Drupal hosting?

Posted by ccweaver39 on January 5, 2010 at 9:20pm

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering, what hosting do you use for your Drupal church installations? Our pastor wants us to stay away from GoDaddy because of their questionable advertising in the past.

So, what hosting services are you using? Are you happy with them? Are there any that you have had bad experiences with and want to stay away from?

Thanks!

Comments

I've done all of my domain

Posted by michaeldhart on January 5, 2010 at 9:37pm

I've done all of my domain reg and hosting for the past 3 years or so with site5.com and they've been great.

http://www.michaeldhart.com

site5 is great

Posted by williamn on January 15, 2010 at 6:03am

I use drush on deployment and site5 allow us to use ssh to make it even easier.

For comparable ease...

Posted by Branjawn on January 5, 2010 at 9:41pm

If you want to stick with shared hosting, I vote for Hostmonster.com

They have easy Drupal install/update using SimpleScripts on the CP.
You can unpack modules in the directory using CP.
I like the ease of those two functions, not having to do all kinds of FTP crap. :)

Good and bad

Posted by pastorjayrich on January 5, 2010 at 11:29pm

I work primarily with with Godaddy, Hostmonster and MediaTemple.
-- Godaddy is cheap, but it's UI is confusing. They do have a 1-click installer/upgrader for drupal which is nice. You can also schedule the upgrade to happen at a low usage time for your site, like 2am. Godaddy is difficult to update the .htaccess and php.ini if I remember correctly. Both are necessary for image modules. I have www.thediscipleshipdare.com hosted there.
-- Hostmonster (my personal fav) is pennies more than Godaddy, but the ease of use is well worth it. It's easy to install and update. php.ini and .htaccess are easy to work with. I have www.amentcreative.com, www.freedomvalleytulsa.com and others hosted there.
-- MediaTemple - Their installer uses Drupal 4.7.6 so you'll have to do your own install, but the hosting is good. i think it's the most expensive of the three. I have www.cometoconnect.com (work in progress) hosted here.

A2 Hosting

Posted by karma.code on January 16, 2010 at 10:50pm

A2 Hosting is a really dependable web hosting service. I switched from GoDaddy because they offered way too little and whenever I called them for help on something, their customer reps were completely clueless about the tech. I shopped around and found A2 Hosting (can't really remember how I was led to them) and have been a happy camper. They are excellent when it comes to getting my technical questions answered and very fast in their responses. I remember that I requested that a custom text editor be installed on my shared hosting service and they were more than happy to do it.

A2 Hosting.

HostGator

Posted by jsquyres on March 6, 2010 at 9:26pm

We've been using HostGator.com for a year or two and have been very pleased with the price, service, and uptime.

They, too, have a 1-click-install-Drupal thingy in their web-based control panel, etc. That's how we got introduced to Drupal, actually.

Dreamhost

Posted by rpeters on March 6, 2010 at 10:04pm

Well if your looking for prices you really can't beat free. Dreamhost has free hosting for nonprofits. It has 1-click installs, a panel the whole works!

works great for me

Posted by ccoppen on January 27, 2011 at 10:09am

It took us a while to get final confirmation, but it's been great once we started using it. I have shell access and everything. I even have drush set up on it. I did a custom install of Drupal.

The problem I see with some

Posted by WebNewCastle on March 7, 2010 at 7:08am

The problem I see with some shared hosting providers and Drupal is some of the limitations with particular providers that are not obvious. GoDaddy is one I recommend against for clients - they can be quite limiting and frustrating in many ways. The problem with HostGator is the hard limit on PHP memory. There are many providers who fall into this category. While this isn't an issue for every Drupal installation, it can be. 64M is often an insufficient memory limit when working with images.

I would highly recommend either a shared hosting providers who is a little more flexible or one that really embraces Drupal-based sites.

Without personal experience to back it, I would recommend looking closer at providers like AN Hosting - my understanding is they keep the database on the same machine. And perhaps more importantly, there are many in the Drupal community who recommend them.

Try GreenGeeks

Posted by LeonConrad on January 27, 2011 at 6:11am

Working for me - unlimited domain hosting (I use masked subdomains) and storage - and they're green.

Agreed! GreenGeeks is the way to go!

Posted by Kutakizukari on January 27, 2011 at 3:45pm

GreenGeeks works very well, which Drupal is one of their target audiences so they make sure their hosting plays well. Another one of my clients use Godaddy hosting and I cringe every-time I have to use their UI that is information overload and slow to load. I use eleven2.com for my personal site, which they are wonderful but I think I will move to GreenGeeks soon becasue it is cheaper for 3 years up front than eleven2 and I like that they are Green.

Greengeeks works...but

Posted by rajisabbagh on April 4, 2011 at 9:48pm

Hi I've got two clients on Greengeeks. They use to work really well but lately I've had some issues with server availability and they have dropped support for drush on shared hosting environments. They are now telling customers that in order to use drush a customer has to subscribe to a VPS service.

Greengeeks (should be allaboutgreen)

Posted by jusyjim on September 20, 2012 at 3:06pm

They come across so nice at the beginning. Truth is they are a bunch of liars. To add injury to insult they serious limit your your server resources so if you want to host a site with as little as 200 visitors per day be prepared to get an upsell on resources or live with server errors due to the limitations you have. I've built dozens of Drupal sites, hosted with many different providers, and let me tell you that these guys are, BY FAR, the worst. As far as support, if you like canned responses and a footer with an ad for an upsell then you'll love these guys. And finally, if you want to back up and move from these goofballs, be prepared... they have disabled backups in cpanel. What a colossal joke!!!

Bluehost

Posted by nickap on January 27, 2011 at 12:33pm

I have sites hosted on GoDaddy and Bluehost and so far I've found Bluehost to be very good. $3.95/month for unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth. The main thing though is the speed - it's significantly faster than GoDaddy. Pages load in half the time.

GreenGeeks

Posted by Branjawn on January 27, 2011 at 4:01pm

I tried GreenGeeks a few weeks ago. I was very excited, but was VERY disappointed with their customer service.

Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I called to activate my account, was told I was third in line and the wait would be about 5 minutes... 27 minutes later (yes i looked at my phone to see) the call dropped on their end and I had to start over. Next time I was second in line, said the wait was 2-3 minutes, waited another 15 minutes, I hung up.

So, I tried the chat help. I told the guy what had happened and he gave me a canned response instructing me to call again! He was very rude. I finally impressed upon him that I had been calling and waiting and was not getting through even though I was 2nd or 3rd in the queue. He said he would have someone call me. They called at 11:40pm!!!! I had gone to bed by then. I canceled the next day. Ridiculous.

Hostmonster: I have always had EXCELLENT support form them via phone and chat.
DreamHost: I am trying them out too and like them as well. They have a very useful support Wiki and a nice user interface.

Just my two pennies.

Does not sound good!

Posted by Kutakizukari on January 27, 2011 at 5:53pm

Does not sound good, so far I have not encountered bad support with them, though I believe with all, they can improve.

Maybe a start of a Drupal site?

Posted by Kutakizukari on January 27, 2011 at 5:59pm

Maybe this can be the start of a Drupal site, lol. The problem, bad support. To fix the problem all hosting support staff register with the site and can be verified through the site, so if they give bad support they will be rated on that. Also there can be an incentive for hosting support staff to do better because if they are rated well by the site then they are in high demand because they keep people at that hosting provider, thus they should be paid more.

Sound worth Brainstorming? Lets talk!

Had to login to reply

Posted by tike012 on February 16, 2011 at 11:01am

I have two accounts on GreenGeeks: a normal account and a reseller account, purchased for different occasions, and I must say my experience has been quite the opposite of yours. I was initially averse to submitting support requests since I suppose I'm conditioned to expect very little from support departments. I was surprised to find my questions answered / problems solved maybe a dozen times now via chat or e-mail with little fuss. I have only Dreamhost in my experience to compare against, but I can at least say that my Drupal sites run fast on GreenGeeks.

Hosting Truth

Posted by tlattimore on January 27, 2011 at 4:41pm

My church hosts there site (Drupal) with Hostingtruth, http://www.hostingtruth.net/. I currently manage 4 seperate Drupal installations that are hosted with them, all with there Silver Hosting package (not all on the same account). They have great customer service and have been willing to customize different stuff on the server for me upon request, including installing Git and PECL uploadprogress library. Also they will enable SSH access when requested, I have Drush set up for each of the accounts I manage.

Dreamhost, Sitemonster, JaguarPC

Posted by bdornbush on January 27, 2011 at 7:04pm

I have Drupal sites hosted on all 3 of the above. I am in the process of deciding where to move the Dreamhost sites, for one big reason: When the site grows to more sophisticated usage, ie, more modules, you reach a point where Dreamhost starts throttling you. It will terminate scripts, leaving you in a bad way. I have asked them about it, and I get all this stuff about how everyone does it, and it must be my scripts that are the problem. There are discussions on Drupal.org about this problem, with no consistent solution. I have not experienced any of this on Sitemonster or JaguarPC. On Sitemonster, I have a very complex site in shared hosting, with no problems. On JaguarPC, I have a site hosted on a dedicated server. It's a new site for me, as I have taken over the support, and so far, all seems fine. Interestingly, performance seems about the same on the dedicated host as I see on the shared host at Sitemonster, but that could be just circumstantial. What I cannot tolerate is the script termination at Dreamhost, so I cannot recommend them for any Drupal site. It's really too bad, as they have the best site management interface I have seen.

pastorjayrich mentioned Media Temple

Posted by christefano on January 28, 2011 at 8:15am

pastorjayrich mentioned Media Temple (which offers "grid hosting") but no one has explicitly mentioned VPS hosting. There are a lot of differences between shared hosting and VPS hosting:

http://groups.drupal.org/node/88174#comment-275954

While I'm at it, here are some other links. I don't like Dreamhost at all, but it has its uses:

http://groups.drupal.org/node/68093#comment-227698

Finally, here's the video of a talk I gave on how to get the most out of shared hosting in case anyone's interested:

http://ladrupal.blip.tv/file/4656252/

DreamHost VPS was a no-go for me

Posted by bdornbush on January 28, 2011 at 9:19pm

I tried it, and returned to shared hosting. It started when I found that my scripts were being terminated. They claimed I needed more memory so I doubled it, but still had the occasional script termination.

Suddenly, my uploaded audio files were truncated. I complained, and was told it must be my script. So I reproduced the web site on a shared hosting account, and it worked fine there. Since I couldn't wait for their resolution, I moved the site back to shared hosting, which still has a problem with occasional script termination, but at least the audio files were uploaded correctly. Then they offered to move me to a different VPS host, but I had already migrated back to shared hosting. I plan to move to another hosting service, as soon as I can identify one that will be better than what I have now.

Hostmonster doesn't offer VPS hosting, but Jaguar PC does, so right now, it gets the tentative nod.

Anybody heard about BriteSparkz?

Posted by cliff on January 29, 2011 at 6:22am

I met the owner at DrupalCamp-Austin, and he says their servers are configured specifically to host Drupal installations. BriteSparkz is worth a look if you aren't satisfied with your current hosting. And maybe even if you are.

BriteSparkz servers?

Posted by younggeezer on January 29, 2011 at 1:19pm

Being in Austin and curious, I took a look. No mention of servers nor hosting on the website. Maintenance and management is mentioned, which makes me think they will take the keys from you and do module updates and such. Which isn't a service I need.

If they sell hosting, they might want to mention it.

'nother vote for VPS hosts

Posted by younggeezer on January 29, 2011 at 1:37pm

Our church site is currently on Slicehost, and has been for years. Excellent service and experience, but now getting hammered by their competitors. I'm thinking about moving to Linode for a 2x boost in RAM etc. for the same cost. Both appear to be run by very savvy folks, and lots of Drupal appears to be done on both.

Tuning Drupal is enough of a pain when you know how much memory you have, and have the ability to change the configuration parameters on php, mysql, and the HTTP server (or choose a different server, like nginx). I suppose shared hosting can work, but I think I'm enough of a control freak that being unable to have root, choose when (or if) things are updated and to what version, etc., would just drive me batty.

eApps hosting

Posted by ojfam on January 30, 2011 at 5:51pm

I've been using eApps's VPS offering for several years now. Customer support is amongst the best I've ever come across. Unfortunately, the latency is killing as we're based in the UK. I'm also thinking of Linode as they have servers in London. Do you know anything about Linode's customer support?

Thanks!

Linode support

Posted by younggeezer on March 18, 2011 at 12:54am

I just know what I read... take it with a grain (or a pound) of salt. The comments I've read about Linode support have been very positive, about on par with those I've seen about Slicehost, which I've experienced as being very, very good. Hearsay evidence, but positive hearsay.

Minor update: I switched our site to Linode about six weeks ago. Totally uneventful, which is exactly the way I wanted it. Working great, and the extra memory (vs the Slicehost account we were on) means I've been able to open up some memory limits and speed up the site a little. All in all a good thing.

GreenGeeks.com No Longer Supports Drush on Shared Environment

Posted by Kutakizukari on May 31, 2011 at 6:00am

http://bit.ly/jMdyp8

Good to know…I recently

Posted by christefano on May 31, 2011 at 7:03am

Good to know…

I recently dealt with GreenGeeks and did not have a pleasant experience. It wasn't clear where the document root for a client's site was and GreenGeeks' live chat support tech refused to provide the directory path. It would have been one thing if the technician had said, "I can't tell you that because X, Y or Z…" but I was just given the runaround. Somehow the tech felt the issue had been resolved and he abruptly ended the chat.

We found the document root of the website and moved our client's site to a new host.