Posted by bob_irving on January 13, 2009 at 12:58am
Just wondered if anyone can recommend a good host. I'm currently using A Small Orange and have generally been happy with them. However, it's a shared account, and it seems that Drupal needs at least a VPS (or VPN?).
I also host several other smaller sites, so I need reselling as well. I currently pay $15/mo for what I have (1000 Mb of space, 25Gb bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and databases, cpanel, linux, ssh, and generally excellent support).
Who does a good job with Drupal sites?
Comments
My trusted sources
Here are providers I have bookmarked that I've I've deemed probably reliable via experience and reading other trusted sources. Please let me know if you'd had any experience with them.
VPS and larger options:
http://openhosting.com/home (I know someone who has been with them for a couple years and is pleased)
http://www.tektonic.net/vps.php
http://www.slicehost.com/
http://www.mosso.com/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
Shared Hosting
http://asmallorange.com/ (obviously you already know about them, I setup one person's website there)
http://www.sustainablewebsites.com/
http://www.g3hosted.com/
http://opensourcehost.com/index.html
http://modwest.com/
http://www.site5.com (I've been with them for 2 years)
http://www.vervehosting.com (I've had a site hosted with them for 3 years without problems)
DreamHost
I like Dreamhost a lot.
If you're a registered 501(c)(3), you can get a business-class account FREE for life.
You can also upgrade to a VPS account and pay as little as $15/month, which can scale at any time up to $400/month.
They have a number of one-click installs, including Drupal. Or you can install on your own (which is what most of us do).
Their homegrown Control Panel is decent, but there is no backend API, except for an unofficial, screen-scraping one that's been developed by some Dreamhost users at DreamHosters API.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Thanks
I've heard so much bad about Dreamhost that I hesitate to use them. But hearing a fellow drupaler say something good about them goes a long way. I'll check them out.
Anselm, the only one I have any experience with is ASO, as you note. I really have had good service with them, but just wondering if I'm outgrowing my plan.
How much memory/HD space/bandwidth would you recommend for a smallish site?
I like Bluehost well enough
Bluehost has been dependably mid-level for me over the past 3 years.
Pros:
* Good price
* Good tech support
Cons:
* Doubt they'd scale well if you're an overnight sensation
* Working out some issues with SSL and subdomains (main domain ok, and I'm on the shallow end of the learning curve with SSL, so can't really blame BH.)
Not to crash the party, but...
I would not recommend Bluehost, Dreamhost, Siteground, or Site5.
We have had clients on all of these systems, and their experience was very sub-par. We used to host with Site5, and moved off their infrastructure.
We currently host a portion of our development infrastructure with WestHost -- we have a dedicated server, and we have set up a couple clients with VPS's from Westhost. We have been with them for a little over two years, and so far, so good.
We have also worked with Advomatic -- they are a Drupal shop, and do great work in the community. We are working on a project with fairly robust hosting needs, and they are on Advomatic, and I have been impressed with what I have seen.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
Plan more important than provider
A couple of questions:
Would you not recommend Bluehost, Dreamhost, Siteground, or Site5 for shared hosting OR virtual/dedicated hosting?
Would you recommend WestHost or Advomatic for shared hosting?
The more I search, it's hard to find anyone with positive experiences (at least for Drupal, PHP/MySQL apps) with shared hosting accounts, and very few people with negative experiences with virtual/dedicated servers.
Good point
Definitely, the plan is more of a factor than the provider.
And with that said, I wouldn't hire Site5 or Dreamhost to tie my shoes, let alone run a VPS. They had a special blend of unreliability and poor service that I wouldn't wish on anyone.
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
DreamHost improvements
Dreamhost has recently implemented some new infrastructure. My shared-server sites were performing poorly in December, but once they were migrated to one of the new clusters in January, things got noticeably better.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
West Host has wildcard SSL
After reviewing this whole discussion (and thanks!) I'm thinking my next client will get a WestHost account.
I'm also moving my company there, eventually, because WestHost offers wildcard SSL-- so I can have https at my main domain and have it filter down to abc.main.com, xyz.main.com etc.. This is important to me because I can then demo a client at a subdomain, before moving them to their production server, without having to get a new SSL and, usually, new account for that SSL.
Westhost's wildcard SSL is about $190, which is a pretty good price from what I've seen. Anyone got advice?
ANHosting is not bad
I've been using AN Hosting (anhosting.com by midPhase) for several sites on a shared hosting account. I've only been there for a few months but have setup sites using Wordpress, Drupal, and Gallery2. I like their cPanel offerings, easy fast one-click installs, etc... I also like they have SSH access (which I use more often then I thought) and the one step backups...it will backup all of your databases and files to one archive. Surprisingly, I've also have good luck with tech support the few times I've used them. It felt like you were talking to a friend everyone considers the tech guy...they gave away some info I'm not accustomed too from larger companies.)
The best things are:
1) Speed. It's a shared hosting account but my Drupal sites are surprisingly fast. I do Drupal sites at work on some decent machines and I still can't get the speed I get with sites on anhosting.
2) Cost vs Space. I buy only $8 or $9 a month (if you pay for 1yr) for 1 TB of space and I TB of monthly bandwidth.
The BIG negative is the reliability. When the servers are over loaded, my sites are extremely slow, virtually unaccessible. Pages just don't show up, white screen. And this happens more often than I like. About 2 weeks ago I called about this issue and the tech said it was another user abusing the server. That user was being banned and they were getting the server ready to go. It was about 30min to 1 hr later that everything was running again. Things have been fine since.
They just moved to a new data center in Seattle. (They were in Chicago, I believe.) I am hoping this solves the downtime problem. Speed and disk space are great but if you can't get to your sites, it's not worth it.
Another negative is that domains cost more than I like. I think it's like $25 or $30 per year...they autmatically include some kind of protection that typically costs $10 to $15 per year from other vendors. This is not that big a deal for me since I use GoDaddy for all my domains, which I think is great for domains and associated DNS management.
Hope this helps. With all the positives of An Hosting, if the frequency of server overloads keep happening, then I will be moving to a new hosting provider. Reliability is becoming a more important factor than speed or disk space as I put up more sites.
Ditto the unreliability
I have stayed away from AnHosting for exactly the reason you cite: unreliability.
All the speed in the world is irrelevant when your site is down, and tech support is on a multiple-day lunch break.
The same is true for a site that is cheap -- all the cost savings in the world don't mean much when your site is down.
And this is another reason why a VPS, while more expensive than shared hosting, is often a better value. Even a low-tier VPS comes with better support than shared hosting, and most VPS options guarantee you resources (RAM, CPU, etc).
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
DrupalModules.com running on AN Hosting
I know John Forsythe speaks highly of AN Hosting. He wrote this blog entry about his experiences running DrupalModules.com on it. Pretty impressive.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Thoughts on shared hosting and vps requirements
I'd agree about site5. I'm preparing to move away from them. It's hard to have many demands or expectations with shared hosting. Every time one host seems reliable from all reports, I eventually dig up counter arguments. It seems when they become too popular they end up overpopulating servers.
Bob: How much memory/HD space/bandwidth would you recommend for a smallish site?
I'm trying to determine this myself. Using the performance logging of the devel module and your estimates for average number of users/visitors, type of usage of users, and what sort of files will be stored/served seems to give you the sort of information you'd need to estimate memory/space/bandwidth. I was also looking at these pages:
1) Drupal Tuning Considerations - http://drupal.org/node/2601
2) Drupal Hosting - http://themegarden.org/drupal6/?q=drupal-hosting#drupal_requirements
Refer to this particular anchor link on the the same page: http://themegarden.org/drupal6/?q=drupal-hosting#example
3) http://openhosting.com/product - The specifications for the plans are based on the type of site (e.g. small site, small/medium site, etc.)
I'm not certain how to distinguish between small, medium, large websites. Maybe small vs. large I can't define, but I know it when I see it, hear the uses and navigate around it.
Discussion like this appeared on Drupal.org feed recently
http://drupalhosts.net/
More comments in favor of some hosts panned here, but always with the caveat for low-visitor sites. And many of the same problems also brought up. (Personally, I'm considering Bill F's comments very closely and watching my own host renewal dates.)
One other thing
I tend to be very wary of any hosting recommendations that are part of an affiliate program. You can generally tell if an affiliate program is in place by mousing over the links. If the url for the site looks "normal" (ie, just http://example.com/page) then there is likely no affiliate link. If, however, you see a link like http://example.com/referrerid=xxx or http://example.com/clickthru=sitex you are likely looking at an affiliate program.
IMO, affiliate relationships reduce the objectivity of the recommendation, as there is a financial incentive to drive business to the host.
It's frustrating, but the many web hosts resort to spam-like tactics in order to try and generate business -- this has made me very skeptical of "reviews" of hosting companies.
And, unfortunately, the site at drupalhosts.net looks a lot like this thread, http://drupal.org/node/205195 -- in short, it's difficult to get unbiased opinions. I'm actually pleasantly surprised (and here I go, jinxing things) that this thread has not been hijacked by hosting spammers. There have been some good recommendations here, based on personal experience.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
my choices
I've used siteground, but unless you can manage your own problems I wouldn't suggest them.
I'm currently migrating all my sites to Media Temple. I know they're not on the Drupal host list, but that's just because they haven't an automatic installer, and frankly, I'd rather install myself. I've sent clients to Media Temple with great results in the past and have finally woken up to the fact that you get what you pay for and I should be there too.
I've three sites on their gs (grid-server) service and will be building and launching two largish sites for clients in the next two months that I'll place on a dv (dedicated virtual) server account.
Good shared hosting
If you prefer shared hosting but fear overcrowded servers, take a look at inhost.com. They limit the number of accounts per server to 254, far lower than most of the competition. Definitely much better than AN Hosting, where I got bitten by the overloading issue mentioned above. Not sure I buy AN Hosting's 'bad customer' excuse - I seriously doubt johncallahan and I happened to live on the same server, but the situation has gotten better over the past two weeks. Maybe they are just renting more servers at the new facility? We'll never know...
Full disclosure: I have worked as a development contractor for Inhost, which is how I know the quality of their hosting service. However, I do not receive payment for this post, nor for any referrals.
--
Christoph Weber
You never know
You never know, we could have been on the same server considering the kinds of problems with AN Hosting!
My two cents
I've had good luck with a small company called MxHub, high reliability and I am hosting much more than a normal small website reliably on one of their servers. I've had a few problems over the past 2.5 years, but they have all been sorted out relatively quickly.
West Host
I should also add that after spending many hours on the web, I'm going with West Host as well. I just created an account but haven't migrated my sites yet. I like what I've seen so far. We'll see how it goes.
It's still a shared hosting account so I'm cautious of the service. They call all of their services VPS Hosting. And, it does seem to be VPS but without the RAM/CPU allocation. To me this still suffers from the server/bandwidth abuse that we see everywhere with shared hosting. However, having separate processes of apache/PHP and MySQL, as well as the ability to configure their config files and install your own applications, is a nice advantage over shared hosting.
Price was in the middle of shared vs VPS, similar to their features. Actually, closer to shard prices than typical VPS prices. It's worth a try before I spend the big bucks to get decent storage with VPS or dedicated machines.
"Semi-dedicated"
We usually start people on the semi-dedicated plan: http://www.westhost.com/semided-business-hosting.html -- this is more of a conventional VPS, as opposed to their other accounts which do feel like shared hosting with a twist.
The other caveat with Westhost: you have shell access, but not root access, so installing apps (like, for example, subversion) can be more complex than it needs to be. But their hardware runs Drupal very well.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
Thanks for all the comments
It's been very helpful reading other people's experiences. I'm needing to find a Drupal host fast, as the company we contracted with to build our new site has suddenly decided they can't be bothered to host us. (!?!)
Bill, I like the look of Westhost, but they don't mention Drupal in their list of features, so I'm guessing they don't have it pre-installed?
I've been doing web design for over 10 years now but I'm a big wuss when it comes to the server side of things and the thought of having to install & configure Drupal myself is giving me heart palpitations-- I kinda skipped over that part of the documentation, since I blithely assumed we were already set in that department. I feel faint.... somebody hand me the smelling salts!
-Nik
Are they still building your
Are they still building your web site? If yes, why can't they install and configure Drupal for you? Or is their idea of building a Drupal site making you pretty pictures and some charts and walking away?
Some of clients ask us to host for them, others don't. Regardless, we install and configure the site for them and provide ongoing training and support. I'm shocked your supplier would do otherwise.
Good question
They're (almost) done with it-- we had one last navigation bug they were supposed to fix before we launched the site, we were really just wrapping things up after more than a year in development (it was supposed to launch in June, if that tells you anything), and then last week they pulled the development site & posted our old site at the IP address where it was. It's been a nightmare just trying to get them to make the site work properly-- months of "Thanks for fixing those 8 things but half of them still aren't fixed and now we're seeing 3 new problems"
It's not clear at this point what they're planning to do-- they said they will "work diligently to transfer the files"-- I'm waiting to hear what exactly that means. I hope I'm just freaking out prematurely & they'll do the right thing, but it wouldn't be the first time they've spectacularly failed to meet expectations.
I'm going to read the installation instructions tonight, just in case!
-Nik
give a shout if you need a hand
Maybe it's because my soon-to-be ex-wife works at a museum, but if you'd like a hand at any point getting it installed feel free to drop me a line. Within the limitations on the amount of free time I have right now, I'd be glad to help you over the rough spots.
in the same boat
We're looking to create an internal Social Network (organic groups) portal for faculty/staff in a little over a month time. Since I'm the one that has spent the most time on the Drupal site I've been put in charge of researching hosts and have narrowed it down to Advomatic. I've exchanged several emails and phone calls with their sales rep and development and I'm very impressed with their knowledge of Drupal requirements and development services. Right now we're trying to throw together a project proposal to throw at 'em and hopefully bang this one OUT! So I give Advomatic a thumbs up, but it is a premature one since we haven't signed anything yet?
Hi Damon
I liked the look of Advomatic also, but we're a state-funded museum and they have a pretty obvious political agenda-- not a good idea. Good luck with them though!
-Nik
if you run into a tight spot museumwebbie
Maybe it's because my soon-to-be ex-wife works at a museum, but if you'd like a hand at any point getting it installed feel free to drop me a line. Within the limitations on the amount of free time I have right now, I'd be glad to help you over the rough spots.
Thanks very much!
That is an incredibly generous offer, thank you! I hope I won't need to take you up on it, but it's very reassuring to know help is on offer. If our contractor doesn't come through I would be pathetically grateful for any assistance you're able to provide.
I love Canadians! One of our paleontologists is from up your way, and he's a real sweetheart too. :)
blame it on my students
I'm utterly inspired by my students. We're three days into the term; they've had all of 40 minutes introduction to their site (that follows Bill's book), and I overwhelmed by the generosity and support they show towards one another (the site is at http://3comsin.com).
Kudos to your students, then!
Just wanted to let you know our contractor did agree to set us up on another web host-- now I just need to pick one. They're recommending rackspace, but I think a dedicated server is overkill for our needs. The "cloud sites" offered by mosso.com seem ok, but I wish they had a better control panel.
Anyway, thanks again for offering to help!