2007 Hosting evaluations and recommends

How is there customer support? I am looking to switch from my hosting company to another. I currently use 1and1, but lately I have not been happy with there service or support. I will make a similar list to yours. This is what I get:
-----------------
Sub domains - 5 / 200
Host 1and1 domains - 5 / unlimited
Host external domains - 3 / 100
MySQL databases - 9 / 50
MySQL disk usage - 100MB each is the limit
Disk usage - 913.16 MB / 200,000.00 MB
File limit - 31,670 / 262,144 files
Email accounts - 9 of 2500
Mailbox size - 2GB each is the limit
Email forwarders - 0 / unlimited
Autoresponders - 3 / unlimited
FTP accounts - 3 / 25
Monthly Transfer Volume - 2500GB is the limit
Comes with 3 free domains

I also spend about $90 USD a year, its nice that they have so much bandwidth and disk space, but a file limit is dumb (they limit the number of files you can have). For the MySQL databases, 100MB can be small at times, but the disk space you use with the databases and the email accounts is separate (It does not take away from your original 200GB)

When I started with this company, their servers seemed to be fast and their support had much faster responses. Now when you send an email to their support, you immediately get an auto-response back saying that they expect to respond to my email within the next 12 to 24 hours. I have had them go much longer than that. And there servers seem to be over-crowded or just slow, I pay for one of the 'premium' accounts, I should be put on a server that has less websites or a faster server. I did a reverse IP lookup on my site, I have 261 other sites hosted on the same server, now I found some website hosted by other web hosts and did a reverse IP lookup and have seen servers with well over 500 websites on them, so I don't understand why 1and1 is so slow.

But thats my 2 cents about 1and1

Someone told me that Site5 would be a good place to switch too, what do you all think?

I'd like to give an update on Media Temple (about whom I complained in the 2006 thread). I've been with them since they introduced their GridServer service and complained like many others about downtime and slowdowns. However, things seem to have improved dramatically since then and although the service still isn't the fastest in the world if you're too far away from their servers it is reliable and offers more for $20 a month than I could imagine possible. I wouldn't recommend this for high profile critical path sites (supposedly their virtual and dedicated servers are pretty good for that - they run TechCrunch) but if you're like me and need to host a large number of low-medium traffic sites, particularly with US audiences, I cannot recommend them highly enough. I run Drupal, Wordpress, Gallery 2 and a homegrown CMS sites on them and they're as easy to administer as if I had my own server (full SSH, php.ini access).

I also like the way the company has addressed their problems (http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2007/01/19/anatomy-of-mysql-on-the-...). Their email support isn't as good as I've had elsewhere but eventually all problems are resolved (usually first response comes in 24 hrs). But most of my problems have been related to the general levels of service and I haven't had to contact them in almost a month.

______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com

Do not use doteasy. They have configured their system so that drupal does not work, and if you ask them any questions they will tell you to use joomla.

I work for struggling non-profits, ie, no money. I liked ByetHost and Awardspace because they offered free hosting that can be upgraded.

Free ByetHost
* 5 mysql databases
* forced banners
* upgraded to $2.95/mo to remove forced banners

Free Awardspace
* 1 mysql database
* no forced banners

I installed 4.7 on ByetHost for one non-profit and 5.1 on Awardspace for a second non-profit.

I was happy as a clam. Then ByetHost reorganized their clusters unannounced changing DNS and usernames, passwords, etc. and my web site went down. I struggled for 5 days to get it working and could not even get a reinstallation to work. phpMyAdmin was crippled so I had to load up some utilities for database backup and restore. I am still struggling. My concern with BH is they don't mind changing things and disabling php functions on the fly. htaccess is a minefield. If your php code has errors involving permissions or access, BH throws up a generic screen that hides any details. Not a stable platform.

Awardspace seems to be more stable. I will see how it goes.

I am now looking for another free/cheap service to replace ByetHost. I don't want to put all my eggs in the Awardspace basket, but I may have to.

John

I recommend HostMonster. HostMonster with unlimited domains, unlimited MySQL, PHP, live 24/7 free phone support.

Dreamhost is a close runner up. Dreamhost also has unlimited domains and unlimited MySQL. But it is slightly more expensive and does not have unlimited phone support. But Dreamhost does have a great referral program. For example, I can create a "promo code" (such as "educational") that I can give to people. If people enter that "promo code" when signing up for hosting with Dreamhost, then I get $97 dollars. I can even give that person a discount (say $25) if they use the promo code. But that $25 dollars comes out of my $97 dollars.

artcoder

Do not go to US Web Design and Hosting. They allow their customer service guy to go ballistic over nothing and then express his personal prejudice by pulling the plug suddenly. Besides, they charge way too much for a domain name.

I am currently using 247-host.com and they are pretty good stink. I use the lowest level "reseller" plan (cheap) to host a bunch of sites. My only first complaint is the same one I've gotten at every host I've used: If you ask a question about something related to Drupal, they say "Go back to the person who gave you the command." That's not very useful when it comes to things like setting up Cron, which is so host-dependent. The other thing biggest problem is that they do have [often extended] periods of slow-downs or just down; that's a risk when you use shared hosting, but this is incredibly bad and frequent. Yesterday, all my sites were down for over 5 hours because "we had a user abusing the system."

Nancy W.

http://www.webhostingjury.com/
- Extensive user reviews and ratings of hundreds of web hosts.
- 79 web hosts had the minimum number of reviews to receive rankings.
- Ratings by one or two users can skew rankings so read reviews to make sure the rankings are warranted.

http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/
- Provides Best and Worst lists with reviews.

http://just-ping.com/
- Measure web host for lost packets and delays. Packets are sent from several sites in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

http://www.hyperspin.com/
- Monitor web host at set intervals
http://www.hyperspin.com/ranking.php?type=1
- 159 Ranked web hosts.

John

I have been researching web hosts for 2 weeks after having some bad experiences.

I wanted a shared web host with
* excellent user reviews
* low fees
* monthly billing cycle
* no setup fee
* no disabled PHP functions
* reliable track record
* responsive support
* Paypal payments

PolurNET appears to meet my criteria.

PolurNET:
http://www.polurnet.com/shared/compare.php

PoluNET reviews and reliability:
http://www.webhostingjury.com/
http://www.geekcertified.com/display-86.html
Uptime: http://www.hyperspin.com/geekcertified/www.polurnet.com
Packet delay for for server #8 BISMARK:
http://www.watchmouse.com/en/ping.php?vtt=1172887428&varghost=bismarck.n...

PolurNET Status reports:
http://status.polurnet.com/
--> forums for 8 servers (requires one forum account)

Server #1
BIONIC (bionic.nsglobalhost.net) (bionic.nsglobalhost.net)
Since: December 30, 2006
Outages: 1
Total Uptime: 99.995%
Monitor: Every 5 minutes
Last Check: March 2, 2007 at 6:10 PM PST+3.0
Year Outages / Checks Uptime
2007 1 / 17924 99.994%
2006 0 / 374 100.000%
Year Month Outages / Checks Uptime Downtime
2007 March 0 / 485 100.000% 0.000%
2007 February 0 / 8200 100.000% 0.000%
2007 January 1 / 9239 99.989% 0.011%
2006 December 0 / 374 100.000% 0.000%
Average response time: 0.079 seconds

Server #8
BISMARK is the server used for new customers
BISMARCK (bismarck.nsglobalhost.net)
Since: February 14, 2007
Outages: 1
Total Uptime: 99.936%
Monitor: Every 5 minutes
Last Check: March 2, 2007 at 6:01 PM PST+3.0
Year Outages / Checks Uptime
2007 1 / 4719 99.936%
Year Month Outages / Checks Uptime Downtime
2007 March 0 / 470 100.000% 0.000%
2007 February 1 / 4249 99.929% 0.071%
Average response time: 0.051 seconds

If anyone has experience with PolurNET as a Drupal host, please post.

I will update this post with my experiences.

John

AngryHosting rocks.

The servers are fast (both in adminstration and serving), the spam filters are top notch, the control panel is simple and clean, and their minimal plans are unmatched in value. $12/year for a GB of storage, what! They are security minded and they don't run php as cgi.

The trade off is support is by email only.

http://angryhosting.com

I've been hosting my sites on Servage for the past year. They work great with drupal!

For eu6.35 a month you will get:
250gb space (25gb more if you use the coupon)
2100gb transfer
Unlimited email accounts
1000 mysql databases.
Unlimited domains and subdomains.

and also, you get a domain name for one year (or an extension of a current one)

Every support call I've made, they've given quick and informative replies.

Use this link to get 25gb more space:
http://www.servage.net/?coupon=getfreespace25gb

Hey all,

I've been following the webhost reviews for some time now, as my 2-year contract with my current host is up in June of this year. My current host, iPower, recently started advertising 200GB of disc space, but don't tell you about the 50k file count limit. I've read so many reviews from different sites that my eyes need a vacation...

What I am currently hosting with ipower is this:

Personal / family website powered by drupal and gallery
At last count, over 5k photos, taking up just over 2GB of disc space
My Drupal install hosts a few meager (aka dead) forums ;), tons of RSS feeds, and a few blogs. It's mainly just a place for me to share my photos, and eventually the results of my genealogical research.

The site is currently hovering at just under the 50k file count limit, so I can't add more pictures easily until I relocate the site.

I was wondering if anyone else was using a webhost that offered something between 5-10GB of space without wanting a virtual arm and leg for it.

Thanks!! Ian

I'm on OpenSourceHost (https://www.opensourcehost.com/), which I found through their partner site, OpenSourceCMS (http://www.opensourcecms.com/). I think they're package is very competitive, but what attracted me to them was their focus on open source CMS and other software. They'll install and upgrade packages for no extra charge, and though I am trying to do all the installation and back-end stuff myself, they have excellent service, usually responding within a couple of hours, and have really helped me out on some stuff that I couldn't figure out myself. I'm really happy with them.

Regarding their support, I find they are willing to go a step beyond for customer support CMS questions. If they don't know the answer, they don't just tell you, "that's a CMS problem," but they actually try to figure it out by investigating the CMS documentation. Wow!

I'm looking at Dreamhost as a potential host for my Drupal site (particularly because of their nonprofit program) and was wondering about their reliability. I've been reading reviews of their service on other sites and a few people are talking about downtime or slow performance at least once a week. Is anyone else having these issues, or are these just a couple customers who had a problem once (hey, nobody's perfect) and are really blowing things out of proportion?

I'm looking to host a site with CiviCRM and Organic Groups (and a few other smaller modules) and want to be sure I'm signing up with a reliable host. Thanks.

There isn't a perfect webhoster, that is why I use five!
My favourite one is LunarPages. Because I can only have 10 addon domains there, I host most of my smaller sites (just html) with Dreamhost.
If you are looking into any webhosting service, and need a coupon, check http://www.coupons.fm
I try to get the best ones out of the companies. And the more referrals I get, the better coupons they give me.

I was about to move my domains to webhostingbuzz (excellent 3$ per month for 30GB disk and 1000GB bandwith and unlimited domains hosted) but then I read on the net a lot of very bad reviews about webhostingbuzz, mainly pertaining to servers frequently going down, slowdowns, disconnected service and poor customer.service.

See sample reviews in the following links:

http://www.hostchart.com/host_reviews.asp?ID=1523
http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/WebHostingBuzz
http://www.webhostingstuff.com/review/WebHostingBuzzcom.html

mmm I guess I will keep on searching...

I tried SiteGround and was not happy at all with their services. In the month I used them the site was super slow, or completely down a number of times.

Their installation of PHPMyAdmin didn't work 90% of the time.

The customer service response was quick, but not very good or thorough. I had several tickets closed with reasons like, file under a different subtopic. WTF is that? In this day and age the support team should be able to shuffle tickets around to respond to problems, not put the onus back on the customer. They also tended to blame my ISP for problems even though I've never had the problem at any other hosting companies I have used, and the problems occured from multiple locations using competely different ISPs.

Finally I got fed up and tried to cancel 31 days in. Even though there is a 30 day money back deal, at day 31 they won't even return part of your money.

So, just avoid SiteGround. There are better offers out there anyway. They don't give you any add on domains for free for example.
Stay away. Far away.

$8.10 per month (canadian).
- 310Gigs. storage.
- 3000 gigs monthly transfer.

Mail Features
- Unlimited POP3 Mailboxes [?] - Unlimited IMAP Mailboxes [?]
- Unlimited E-Mail Forwarders - SMTP Server
- Online Mail Access (Webmail) - Catch-All Mailbox [?]
- Spam Filtering [?] - Unlimited Mailing Lists

Web features
- 310 GB Web Space (310000 MB) [?] - 3000 GB Transfer [?]
- Unlimited FTP Accounts [?] - FTP Access [?]
- 1000 MySQL Databases (v4 & v5) [?] - FTPS (Encrypted FTP)
- PHP v4.4.4 & PHP v5.2.1 [?] - GD Support [?]

- Shockwave & Flash [?] - Microsoft Frontpage Support
- Custom Error Pages - WAP Enabled [?]
- XML Support [?] - Mod_Rewrite Enabled
- EXIF Support [?] - CGI/Perl [?]
- SSI Support [?] - Python Support
- Private CGI-BIN [?] - ionCube Loader
- Zend Optimizer - Run Zend Encoded Scripts
- Optional Hotlink Protection - CURL Enabled
- PHPMyAdmin - Webbuilder Software Included
- ImageMagick Support - Netpbm Support
- Ruby on Rails - Wildcard Domains
- Password Protected Directories - Full .htaccess & .htpasswd Support

Additional Features (included)
- Web Based Administration Panel - Full DNS Management
- 1 New Domain Included (or transfer) - Multiple Domain Hosting
- Unlimited Subdomains - Own Cronjobs
- Online Web Statistics - Online Filemanager

- Automatic Script Installer [?]
Content Management Systems:
Drupal v4 (4.7.5)
Drupal V5 (5.0.0)
E107 (0.7.8)
Joomla (1.0.12)
PHPFusion (6.01.6)
Postnuke (0.764)
Typo3 v4 (4.1.1)

Blogs:
BBlog
WordPress (2.1)

Discussion Boards:
phpBB v2 (2.0.22)
punBB v1 (1.2.14)
SMF (1.1.2)

E-Commerce:
OSCommerce
ZenCart (1.3.7)

Groupware scripts:
WebCalendar (1.0.5)

Guestbooks:
OpenBook (1.2.2)

Image Galleries:
Coppermine (1.4.10)
Gallery V2 (2.2.1)
MG2 (0.5.1)

Polls:
VzPoll

ki's:
DokuWiki (2006-11-06)
PmWiki (2.1.27)

And another interesting feature:

Servage Webdrive

As addition to common uploading methods such as FTP and HTTP we also offer the Servage Webdrive. This feature enables you to mount your hosting account as a drive (e.g. S:) on your local PC.

Virtual Hard Disk
Use your Servage account for personal documents and files. You can access your data from any Internet connected PC. No more need for USB keys, CDs and Disks.

In many cases it is inconvenient to use a normal FTP client when creating scripts or websites as each change must be manually uploaded.

Easier Web Programming
Creating and updating scripts is easy when your hosting account is mounted as drive. Webdrive allows you to use your favorite editor and simply save your changes and the changes are applied to your hosting environment – instantly!

With Webdrive you can take full advantage of the high amount disk space included in your account. You are no longer limited to hosting only your website and email but can also use your account as external storage!

http://www.servage.net/

I don't write this lightly as I have been a huge fan of TextDrive. A buddy and I got together and bought in early with them for the $500 lifetime hosting account. Initially they were hands down the best host I have ever used for this level of hosting.

Now the servers go down over and over several times a day and I get lame tech support replies 5 to 6 days later, if at all, saying the server has been known to have issues but none can be found. This is seriously lame hosting now... my guess is this is their way of dumping those foolish early clients that bought in.

It is a shame with all the amazing open source software out there these hosting companies provide such crappy hosting for the community. I decide to post this to save some other folks the hassle of believing the hype of TextDrive.

this is a plug for my own hosting company

We have just launched our own hosting company (reseller), Fsh Hosting and as part of the Drupal community, I hope you will consider using us to host with. We offer three levels of hosting package;

• Fsh Individual - GBP2/month or GBP22/Year
• Fsh SME - GBP5/month or GBP54/Year
• Fsh Corporate/Unlimited - GBP10/month or GBP108/Year

Please see the Fsh Hosting website where you can compare our hosting packages

If you have any questions, then send us a message (Contact Fsh Hosting)
--
Fsh Media¦Fsh Hosting - Website hosting¦Fsh Publishing - Online magazines¦

Hostgator.com

I've been his client for over 1 year.
Packages increased storage size and transfer ammount some months ago.

The service is really great and I think is cheap and worth.

For 6.95 a month you get 50 Gb of disk space and 200 Gb of bandwith.
Cpanel with fantastico included.

-----------------------------------------------
My site

I just had to laugh on the "my eyes are bleeding" post, mostly because I was thinking the very same thing!

I need to switch hosts, but I'm not sure the grass is greener on the other side of the fence because I switched to the host I am at because my previous host was not delivering.

I think a chart listing the features most important to "our" community should be put up. It could be handled like any Drupal project (I would even volunteer to author and moderate.)

This chart would have two huge benefits in my opinion:

A) A drupal user could quickly find a host that really meets their needs. (Let's face it, some of us need lightening speed and some don't)
B) A host that's not cutting the mustard, but wants the business of our ever so quickly growing community could see at a glance where they are going wrong and address it.

What do you think?

eUKhost

Subdomains - unlimited
Parked Domains - unlimited
Addon Domains - unlimited
Mysql databases - unlimited
Disk usage 200MB / 25GB
MySQL Disk usage - combined with package disk quota
Bandwidth (this month) 2GB / 250GB
Email accounts - unlimited
Email forwarders - unlimited
Autoresponders - unlimited
Email filters - unlimited
Mailing lists - unlimited
FTP accounts - unlimited

Most important aspects of eUKhost Hosting plans are are high security of servers, quick software updates, Uptime, Server Hardware Quality, browsing speed and support response.

I know some people have had trouble, but I've had very few problems with their hosting. I've been hosting Drupal sites there for more than 2 years now. On my reseller account I have more than 20 Drupal sites running, and I maintain several on old multi-site accounts as well as the $5 Deal accounts.

Ever since they moved their accounts around to have even fewer accounts per server, I've had almost zero problems. The few things I've run into are minor and taken care of quickly.

Setting up multi-sites has been extremely easy ever since I learned how to do symlinks. Now I'm running several multi-site setups.

My favorite thing about the reseller account is my "skeleton" directory. In there I keep the newest version of Drupal along with the modules I use most often. When I create a new account, the files are automatically copied into the account. My next step is going to be making a site with the most common used settings for all the modules. Then I can load that using PHPMyAdmin and I won't even have to go through and do all the module settings every time.

--
Jenni S.
http://www.nu-look.net
Portland, OR metro area
Contact Me

Hi all!

We have Fast and Secure EUROPEAN Web Hosting on UK servers, with cheapest prices.

Check it here - http://www.webservice.ge

Thank You.

* * * * * * * * * *

www.webservice.ge --- Fastest European Hosting

I'm using www.resellerzoom.com happily. They give 4GB storage with 60GB bandwidth per month with their budget plan.

--
Cheers,
Sivanandhan, P. (a.k.a. apsivam)
www.apsivam.in

Some of you might find interesting a new article about Drupal Hosting on themegarden.org.

---
Drupal Themes Live Preview - themegarden.org

I've been using Jag for several years. I was with Aletia, which was mediocre, until they got bought out by JaguarPC, and now they've been top notch (perhaps 6 years with Jag so far).
* 17,000 MB web space
* 210,000 MB transfer
* Unlimited domains & email
* MySQL PHP4/5, Ruby on Rails
* $8/month (I think it's actually something like $7.97*12 billed annually

*Drupal Support.
They have fantastico push-button Drupal install, though frankly, I don't care for fantastico. If you just want plug and play, though, it's an easy way to get Drupal up and going without having to use FTP or what have you.

*Tech Support.
I rate it as absolutely excellent, but be aware that they have added phone support and live chat in the last year. Before that it was ticket system only. I have not used support since they added phone support and that may have degraded or improved the overall service. I have no idea. Every interaction I've had with tech support has been great though.

Yosemite Explorer - hiking and climbing in Yosemite (drupal)

Note from drupal.org admins:This user is suspected to be a shill of friendlier.com. See also http://drupal.org/node/155797.

Hi,
I have found a very good Web Hosting Company - www.friendlier.com.
I use their Friendly plan for Just $4,95/mo and I have unlimited MySQL DB, E-mails etc.
On sign-up, you receive a free domain, but you can host as many as you wish.
Besides their support team is really good!!!
I sincerely recommend them!

Well, for the second time in a month I had random server outage / extreme slowness.

My sites are extremely low traffic: one is a family-only site, the other is currently in development.

One of the reasons I decided to try DreamHost was that I appreciated their apparent honesty in posting issues on "System Status." They showed some issues, even some serious ones, but they appeared to be resolved promptly and intelligently.

What I now know is that my accounts are affected by issues that do NOT appear on "System Status", and that occur much more frequently.

So, I've signed up for MediaTemple, and am running a test site there for the moment. So far Drupal seems to run much faster than on DH. On the down-side, their Knowledge Base is pretty poor -- DH's wiki always seemed to have documentation of my issues. So if you're just starting out (like I was a few months ago) and you need color-by-numbers, DH is OK training wheels, but MT seems to be the 10-speed.

I've been with them for a couple years without any real problems. Uptime was always decent, performance was fair (definitely not quick, but ok).

This week, though, uptime has been awful, and customer service dismal:
http://www.appdev.info/?q=node/106

I'm still stewing, but definitely considering a switch.

Bottom line isn't what the hosting provider gives you, but what your site requires. Unlimited bandwidth doesn't mean anything if your Drupal site is using 30% CPU resources. Shared hosting is for low traffic, low query, sites.

One of my 5.2 Drupal sites is serving 800-1,000 truly unique visitors per day. Even with the v5.0 performance setting and throttling, my site is taking a big nick out of the CPU. It would be more useful if folks posted traffic statistics with their recommendations. Then a person could get a better comparison of what a host can provide them.

A hosting provider these days can promise you just about anything, but the minute your site actually becomes useful to more than a handful of users, they will shut you down in a heartbeat. There is no such things as unlimited. A shared host isn't going to sacrifice an entire server full of accounts just so your Drupal site can run flawlessly. Bandwidth is just a marketing tool. My site is multimedia and full of forum posts and articles and it only uses a maximum of 40 gig a month. So offering me 250 gig of transfer per month doesn't really mean squat.

So if you have a popular site, or think you have an idea that will make for a popular site; Just beware that all these low cost offers come with a price. Moving a site is not a trivial matter especially when you have a few thousand users and 6gigs of files, along with a 100+ meg database. Make your comparisons mean something.

Cheers!

Anyone have any comments about godaddy.com?

I am running two sites on their free (banner-supported) hosting and they seem to be fast enough and reliable. Unless I hear something bad from somebody, I will eventually pay for their hosting to remove the banners.

I have several sites running on bluehost.com (for more than a year now) and have had no problems with them. They have very fast and good customer service. Their servers are pretty quick too and you can have MySQL 5 and PHP 5. They use CPanel which is very user-friendly IMO, and is more powerful than Vdeck. Their package options for the basic shared hosting are some of the best I've seen, plus they've been around for quite a while.

Another option is anhosting.com. They have almost the same deal as bluehost, and their servers are pretty quick (and stable) too.

Just my 2c.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
_{mybesinformatik.com - Drupal website development}

Does anyone know of any webhosts that will provide not only one-touch installation of Drupal 5 but also automate or simplify the upgrade process somehow (I'm imagining various ways this could work, my only requirement is that I not be responsible for downloading the package, unpacking it, running the correct scripts, etc. ) so that I can stay up-to-date with all the security patches?

Thanks.
P.S. I'm used to Drupal 4.7 and have yet to upgrade a 5.X install...if it's significantly easier to begin with this may be a stupid question. Then again, one click on cPanel or whatever is still preferable to having to upload and unpack a tgz file since I'd ideally like someone not-so-tech savvy to be able to do this or for it to be fully automatic.

I have been looking around and found that a surprising number of providers whom people say have excellent performance run php as CGI. (Hostingplex, Hostmonster and Dreamhost) I guess this doesn't affect performance all that much. Anyhow, it is supposed to be more secure that way.

I reckon the actual determining factor for performance is the database server. I suppose that if the database runs on the localhost it would have better performance than if it were a different machine than the web server. Hostingplex and Hostmonster both run on localhost. Dreamhost and Godaddy run separate database servers.

I'm currently developing a new site for a small club. I started designing it on my local machine to see if Drupal had what I needed, now I'd like to find a host and develop the site there until I'm ready to go live. I'm new to web development in general and have a couple questions.

1. Is it difficult to cut a domain name over to a new site?
2. When using Drupal is there any point to picking up a provided service such as e-Commerce, since there are modules for it?
3. How is setting up Drupal on a hosted site compared to your local machine? I know this will vary per provider, just trying to get an idea of what I'm in for.
4: Million dollar question, what is a good provider to go with if you are looking to start small for development and upgrade to go live? I expect the live site will be relatively small, and not a lot of traffic.

Hi Folks,

I've been paying attention to this thread because I have a site where the Adsense revenue is limited by the poor shared hosting performance at HostRocket. Post about how many gigs of files space are cool, but the most important thing, in my mind, is performance.

When I first moved to HostRocket, it was fast. But now it is really just another overcrowded server and HostRocket is rude about helping. I have seen the load average go up to 150! Of course, even when it is at 25, it is amazingly slow, and this can happen for hours a day.

Then, if I move it, how do we know it will not be really bad again after a few days, weeks or months?

So, does anyone know of a shared hosting provider who will guarentee performance (load average, uptime, etc)?

Thanks!

I have been using the siteground shared hosting plan for over a year. At first their hosting was not very good. However after they replaced the server I am on their service has been good. They are very responsive to any issues. There has been very little down time which has been resolved quickly. I run Drupal 4.7.0 as well as civicrm 1.7 in different databases.

The only downside is no SSH.

I am looking for reliable hosting companies who offer SSH.Any pointers will be appreciated.

Anyone have any experience with http://www.cyberultra.net/

Thanx

i've jumped through some shared hosting companies back when i just dumped flash files via ftp to a root dir (godaddy, doteasy, hostgator). i can't say much about support from these as i never really needed any (godaddy has all my domains, phone support has always been fast but not without them missing the opportunity to offer me something). last place i tried shared hosting was hostgator, meh. the acceptable user policies where scaring me, i knew if i maxed the accounts to the limits they would kick me out for "abuse". i also wanted to learn linux commands and how to manage and keep a server safe.

so i started looking for the next step vps (for noobs{managed}), so i found wiredtree.com on the webhosting talkforums, they had good reviews by known members of the community, they ran some ads on there too.

started with a basic vps in march, they had a coupon on webhostingtalk that made it $44 (from $49):

xeon(8cores), 256mb mem, 1gb burst mem, 30gb, 300gb bandwith, centos vps

as i added more sites, among other things, services where starting to restart automatically, i needed more ram, more space, more bandwith.

so now im happy with $89: same 8 xeon cores, 512mb ram, 2gb burst ram, 50gb store, 500gb bandwith

afterhours, the phone support system seems to get forwarded to the staffs personal phones, so they always answer, or one must leave a voice msg they call back immediately. such was the case a month or two back when a power strip (so simple...) failed, i immediately got an email stating all my services where down, called them, within a few minutes the rack was up again, no problems since that. support tickets and/or email gets answered in less than 10 minutes.

i know i could find something cheaper, but service has been excellent since march.

/rant.

I currently use Vistapages. They have been superb!

I need to build a Drupal site here in Australia (with e-commerce)
Is there a hosting company that can be recommended?
Are there hosting companies to be avoided?

All help appreciated

I want to warn Drupalizers for dutch hosting provider Digitalus http://digitalus.nl/. Service is good. Default settings are not good for Drupal, but the helpdeskpeople are willing to set things strait. Pricing is good. Helpdesk is responsive.

Weak points:
-A bit slow on SQL queries, probably because Mysql is on another server.
-Slow admin panel (but working)
-For every domain the /user URL is in use for there controlpanel software THIS SUCKS, /user is a Drupal system url. Aliassing /user doesn't help in all cases.

Do not use this host for Drupal. Otherwise, it's good value for money.

I have been doing reading on lots of shared webhosts. IMO there is no point focusing on negative reviews, because there will always be some and people with negative experience are the first ones to share it. I am currently with 1and1 and despite many negative reviews I am quite satisfied with value. Canaca has extremely bad ratings and 60 BBB complaints unresolved, I gave them a try and bandwidth is fantastic (although hardware is not - they use homegrown servers). Depends on what your needs are, someone needs excellent customer support and someone else needs first grade bandwidth.

Also important thing is that if your audience is in UK, your hosting should be in UK. The national bandwidth is almost unlimited, but the foreign bandwidth is a precious commodity. It's a bad decision to host across ocean unless most of your customer base is there.

The following website has reviews and does actual monitoring of many webhosts and includes uptime:

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/

Keep in mind that 99.98% uptime is 1hr 45 min downtime / year and 99% uptime is 87hrs/yr downtime.

Hi guys,

I'm currently looking for a VPS hoster in the US ($30 to $60/month).

Anybody has experience with Liquidweb?

Any other suggestion?

Thanks

Emmanuel

I've just looked at their terms of service (http://www.hostmonster.com/terms-of-service.html) and it seems that they can, and will, terminate your account without notice if your site contains, among other things, "Foul language and profanity in the site content".

Since my site will contain user provided content, there is no way I can guarantee that there will never be such language on the site at any given time. Also, I can't guarantee that my Admin will apply the same definitions as their Admins too certain words or phrases. Profanity is a particularly grey area!

Their service, otherwise, looks good! Does anyone know of a host that offers a comparible service but has more reasonable and workable terms regarding site content.

I am looking for a webhost that allow hosting of controversial website like

href="http://www.synthethic-androgen.com"/>anabolic steroid online shop

It is true than steroid is illegal in US but it it legal in other parts of the world.
Suppose that a webhost host a site that allows US and international buyers

href="http://www.synthethic-androgen.com"/>to buy steroid online

Hello Mike,

I'd recommend you to look for Asian Hosting providers. You won't have any problem with them.

Web Hosting UK

We are in a development stage for community site, so not expecting high traffic, however, I wonder any provider can offer this :

1.Allow increase PHP's memory limit upto/over 32M ( i have installed many modules i.e OG, events, location require high resource)
2.PHP as mod_php (Not CGI)
3.Shell access - mysqldump
4. Local MySQL database (not seperate machine)

-najibx-

Hey all -

I just wanted to share the recent experience I had with trying to sign up for webhosting services from dreamhost.com...

I'd been looking at different webhosts over the last few months as I've gotten fed up with my current webhosts 'shortcomings' ... They advertise that I've got 300GB of disk space at my disposal, but don't tell you about the 50k file limit they have imposed. My site is composed of a Drupal CMS front end for blogging and whatnot, and a gallery2 photo library for static photos, and that it is. Between those two applications, and all the logs that their server maintains, I can only keep about 4500 pics online at any given time, as I keep hitting that 50k file count limit, but am only using about 1.5% of the supposed 300GB of disk space (4.5GB?)...

I looked long and hard at dreamhost, and attempted to sign up for their service last week. I was in Bucharest on business when I purchased a plan through Google checkout.

The checkout procedure went smoothly enough, and I got my account created at dreamhost. The problems started when, after 24+ hours, my account was still 'pending'. I emailed them and simply asked when I could expect my account to be fully activated, so that I could move my website to their service. Here's the email thread... I was stunned....

Hello,

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, you wrote:
> I was wondering if you could tell me when my account will be fully active so that I can begin to transfer my site to dreamhost?

Your account was disabled by our fraud detection system. Your payment has also been refunded.

We request that you take your business elsewhere and we apologize that we won't be able to host you at this time.

Thanks,

Brett
--
DreamHost Billing Team + billing@dreamhost.com

I replied to their email, stating that I was shocked and appalled at how this whole application for service was handled. There was no contact from them asking for any clarification, they basically have told me to go suck wind... I have yet to receive a reply, and I am not holding my breath.

WTF???? Thoughts? Comments?

Regards // NoVARaif

I am happy with HostMonster. They have a script for install, the performance is pretty good, and the bandwidth is practically unlimited. The service is good, they have responded very timely. They have an excellent control panel and FTP and SSH access. I am quite happy with it and it is only $6 a month.

After reading recommendations on this site I moved my sites to AN Hosting in July. While my sites are a little faster with PHP 5, I am very dissappointed with the large number of down times. My sites are down at this moment, as they were yesterday for several hours, as they were a week ago for a couple of hours. This is an ongoing thing.

I am also continually frustrated at trying to get my cron runs to settle down. They were difficult to set up in the first place as the little piece of arcane script is not made obvious to anyone. I had to spend a lot of time in the forums before I finally came upon it. Since then, twice now, all of my crons quit running and I had to go through tech support to restart them. Right now the crons do not run on two sites and I have to implement them manually.

One more note, don't get conned as I was into believing that you can host 20 sites on one account. It works like this - you get one main site and all of your other sites are set up as sub-domains. You cannot mess with the main sites .htaccess file as it will affect all of them. It is also extremely difficult to change your file upload settings. Changing the .htaccess files or the php.ini files have no affect. As with the tech support staff of most hosts, it is difficult to get someone who really knows what they are doing to work with and overcome these problems.

No, I don't have a grudge against AN Hosting. I just believe in the old saw that you get what you pay for. They offer a great package for a really low price but the quality of the product is an entirely different matter. Of course, their response is, if you want better service, you have to pay for it.

I have to admit I was peaved when I wrote the comment yesterday as my site was down. I took some time and contacted tech support about my other issues and they were very friendly and helpful so I take back some of the negative remarks about tech support.

However... my site was down again this morning for quite some time. This is getting very annoying and I have let them know that.

I see IX Hosting was mentioned so I thought I should share my experiences with them as they have been my hosting providor for over 5 years before I switched.

IX was very, very good as a host. I really didn't have many issues with them. I also like how much control I had over the configuration of my sites and I love the fact that each domain had it's own unique address - none of the sub-domain crap. Why did I move from them? Their service is very slow. They have not yet moved to PHP 5 and their MySQL is also out of date. Why they have not upgraded their servers is still a mystery to me. Perhaps if they had, I would still be a customer.

Between the two hosting companies, I give AN a thumbs up for speed and keeping current with the latest software. As for the way the service is configured and the amount of downtime, I much preferred IX Webhosting. So, there you are.

Yes they should update that knowledge base articles. I don't know if they are bleeding edge but I am happy because I can do drupal 5.3 upgrade from the control panel. It takes a backup of the directories and the database and I don't have to worry too much about breaking stuff. What can I do I am lazy. I have SSH access and the server certainly isn't idle, but net performance and computer performance are pretty good. They are the same company as Bluehost but they are cheaper for some reason. Service with them has been good, they answer their tickets fast enough for me.
Hostmonster

Dear Drupalers!

It is my pleasure to announce the launch of new webhosting service.
http://www.DrupalValueHosting.com

The purpose is to provide the best hosting muscle to the best CMS system (i.e. Drupal, of course!)

Top Class Hardware:
Here are the Server Specs:
Xeon QuadCore 5335 'Clovertown', 4 x 2.0 GHz, 2 x 4 MB L2 Cache,
16 GB RAM (FB-DIMM)
Port Speed 1000 Mbps (Premium Bandwidth)

Latest Software:
The servers run the latest and most optimized application software.
1. OS: CentOS v5
2. Control Panel: cPANEL
3. Apache v2.2.6
4. Mysql5 : v 5.0.27
5. PHP5 : v 5.2.5
6. Curl, Openssl, Mcrypt, Mbstring, GD, eAccelerator, Bz2, Zip, XML, Soap, exif, json, RoR and lot more

See the PHPINFO() on the server in realtime:
http://www.drupalvaluehosting.com/status/index.php?action=phpinfo

Premium Bandwidth:
Whereas most shared hosts limit you on a 2Mbps to 10Mbps download speed, DVH provides 1000 Mbps rollercoaster download speeds! Here are some sample files to test the server download speed:

#1. Some beautiful wallpapers in a 10 MB zip file!
Direct URL : http://www.drupalvaluehosting.com/members/downloads/testfile10mb.zip

#2. Some beautiful wallpapers in a 20 MB zip file!
Direct URL : http://www.drupalvaluehosting.com/members/downloads/testfile20mb.zip

Also, we will limit the number of domains hosted on each server, so as to provide the best service.

Order/Purchase:
If you like what you see, get a hosting package rightaway, before we run out of hosting packages. Here is a list of packages:
http://www.drupalvaluehosting.com/members/order.php
The Prices start from $5.5/month for premium hosting!

Server Status:
The best thing about us is that our service would be transparent to the users. We share the server specifications, and more importantly the load and uptime status of our servers in real time on our website!

Here is the current Server Status report (realtime):
http://www.drupalvaluehosting.com/members/serverstatus.php

Feel free to ask us questions, would appreciate hearing from drupalers :)

Regards,
Steve
http://www.DrupalValueHosting.com
steve@drupalvaluehosting.com

we have (had) many client sites with them and the sites keep going down. Sometimes we get prompt response from support and sometimes not - there has been a dramatic downturn in their service over the last couple of months.

We now use http://www.mayfirst.org for our union built web sites and find them to be remarkable in terms of customer support/service, and their ability to respond during crises.

Highly recommend

http://www.realmetrics.com/r/shared-hosting

Their evaluation criterion seems objective.

Thanx

I'd like to compile speed test results for shared web hosts hosting drupal sites. Please see http://drupal.org/node/195108

and respond there (not here) with:

The name of your shared web host
the URL of your drupal site
the approximate number of installed non-core modules

Then we can run speed tests on the whole list at once.

I just found this nice web hosting provider www.crucialwebhost.com
Just signed up with them for couple of days ago. All I can say is they have a really nice support even for a noob like me. I use a coupon code diskon$60 to sign up and got $60 OFF instantly !!.
Here is what they are offering:

* 250GB Disk Space
* 2,500 GB Bandwidth
* Unique IP Address
* Shell Access (SSH, GCC)
* Unlimited Subdomains
* Wildcard Subdomains
* Addon Domains
* Unlimited Email Accounts
* Spam / Virus Protection
* PHP 5.2.x / MySQL 5.0.x / Python 2.3.x / Perl 5.8.x / Ruby On Rails
* Unlimited FTP Accounts
* Anonymous FTP Server
* Daily Site Backups
* Hourly SQL Backups
* Video Tutorials
* Ticket Support
* 24/7 Technical Support
* cPanel 11
* Fantastico Deluxe

I also wrote an article on one of my site to offer $65 OFF by using HOLIDAY (my own coupon code)

cheers

Initially, Mediatemple GS delivered intermittent performance, mostly related to the DB.
However, if you get a MySQL Grid Container, performance increases significantly.

For my site, showing 'worst case' / slowest page loads i experienced :

Before (smart pool): Longest query on homepage took 500ms
After (Grid Container Lite): Longest query on homepage took 8ms

Before (smart pool): Executed 75 queries in 705.24 milliseconds
After (Grid Container lite): Executed 75 queries in 50.24 milliseconds

Also, you can enable zend optimizer in PHP.ini which helps page execution times pretty significantly.

I fought w/ the MySQL Smart pool setup for a month or so before giving in and getting the SQL container, which lets you tweak my.cnf as well.

all in all, 40 bucks a month for a pretty stellar package in my opinion.

EDIT: Steve at Drupal value hosting invited me to try out their service, so i gave it a shot... pretty impressive. Results posted in mediatemple forum:
http://drupal.org/node/157762#comment-673242

It's very cheap. Thanks.

been struggling to get things going on ipower for a couple days, slack helpdesk (tables) & some other goofy stuff. After 4 days i went with Anhosting, copied the files over, gave permissions to the default site folder, was up in 15 mins. Cheaper to :) !!!

It will be deleted quickly.