I'm probably not running even 25 modules.

I'm on Hostpapa right now--its php memory is set at 32--and frankly, these forums have explained why we've been having the issues at Hostpapa we have been having. We even told them we were doing some drupal development, and with no traffic, just sitting there slowly building. We had to get whitelisted to even access our accounts, so I guess the idea of visitors was out of the question. I guess we probably over did it earlier with the modules, so some clean installs over the course of the last year demonstrated that issue with the module largesse clogging up the plubming. Duh! I had no idea, so thanks, all, for that info. I'm still a newbie and only doing this myself because I have no budget to hire someone for real. I lived with DrupalEd for the last year, and learned a lot from it, but like I said, I'm now ready to go it alone with 6 and my own homemade themes. I'll post an update here, of course, if I have any experience with Bluehost and will wait around here for any response to this.

Any thoughts?

Thanks-

Magarna’s picture

the 3.95 deal ended. I should have moved on it instead of sending this message to the forum, as I think it would have been a good deal for what I'm trying to do. Now it's just average, it seems. So, I'm starting over.

If Bluehost returns soon with that sale, I'll jump on it - but still wonder what experiences people are having with them.

I'll review the other sites mentioned often on this board. Thanks-

feconroses’s picture

magarna any news from you? im in a similar situation. Im with godaddy but i want to change because its too slow with drupal. My priority now is finding a hosting provider that supports drupal and that can run it very fast!

PatW’s picture

nevermind- the $3.95 special hasn't ended. I just put a live site on it last week The offer appeared on my Firefox browser, but not on my client's IE, so I called to ask them what was up. I found out that the offer is browser-specific.

paganwinter’s picture

Have been using Hostmonster.
No problems so far.
Just hosted another site on the same account. CPanel support is brilliant!
Feel I dont even need SSH access. CPanel does everything for you. Lets you upload zipped files and then extract the contents, and vice versa.

df412’s picture

I am living a drama there...! Really!

My site is so SLOW! Sometimes Drupal needs 1min to go to the admin panel.

To be honest, I am looking forward to find some extra time and get out of there...

Taiger’s picture

I have read this elsewhere. Media Temple GS (grid) shared hosting is worse than most shared hosts.

After I read that I tried Media Temple DV. It is not shared hosting at all but a proper virtual server. It uses Plesk which is is okay. There used to be discount on Retail Me Not, so look there first.

If you are used to shared hosting make sure to enable fastCGI on MT. There is a slight performance penalty but it really can be a savior for permission issues on client sites.

Media Temple has some decent documentation and Drupal sites run much much faster than on shared hosting. I couldn't see going back to shared hosting.

Gandi.net offers similar virtual hosting as Media Temple DV. I know someone that likes and uses Gandi.net.

ben4asterisk’s picture

Hi All,
I am looking at greengeeks currently to host multiple of my websites. The FAQ section on the website talks about creating the domain-named folder under www, whereas a drupal setup would require these to be added under the sites folder.
How would this work? WIll there be a clash?
Any experienced users on this before I actually sign up with them?

cheers
- Ben

espirates’s picture

Is to ignore all those hosting review websites, they are all scams, every last one of them. Many are created by hosting companies made to favor their company. Hosting companies even pay to have their site listed in the top so it's all bogus.

The only sure way is by trial and error and word of mouth but even that is crappy these days. Everyone is trying to sell you some snake oil.

Try out a host for 30 days only then switch if it's no good. Keep your domains separate so all you have to do is point to your new host. Don't give any host long term regardless of what they promise you. If they don't use Cpanel, cross them off the list.

These days almost every host is offering unlimited everything making it harder to choose. All the more reason to do a trial period only no commitments.

Run away from cheap deals that want you to pay in full 2 or 3 years and I also try to stay away from resellers especially those piggy backing off of a real domain registrars.

My terms are simple month to month to try out then i'm off to the next host if need be. Fortunately, I haven't had to run to a new host in a long time.

imlol’s picture

Do not use Bluehost. Their support is terrible! I have never dealt with a company like that before. The reps on the phone just hang up on you. I wont be finished and quickly try to say no wait and they will be gone. If you have a problem with them you are screwed.

nihonsei’s picture

What kind of support are you looking from Bluehost? My site is hosted on Bluehost. I am 100% satisfied with the support of Bluehost till today. Bluehost is cheap and best for Drupal.

Bluehost is charging only US$6.95 per month (free domain name with one year subscription). My old Japanese site is hosted in Japan. I am paying 4 times more (around US$24 per month) in Japan, as .jp domain name I can not register outside Japan (I paid extra around US$36 for .jp domain registration for a year). Japanese hosting server is not configured to run a Drupal based website. Last year I called to support team in Japan to make a request that I need some extra features (php memory limit, MySQL setting, PHP library, Corn Job, .htaccess) to run Drupal. They did not give me the configuration details of the server. Japanese support team told me to read online manual and cut the line. I set up a drupal based site with the help of googling on google. I am planning to discontinue my Japanese site this year.

I want to run a Drupal based website at a low cost, so I register a new domain name with Bluehost. I find my new website has got a fast life on Bluehost and running very smoothly. In this month I chat 6 times to bluehost support team for some silly questions. They support me very well, although answer was available at their well written online manual.

When we are using a CMS, we do not need to write a code for a simple website. We need only well configured server to run Drupal smoothly. Bluehost shared hosting server is well configured to run any CMS (Drupal, Wordpress, Magento).

kpastore’s picture

I have been with Bluehost for a year now. They just automatically debited my account for another year (without sending an email saying this was going to happen). To be fair, it says this in the terms of service now, but not when I first signed up. According to the "support staff" this is a recent policy change. Apparently they don't send out notices when the Terms of Service change, either.

In May of 2010, power and some phone lines in Salt Lake City went down for around 6 hours. ALL Bluehost sites went offline for this time. Looks like they have no secondary, off-site backup. Twice in the last 3 months my sites have gone down as well. This included email. The first time, I was told it was a routine software upgrade. Sites on my 'box' were down for 30 minutes. The second time, I was told the "engineers" were testing out new software -- on a live server!! This was around a 25 minute downtime in the middle of the business day. From my year with them all I can surmise is that Bluehost is a bunch of amateurs who offer a low-cost hosting option, but don't really know what they are doing.

nihonsei’s picture

Thanks for sharing your experience. I am lucky that I did not face any bad experience with Bluehost till today. I am 100% satisfied with Bluehost and recommend it to my friends.

I checked the page speed of my sites on Bluehost (Page Speed Score: 85/100) and on a Japanese host (Page Speed Score: 81/100) by using Page Speed 1.8 in Mozilla Firefox. Site performance is good on Bluehost.

Stoob’s picture

LunarPages is ok (get their cPanel admin, not the LPCP, plus SSH access, which costs extra.)

Site5.com is even better.

I like site5. Two drupal sites running well on site5.

Grabby’s picture

The devil, I’ve found, is in the details, which are rarely published for shared hosting solutions. For example, for a site with lots of modules and administration menu enabled you’re likely to need a max_allowed_packet parameter greater than the 1M standard on shared hosting. I’m with midPhase, who I have no real complaints against except the 1M is set in stone with them and when I ask them if it can be increased they say I should move to VPS. Anyone know of shared hosting where max_allowed_packet can be set to, say, 16M for example?

espirates’s picture

is on shared hosting and they increased mine to 128M no questions asked :) I think most these days will do it if you ask them. It's not like they have anything to lose in doing it. Even at 128M it doesn't improve much in performance. Drupal is a performance hog that's just the way it is.

Grabby’s picture

Really? They increased your max_allowed_packet to 128M? Are you sure you’re not talking about the PHP memory limit? Who is your hosting provider?

espirates’s picture

Opps! I thought you were talking about the php limit, I see now you are referring to the mysql. They did at one time increase this as well for me upon asking. I can't remember what the number was and later on I was using the drupal tweaks module that did this automatically but that module is no longer applicable for the latest mysql and since the host upgraded the mysql I have not needed to adjust these settings.

twood’s picture

Hostgator is incredibly good, their 24/7 support is excellent with three ways of contacting them- tickets, chat, and phone. I've used them all.

They provide great value and reliability. I'm not a "server" guy so I need support on many levels. Their control panel makes it easy to set cron, backup prior to updating modules, and phpMyAdmin for those "special" times when the database acts up. Fantastico Deluxe also makes for a very simple installation of Drupal.

I've used, and still use midPhase for some sites but am not happy with their service or product- just a bit lazy in making the move to hostgator on those...

GoDaddy? Please- I do not recommend the fantastically convoluted GD for anything other than cheap domain prices.

geneatwell’s picture

Just looking to replace Midphase as my host. In the middle of the game they came up with a policy that does not allow the use of Drush on their shared servers. Even after I spent the last 3 days talking to their support people and even after I've successfully used Drush to update code and modules. Tsk.

Here's the quote from their service rep who doesn't want a name associated with his company's change of heart:

I was just discussing this with our Admin and he has informed me that we do not allow drush on shared servers because it is too CPU intensive and will cause load problems on our servers. We do sincerely apologize that we missed that earlier when this ticket was first escalated. If you would still like to use drush you are welcome to purchase a VPS at VPS.net. If you purchase cpanel on that VPS then we would be happy to help you move your cpanel account over to your VPS. Let us know. Once again, we apologize for not informing you of this earlier.

So....use that information for what it's worth.

espirates’s picture

I'm thinking about hosting on my own computer. I did it before and had a better setup than any hosting company could ever provide. A web hosting company is nothing more than someone else's computer, all the fancy advertisements and wording makes it sound so great and they all say the same thing. It's just a computer so why not use your own.

gausarts’s picture

What computers?

Subscribing. Thanks

love, light n laughter

jetxs’s picture

Hosts I've tried out:

GoDaddy - AVOID! (for anything other than buying domains).
HostGator - 4 Stars
Dreamhost - 5 Stars

Most hosting services with cPanel/DirectAdmin should work great with Drupal, as a general thumb-rule..

marconey@me.com’s picture

I found them in connection with my Joomla! fiddlings years ago. However, I never went with Joomla! but decided to go with Drupal instead (eventhough I did all my fiddling with Joomla! on my localhost and got to know quite a bit of Joomla!). They are the host for Joomla.org.

I recently started working on a community website for our residential community and went to RochenHost. Surprize, surprize! They now officially support Drupal hosting (it worked fine even before they "officially" supported it - I had not a single issue with Drupal).

As a total beginner to ANY web hosting, I was a bit (well, a lot!) nervous going with them because they have no phone support. All my life, I thought, it's a lot more comforting to pick up the phone and talk to someone when you need help. But here I am many years later still in love with RochenHost.

They are extremely fast with trouble tickets. You clearly explain what the problem is and they usually get back to you within a couple of hours (less most of the time!). I have become so comfortable with this arrangement, that I no longer consider having phone support a criteria! (conversely I did have phone support with GoDaddy (in connection with hosting a site for a client of mine) and after holding on the phone for a while and then chatting with tech support, the guy actually told me that I should "google" for help with the issue!!! - so much for phone support!)

Rochen's user interface is clean and that works well for me as I feel giddy just looking at GoDaddy's gazillion button, cluttered UI although they have made some improvements lately but still ...

All in all I couldn't be happier hosting my Drupal sites with RochenHost, especially now that they officially support Drupal.

Hope this helps.

sassafrass’s picture

I'm with Espirates. It would be great to come up with a non-biased "Consumer Reports" like review of web hosting companies. All the ones I've ever read are either written by the web hosting companies themselves, or are poorly researched and posted for the sake of some other pursuit.

Personally, I've used IX Web Hosting and Verio for small, static, non-enterprise, non-business type sites. They're both fine for such limited needs hosting. However, I haven't used either one of them for Drupal or anything demanding.

Lynn Haas

gregorsa’s picture

I would give serversky.com a try, i just bought a vps there for hosting drupal, and they've got this cool android application that goes with it.

ophelia’s picture

I'm currently running a Drupal 6 site on GoDaddy and it runs really really slow. I even had to call support yesterday, and they claimed that part of the reason is that the server thought I was a spammer because of how often I visited the site! So are my most frequent site visitors getting punished for going to my site often? That is so backwards! Today at least the site isn't timing out on me but everything is still running super slow and has been for months. Suffice to say, I am looking into other options. So far, A2 drupal hosting, GreenGeeks and HotDrupal look promising.

JamesOakley’s picture

I've read so many stories of GoDaddy giving people problems. Find a host that doesn't oversell their servers, which means finding one that doesn't offer unlimited storage. Work out how much space you think you need for now, and find a host that can reliably give you that. Then you'll likely be just fine.


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espirates’s picture

Never had a problem, they are cheap and more than enough to host Drupal.

FareThoughts’s picture

I host several Drupal 7 sites through GoDaddy's 4GH Linux shared hosting. I used the Acquia flavor of Drupal to create them locally and then installed them myself. (I have never used one of their self-installers; so I cannot comment on them.)

I have to say that except for the migration from legacy to 4GH, which new users should never experience, I never had any problems. One of my sites is fairly robust, but I have yet to see a sever error or hear anything about sluggishness.

Actually, the only speed problems I have experienced is that using TypeKit will occasionally load a page without the special fonts and then reload the page displaying those a few milliseconds later. It's not something most users would probably even notice.

Overall, I've been very impressed by their customer service. Generally, their phone support is far better than their e-mail support though. If you can call them after peak hours, you also get more help. Some of the guys there are Drupal experts as I've had them give me excellent advice and find *my* errors immediately.

Maybe I've just been really lucky, but my experience has been completely different.

mattwmc’s picture

Godaddy Shared Hosting is terrible for Drupal.

They actually shut my site down due to the number of queries being called.

I had to turn off some modules in order to get it under their magic number.

I suppose if your site doesn't get much traffic, GoDaddy might be the way to go.

However, once your site starts seeing spikes in traffic or gets around 10,000 views you can forget about it.

I'm on their Ultimate Hosting and they say you can have like 600 or more connections at one time. That's a laugh -- especially with Drupal installed.

I suppose you get what you pay for as its real cheap. I haven't used their Dedicated Servers, yet. I tried one of their VPS packages, but it was slower than Ultimate Hosting at 3x the cost.

Now, I'm looking at Dedicated Hosting at other places. It's going to cost me 20x more, but in the long run, I think it will be worth it.

*Added - I'll say their customer service is terrific, though.

*Update: Use Boost. Caching is a must for shared hosting.

theabacus’s picture

I have used Liquidweb to host personal and professional websites (including Drupal sites) for over 12 years and have been very pleased. They aren't the cheapest host, but their tech support (U.S. based, I believe. Speak American English) is excellent and their servers are top-notch. I am not knowledgeable in server management, but cPanel/WHM makes it fairly easy for me to handle the basic tasks. Anything beyond that, a simple phone call typically gets the job done. I can't say I have ever waited more than 1-2 minutes on hold; normally they pick up immediately. Their techs are generally quite knowledgeable, and if they do not know they will seek help from senior technicians. In the dozens of support calls I have had over the years, I have only had a small percentage of average/poor experiences.

They don't do all that "unlimited" none sense. The server specifications and limits are clearly listed out. Anyway, just my two cents. To my knowledge they won't install Drupal for you...but that is a simple task to accomplish yourself.

Tresler’s picture

Hello,
I think an important distinction I haven't seen in this conversation is clarifying unmanaged vs. managed hosting.

The support from an unmanaged host such as godaddy - will always be very perfunctory. They can reboot the server and wipe your directory to start over, but they actively cannot do true support, and you are in charge of making sure your site is up, backed up, and secure. A good managed host will manage things for you. Backups, site monitoring, 24/7 active support, server security upgrades, etc.

If you're looking for a company to really partner with to maintain your web site, you should be looking towards managed hosting.

geoffmen’s picture

I just registered my domain on gandi.net. I was wondering, if I need a host mainly for a drupal site, why not use Drupal Gardens?
Will I have as much control as I would using a VPS? (for example, install any modules, manage database, use drush?) Are there any experiences to share?

laz0rama’s picture

liquidweb seems to be pretty reliable, and very good support.

most hosting companies have a drupal auto-install (one-click, simple scripts, etc), but that says nothing about how well they actually know and/or support drupal.

dreamhost used to be the best in the business imo. but over the past 2 years they have completely changed, and not for the better.

hostmonster is not bad either.

JamesOakley’s picture

Liquid Web are definitely at the top end of the hosting industry.

You always need to make a judgement as to what kind of hosting you want. You can have the very best hardware and support in the industry, but you'd also expect to pay for the privilege; you can pay little if that's what your budget allows, but don't expect so much. Of course, not every expensive host is good, and not every cheap host is bad, but there's always the trade-off - how much am I prepared to pay in order to secure that extra bit of support.

But if in doubt ask. I always advise people to send off a pre-sales e-mail or two asking questions. If a host claims to support Drupal, why not ask a question that only someone who knows Drupal would understand? "I'm thinking of using your host to run a Drupal 7 site - would I be able to set up a cron job to run every hour? What would I have to put in the box where the hosting control panel asks what job I want to run?" Does the host know that Drupal 7 introduced a unique cron key, for example? And do they give you access to cron at all?


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laz0rama’s picture

warning: liquidweb has some mysql servers that are old, and use the old mysql password hash instead of the new one. this should not be an issue, but unfortunately it is.

i installed drupal 7 on one account i have there - i tried both a manual install and a one-click. upon submitting the database info, you get a database access error - the install does not complete, as database authentication fails. and there is NO WAY TO FIX IT (on your own)!!! you cannot change the mysql user password, since you cannot log into mysql. it is a kind of catch-22.

the ONLY way to get around this issue (IF you happen to get one of their older mysql servers), is by contacting liquidweb support and getting them to create a new database user/password for you.

for a hosting company with such a sterling reputation and great support, it seems absurd to me that (in the obviously common scenario of getting assigned to one of the old mysql servers) it is impossible to install drupal - or for that matter use mysql at all - without contacting their support.

i also hate the way cpanel (so widely used, including by liquidweb) forces your filesystem configuration. if you are hosting multiple domains, you have to jump through hoops to get the domains to reside where you want them in the filesystem, and again, their support has to make some configuration changes to make it work. why should you not simply be able to specify the directory where a given domain is going to live?

although their support (and even their infrastructure) has degraded dramatically in the past 2 years, dreamhost has by far the best control panel i have ever used (custom i am sure). i sure wish they hadn't gone so far downhill.