[el chupacabra]

Ok I've been looking a for a vps hosting solution for about 2 weeks now. Every review I read isn't just bad it's horrible. People are describing these hosting companies like flat out scams, that don't offer 1/3 of what they say.

All I find when searching is those $4/mo -$9/month cheap solutions. Other web hosting boards are recommending hostmonster, godaddy and hostgator. But then I search on these and there is thousands of bad reviews on blog sites; even a site called nodaddy.com describing their scams.

...But there are millions of pages out there that are going strong so I know there has to be good hosting companies. Does anyone know any of them? That is without going to a $150/mo dedicated server.

Really I just want something that does the basics; not cut me off for using 5% of memory/cpu, uptime 99%, cgi/perl.

Right now the runner up is yahoo hosting.

Any suggestions?

[ghporter]

Looked at 1 and 1? I've had them for about a year, and they're pretty easy to work with. Their prices aren't bad either. I don't know about how they handle server-side stuff because I don't use anything like that.

[besson3c]

What do you need from your host, exactly?

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Looked at 1 and 1? I've had them for about a year, and they're pretty easy to work with. Their prices aren't bad either. I don't know about how they handle server-side stuff because I don't use anything like that.

We used them in the UK and had nothing but trouble with them. Expensive too. Sorry, but I would never recommend them.

[Eriamjh]

How about $20/mo or $240 per year? Click the link then on "Web Hosting".

It's not a dedicated server, but it is not some massively shared server.
I've been with them since 2000 and they host three sites for me now.

[besson3c]

I would suggest figuring out what you really need before you look at all of these options so you can figure out what has the most value to you. For some people something like full backups or more personalized support is more valuable than Python support, for some the opposite might be true. Don't simply compare who has the longest checklist of "features" for the cheapest price, this is a game that the hosting providers play. The more "stuff" you provide, the more resources are required to do so. This often equates to a larger company, particularly if there is a large installed base, which means less personalized attention for you and more red tape.

Just something to consider...

[MacosNerd]

What are your needs? Storage, email/webmail, bandwidth etc.

Personally I'm going with ICDSoft I get answers to my questions within 10 minutes or less, their uptime is top notch. I have enough storage and bandwidth to do what I want. I love their webmail client.

If you search hard enough you'll find someone complaining about every web host.

Before joining ICDSoft I was leaning towards hostmonster, and LunarPages but I really don't like squirrel mail and Horde and both companies use those for their webmail.

People here rave (and rant) about dreamhost. They have some high bandwidth settings.

Finally I think you're reading into too much stuff and now your paralyzed by fear of making a wrong decision. Most web host offers 30 (or more) days to try it out and if you don't like it you can get a full refund.

[el chupacabra]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Don't simply compare who has the longest checklist of "features" for the cheapest price, this is a game that the hosting providers play. The more "stuff" you provide, the more resources are required to do so. .

Yeah I've noticed that. That list of features doesn't interest me at all. Dont need tons of space, band, features, or email, but do need cgi scripting, security, uptime(95% would be good), and privacy. I'm at the point where I'm just looking for a good honest company that can keep a very basic news site up and honor their contract. With most of them, their terms of service essentially say they can do whatever they want. Godaddy for example has a history of giving up people's privacy info. People pay extra for this but it has been found that a single call to godaddy and you can get anyone's information, or just accuse them of Offending you and they'll shut you down. Other companies say you get 3TB of bandwidth yet people use up their (hidden) monthly memory maximum long before ever reaching 1TB. Or companies are hacked and when a users email is used for spam the company shuts the site down accusing their customer of spamming.
In the 30 day money back it says in their tos that you will be charged a nonrefundable setup fee of around $20... You only get back your monthly fee.

Anyway thanks for the suggestions everyone. I will look at those, and hopefully I am reading too much into this. I wrote an email to dreamhost asking if theyd improved things and they said I should realize that dissatisfied people are always the most vocal. That maybe true but it also might be true that these sites really just have their servers set up for small unsuccessful businesses (that get little traffic), or rarely visited family pages, maybe that's who they're marketing to.

edit: laptop induced typos

[RAILhead]

(mt) Media Temple

End of thread.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

End of thread.

Not at those prices wow

[Mastrap]

100 GBs of premium storage
1 TB of short-path bandwidth
Host up to 100 individual sites
1000 email accounts
64 MB Ruby/Mongrel container
Money Back Guarantee
All of the features below, and more...

for $20 a month is not bad at all.

The main reason we're staying with dreamhost is that we are allowed to host unlimited domains on our plan. That allows us to give away free websites to all of our authors.

[Mithras]

thumbsup for MediaTemple. Switched to them from Dreamhost and have much better speeds, more reliable service, and the flexibility of a quasi-virtualized host.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

We used them in the UK and had nothing but trouble with them. Expensive too. Sorry, but I would never recommend them.

Maybe they're different over here. No problems for me at all, and I have a package that is downright cheap.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by Mithras 

thumbsup for MediaTemple. Switched to them from Dreamhost and have much better speeds, more reliable service, and the flexibility of a quasi-virtualized host.

How many sites did you switch and how much hassle was involved? What scares me most would be our databases - we have about 20 running, all of them vital to the business.

[RAILhead]

I run 10 sites with media temple, and I've been using them for over 5 years.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by RAILhead 

I run 10 sites with media temple, and I've been using them for over 5 years.

I'm not saying their bad - the was just stunned by the sticker shock. I'm a big believer in you get what you pay for. dreamhost has a reputation of over promising and under delivering. You get cut rate uptime and speed because you have a cut rate price. I have ICDSoft and its not the cheapest but I find it for my personal site perfect.

If you plan on running a serious site, or a business then it makes sense not to cut corners.

for curiosity sake what does Media Temple use for webmail and do they use the ubiquitous cpanel to maintain your site? I like ICDSoft's custom interface, very easy to setup and customize your settings and their webclient is much better then squirrel mail - that product never really impressed me.

[Mithras]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

How many sites did you switch and how much hassle was involved? What scares me most would be our databases - we have about 20 running, all of them vital to the business.

Just two personal sites, so nothing too adventurous. But I dumped and reloaded 4-5 MySQL databases without a hitch.

Originally Posted by MacosNerd

for curiosity sake what does Media Temple use for webmail and do they use the ubiquitous cpanel to maintain your site?

It uses a atmail by default, which is a pretty nice ajaxy webmail, an a custom control panel.

I'm on the $20/month gridservice plan.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by el chupacabra 

Yeah I've noticed that. That list of features doesn't interest me at all. Dont need tons of space, band, features, or email, but do need cgi scripting, security, uptime(95% would be good), and privacy. I'm at the point where I'm just looking for a good honest company that can keep a very basic news site up and honor their contract. With most of them, their terms of service essentially say they can do whatever they want. Godaddy for example has a history of giving up people's privacy info. People pay extra for this but it has been found that a single call to godaddy and you can get anyone's information, or just accuse them of Offending you and they'll shut you down. Other companies say you get 3TB of bandwidth yet people use up their (hidden) monthly memory maximum long before ever reaching 1TB. Or companies are hacked and when a users email is used for spam the company shuts the site down accusing their customer of spamming.
In the 30 day money back it says in their tos that you will be charged a nonrefundable setup fee of around $20... You only get back your monthly fee.

Anyway thanks for the suggestions everyone. I will look at those, and hopefully I am reading too much into this. I wrote an email to dreamhost asking if theyd improved things and they said I should realize that dissatisfied people are always the most vocal. That maybe true but it also might be true that these sites really just have their servers set up for small unsuccessful businesses (that get little traffic), or rarely visited family pages, maybe that's who they're marketing to.

edit: laptop induced typos

Picking a good host is tough!

There is a ton of anecdotal information out there, a ton of different opinions, and whatever horror stories existed may have only been for a specific time in that company's history. Many of these companies boast "99% uptime", but WTF does that mean? How can they promise such a thing? In order to really offer that sort of uptime there needs to be a solid data recovery plan in place, but these sorts of operations are usually internal, private matters. Some people go by the uptime reports listed on Netcraft, but I don't think this is a good gauge either, because this may mean that the provider simply decided to forgo any OS updates.

If I were you I guess I'd just go for a host that has a reasonably good reputation, and a provider that seems to offer friendly, personalized service, and go from there. You are kind of rolling the dice, but that's the way it is going to be with any provider. There are no guarantees.

I would find a host that allows you to do mysqldumps and backup your own data over SSH (it can be automated that way), so that if you ever do decide to switch, it will be a trivial matter. You definitely want IMAP as well, although it should be relatively easy to migrate your data off of either POP or IMAP.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Mithras 

Just two personal sites, so nothing too adventurous. But I dumped and reloaded 4-5 MySQL databases without a hitch.


It uses a atmail by default, which is a pretty nice ajaxy webmail, an a custom control panel.

I'm on the $20/month gridservice plan.

I'm working on moving our University towards AtMail as our next Webmail environment. It is indeed nice, but the Advanced interface does not work in Safari right now, so plan on using Firefox for this.

Another nice AJAXy Webmail system is Roundcube, although it is light on features right now.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Another nice AJAXy Webmail system is Roundcube, although it is light on features right now.

Yeah, RC is easy on the eyes, but still beta.

After testing it for a while, I'm still not convinced it's ready to be used as a productive solution...

-t

[Big Mac]

Is there any host that offers IMAP boxes and not just POP?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Is there any host that offers IMAP boxes and not just POP?

Uhm, is there any that DOESN'T ?

IMAP is standard these days, if a host doesn't even do IMAP, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole...

-t

[Peter]

segpub.com.au = awesome

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Yeah, RC is easy on the eyes, but still beta.

After testing it for a while, I'm still not convinced it's ready to be used as a productive solution...

-t

I offer a semi-recent snapshot in addition to Squirrelmail as the old standby for this sort of reason. The Roundcube team wouldn't claim that it is production ready either, it is still under development.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Is there any host that offers IMAP boxes and not just POP?

Most, I would think. A host that provides web-based email is a pretty big cue that they offer IMAP.