Posted by jayvgee on August 19, 2010 at 7:59pm
What are some of the better hosting companies? What are the pros and cons of going private vesus shared? We talked about briefly at the last meet up but I thought I would post up for the community to answer.
Comments
RAM
For me it comes down to RAM more often than control. You will see others say "shell or root access/control" which is great for the Ninjas, but even Drupal Ninjas need the same RAM as you.
Shared hosts you cannot control your PHP plug-ins/settings, so a cheap host may cost you more in troubles than they may be worth. Beware of Database size limits, some have 500MB limits. If you plan to do E-commerce then the whole "PCI (DSS) Compliance" thing comes up, which is a can of worms on its own and shared hosts aren't always going to be compliant-ready for you and your own VPS/server allows you to install and maintain those at will (if needed). If you do not plan to tinker with the server than shared is usually fine.
LA Drupal's web host sponsor is currently SoftLayer (which is merging with The Planet [which is who I use at times]), and for smaller/shared hosts HotDrupal.com was a previous sponsor of ours.
Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant
I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us
Drupal on VPS
I agree with Chris on RAM being important with hosting Drupal on VPS, CPU would be a very close second.
VPS hosting can be broken down into two different architectures - one being guaranteed minimum or guaranteed maximum. I highly recommend researching VPS hosting companies that have guaranteed minimum with burstable RAM, CPU, disk and network I/O. Depending upon how many VPS are hosted on the server, if your site needs an additional amount of RAM/CPU for a very short period of time, you'll get what you need provided the hosting server isn't oversold. Hosting companies that have guaranteed maximums mean when you reach that limit, you can't go past those limits.
A way to overcome the disk I/O challenges with VPS is to use APC and tune MySQL to serve as much data out of RAM as possible. If you can use the Boost module, create a tempfs and mount the Boost cache directory to that tempfs. All your static files will be served from RAM, bypassing disk. Disk I/O on VPS is the real bottleneck. This way as the disk I/O subsystem fluctuates, your site won't be as impacted.
HTH
Mark Schoonover
http://www.thetajoin.com
High Performance Drupal Hosting & IT Services
Drat
Drat. I prepared a long post but groups.drupal.org just logged me out and ate the post. I'll just sum it up (and point to an older thread on the same topic at http://groups.drupal.org/node/16328). I think I'll put the rest into a longer presentation at the meetup in Marina Del Rey on August 31st.
In short, I'm a big proponent of VPS hosting (from Linode, Rimuhosting, Slicehost, etc.). It's possible to make shared hosting go further with things like the Boost module, CDNs and such, but shared hosting doesn't really cut it for database-heavy applications like Drupal. I know there's disagreement over this but the time and money saved by using shared hosting just isn't worth the limitations (such as slow disk speed, even slower database performance, not having a dedicated IP address, being limited to a pitifully small number of outgoing emails a day, etc.).
Aside from a slightly higher cost, the only downside to using VPS hosting is that you need to do most or all of the system administration yourself unless you pay extra each month for "managed" hosting, which usually gives you a control panel and guaranteed phone or email support. This isn't a problem if you use the free Virtualmin install script or pick the right webhost. I like Rimuhosting a lot because their basic support comes really close to the "managed" support that other webhosts charge extra for.
Ditto
I'm also a huge fan of VPS and Dedicated hosting. One of my clients had to use shared hosting during the beginning stages of the project and many things that I would normally take for granted (such as ssh, etc) were out the door. Fine tuning the server was also not a possibility and the site just felt sluggish. We used the boost module to help out but ultimately, the whole process was just not cutting it. We eventually moved to using EC2 (and the mercury package by the folks at Chapter Three) (which I also have nothing but good things to say about).
BTW, sys admin work is a lot of fun! Its a bit difficult at first but there are so many wonderful resources out there you'll be swinging with the best in no time (ok, maybe I'm off on that one since I've been doing sys admin work for years and I still have a LOT to learn about performance tuning ^_^)
With all of that, what Chris has said about RAM is vital - that is typically the biggest stumbling block on a growing site (especially given how much more resource hungry drupal sites are becoming). Running op code caches like APC / eAccelerator are vital (and running some lightweight like NginX instead of Apache might make the difference between getting a larger slice/multiple servers and staying where you are). Things like Memcached/Varnish/Solr are also the norm and another set of services that you are likely only going to get your hands on if you are on a machine where you can install this stuff yourself (solr with a shared host? are you out there?).
I think I just started rambling on like an old man, but anyways, my experiences with some of the companies:
Peer1 - I wasn't a huge fan of their services and really preferred the freedom I had on ServerBeach and Slicehost.
GoDaddy / Dreamhost - I had to run a Drupal site on GoDaddy for a while and a Ruby on Rails site on Dreamhost...the drupal site felt quite sluggish and the RoR site was a huge pain to set up (they used Apache 1.3 with an older version of FastCGI and the site again felt sluggish). In both cases, we witnessed the server just go down due to some other site maintainers. With that said, Dreamhost was fairly responsive while GoDaddy was quite the opposite :/
SoftLayer - Really enjoyed their server so far for the LADrupal project.
Slicehost - (I'm actually a huge fan with how their backend works, how easy things are to set up, and the speediness of responses).
Serverbeach - I had a relatively pleasant time with them although you quickly learn that being on a dedicated machine and trying to scale it out on their farm was a huge pain in the butt.
Amazon (EC2) - Also been a great experience so far. The pricing for beginners amounts to about $50/month on a reserved 'small' instance (and you get 1.7 gigs of ram on that). The AMIs are also quite great and do make it a lot easier if you are not a sysadmin to start out on setting up your site and getting great performance out of it.
Rackspace
I'm a pretty big fan of the Rackspace cloud. Their "cheapo" plan starts out at basically $11/month. You get full SSH root level access for the same prices as a shared hosting plan. The fact that you can simply upgrade to a larger plan with more RAM solves quite a bit of the scalability issues that clients are always concerned with. I'm a big proponent of the cloud...
I'm also a big fan of the fact they keep sponsoring Drupal events...
CEO Stauffer
www.stauffer.com
I'll second the Rackspace cloud recommendation
I'll second the Rackspace cloud recommendation. I've used a number of shared hosts, VPS hosts, etc. and have had really great luck with Rackspace's cloud servers. Their scalability features are great, the customer service has been top-notch, and the ability to match what you pay to what you need means it's usually very cost effective.
I'll third the Rackspace recommendation, plus HostGator info
I've got sites hosted at GoDaddy, HostGator, and RackSpace.
Mostly the financially challenged, and early, clients I had got GoDaddy, some VPS some dedicated. Okay, but kinda slow for the VPS users. Hard to beat $4 a month for the financially challenged.
HostGator is great, fast, and the business package comes with its own SSL cert, for eCommerce. $14 per month is hard to beat, plus their "Web Disk" lets me mount the hosting account as a disk for very easy file transfers, and the ssh access is great too.
However, the RackSpace Server Cloud is really nice - for Web Apps that you may want to spin up new servers on the fly and such. Like they say, their "fanatical support" is great. When I first visited their support forums, I thought the fact that they were empty was an indicator of a problem, but it turns out that their chat support is so good, the forums never need visiting. I like that.
The RackSpace Cloud Server I'm using currently for a client's development is very snappy - the best I've experienced after locally hosted. Although this client requires a Windows Server host (boo!), after a tad bit of work (adding WAMP and BASH), it's like a real computer! :) I experimented briefly with a Linux Cloud Server when first testing RackSpace and it was clearly the most responsive remote Drupal (actually Pressflow) install I'd played with. I had a little sniff-n-tear when I deleted that server because the client did not want Linux used for their project...
my 2cent :
my 2cent : http://drupal.org/hosting ... ok, it was really just a link.
hosting is complicated, and totally depends on needs.
I use both shared and VPS depending on the needs and goals of my client. I've had clients that can handle 20,000 visitors a day on shared... but once traffic gets real, so should your host. in general, I like to think of a website as the lobby of a company... versus a business card. sometimes that metaphor in itself can help you or client better determine needs.
--
mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
The Website is the Company
For many companies, the website is the company. If it's not online, company doors are closed. Hosting is complicated and the complication doesn't stop when a site is launched. There are many administrative tasks that continue on past the launch date. There's the standard system administration tasks - security updates, offsite backups, upgrades, performance tuning, etc. Have to throw in fault monitoring and performance monitoring as well. You never want your client to call you that their website is not responding.
Having a solid site upgrade path from VPS to dedicated hardware is a must these days. You just never know how popular a site may become!
Mark Schoonover
http://www.thetajoin.com
High Performance Drupal Hosting & IT Services
RackspaceCloud & Slicehost
Another happy RackspaceCloud user here on one of my client projects. I'm also working with several Slicehost-based, Drupal sites and very happy with that service too (also now owned by Rackspace). Slicehost has great documentation, API and an active community. Also, Rackspace recently announced support for http://openstack.org/
Some of the VPS advantages
Some of the VPS advantages over shared hosting are full control of the Linux/Java environment your application is not impacted by others. Plus resources you have on a VPS are guaranteed in most cases, and as such you avoid fighting for resources with others.
As for what concerns hosting companies, you could check eApps Hosting but, of course, everything depends of your needs.
Cheers,
Camy
Any one has experience with
Any one has experience with GreenGeeks VPS ?
webhostingtalk anyone?
At the last Drupal cafe we talked about this topic. I didn't have a chance to throw out a reference to a useful website: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/
It seems key people from many web hosting companies discuss hosting issues. Meanwhile developers post frank reviews about their experiences. It almost seems like the consumer reports of hosting companies.
Had I seen this thread three months ago, I would have took a closer look at rackspace cloud based on the 4 glowing recommendations above. But based on the reviews on webhostingtalk I narrowed down to a few and finally chose knownhost.com. Three months in I am still happy.
One More Tip
Also, be sure to Goggle the host of your choice for discount coupons. For that knownhost.com account I mentioned, I snagged a 20% off LIFETIME discount coupon code.
Web Hosting Talk is great.
Web Hosting Talk is great. Did you know there's a Drupal-centric version of Hosting Talk right here on groups.drupal.org?
Hosting Talk
http://groups.drupal.org/hosting-talk
It's new but it already has discussions and wiki pages from all over the community about hosting for Drupal. It could use a few more co-organizers to help with setting a good tone (voting up good content, voting down spam and just answering questions) and nurturing it as it develops. Let me know if you're interested.
update: Well, it looks like the Hosting Talk group was deleted today. Gotta wonder sometimes.