Posted by willardblanco on May 31, 2012 at 2:12am
Hi,
I just wanted to get an idea of what the locals would recommend for Drupal friendly hosts. I would need an ISP to host anywhere from 20 - 100 sites.
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I have used and closed shared
I have used and closed shared hosting accounts on A+ and 1and1. I have drush and Drupal 7.14 currently operating on multiyear accounts at godaddy, bluehost and hostgator. Hostgator "Business" shared hosting is my favorite at this time. I've had zero problems with HG (not counting my own startup errors).
When I "drush up" similar Drupal sites on godaddy "Ultimate" and the hostgator "Business" accounts, I saw at least 2x difference in response time - Hostgator won.
Bluehost was not offering php 5.3 until Feb this year, and then only if you work with their support line, unlike hostgator which had 5.3 available in the first half of 2011. I could not get drush running on bluehost, but that could have been my problem.
Hostgator includes cPanel, domain name, SSL certificate and private IP in their Business package, so I bought a separate shared hosting account for each main client. I also deployed several development sites on each (separate from the production site directory) using both cPanel add-on domain and sub-domain tools. sftp works fine; ssh over osx Terminal was easy to configure and is my main management tool. I copied their php.ini to my accounts root and increased memory limit.
I have not tried their reseller, vps or dedicated server plans.
Hope this helps.
Pantheon or Rackspace
If you want everything taken care of, and an environment totally optimized for Drupal: Pantheon. (getpantheon.com)
If youre handy with Linux: Rackspace Cloudserver. You need to be comfortable setting up your own server (or have someone do it for you). Make it a Ubuntu 12.04 server and enjoy all the improved responsiveness of a new Limux kernel.
Either way, you'll never look back to shared hosting.
--
Christoph Weber
I concur with Christoph completely with a few additions...
Be sure and consider Linode (http://www.linode.com/) as well if not in the game for Pantheon... Linode has a similar offering to Rackspace cloudserver (with Ubuntu 12.04 as 32 or 64 bit) with a little cheaper pricing ;) but all the speed... I have a lot of these as well as Rackspace's and they both have their advantages...
OR... another favorite is the new Mediatemple VE offering (http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/ve/) which is similar to Linode and Rackspace's (although they aren't offering Ubuntu 12... yet) I have 3 of em fired up... with CentOS 6, Varnish, APC, Memcache, Cloudfare CDN and I'm quite happy so far.
If you want to go crazy on some Drupal hosting try: http://omega8.cc/buy
;)
I really like that on all of these you get exactly what you want as far as ingredients you put in them and nothing you don't. You can really get intricate with your config recipes... I love all these options.
If you want "semi managed pre configured easy" but Pantheon doesn't fit, go for a MediaTemple DV 4.0 server for 50 bucks and work your way up... but steer clear of their GS servers...
If you want super cheap but lots of freedom (I use them as a dumping ground of cheap sites) there's Dreamhost... (don't use this for anything medium to lightly serious... ;) - it's totally shared but shared well as far as ACL / shell rights and I have no real opinion on Dreamhost PS... instead use Linode, MT VE, Rackspace cloud for that type of hosting imo...)
...another important item about these offerings..
...one of the biggest reasons to having accounts with each of these three (Linode, RS and MT) is the absolutely great documentation that is in their wikis, knowledge bases, howto and support docs.... ok well Pantheon and Acquia obviously have great documentation - but Christoph started the whole roll your own RS Cloud convo ;)
Each one has a different set and a wealth of knowledge on how to go about configuring things AND you will find out alot of it is Drupalcentric...
You'll also read howto's on things you maybe wouldn't otherwise consider doing due to lack of an immediate need... ie. easy loadbalancing, using NGINX, loading up extra monitoring tools... well the list is a mile long.
Standard hosting providers like Bluehost and HostGator (sorry to insult hg as they are stable and good imho) just lack in this kind of documentation and direction.
also in a different area...
There is Acquia hosting of course. The dev clouds are great, the managed clouds are a no brainer for clients with the money... they do it all for you.
The knowledge base is great, the dev cloud is easy and cool... using it vs. running your own Amazon stack is an obvious choice.
AND importantly their third party freebees that come with membership are without a doubt - a HUGE benefit. Both Pantheon and Acquia come with New Relic.
Thanks for the info - will
Thanks for the info - will definitely consider all of it when going forward.
Excellent - thank you for the
Excellent - thank you for the replies, it's much appreciated.
bluehost not drush friendly
I am on bluehost and a novice with drush but an experienced programmer and I have spent the last week trying to get drush archive-restore working on Bluehost. Their tech support admitted that the drush archive-restore does not work in their environment. However, all the other drush commands appear to work. I will take a look at hostgator.
Thanks for sharing...
Try standing cloud also
Be sure to check out standing cloud. You get your own VPS on the cloud infrastructure of your choose (rackspace, amazon, etc...) You can easily migrate to a new VPS at the click of a few buttons.
Standing Cloud Pricing starting at $15
They give you a free 24 hour VPS trial that you can test with, and instantly activate if it you like it. Comes with out the box support for ssl, dedicated IP, git, drush, memcache, varnish, apc, etc...
Alternative to Media Temple for Drupal Hosting
Now that Godaddy owns Media Temple I'm sure many people will be leaving. For those that run Drupal, honestly its probably better anyway. I would check out www.Getpantheon.com or www.acquai.com Both kick ass, and you don't have to worry about servers any more. PAAS Cloud hosting is the way of the future anyway for most businesses. Amazon EC2, Huroku, Google App engine are already popular for web apps.