I did a search but if I missed a post, list, or such, a link is appreciated...
I gained Drupal experience on sites for my professional association (www.nena.org and www.al911.org) and I want to move our Church site to Drupal. I'm struggling to find a host in our price range as we are a very small church and money is tight. We use Slicehost for NENA but $20 a month is not in our price range. I may make hosting part of my financial support of the church and just go that route but I prefer something with Cpanel so it would be easier for someone else to take over if needed.
I decided to try Bluehost and of all the strange things I was assigned a server named "box666" and it was painfully slow.
Please let me know if you offer hosting (cheap) or have recommendations...
Thanks in advance
John
Comments
Dreamhost
We are using Dreamhost. They offer free web hosting to US nonprofit organizations. You have to make an application which includes providing a copy of your IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter. They provide excellent service too.
See http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-nonprofit.html
I've heard lots of bad news
I've heard lots of bad news about Dreamhost. Today, I was told that they have a security issue that some might consider severe. (I know from personal experience that Bluehost, and many other shared hosts have this same issue, although I often recommend Bluehost as the best of the cheapest providers.)
MediaTemple grid service looks like a good recommendation. I've been wanting to try them out myself, but I usually prefer a VPS where I have full control.
Drupal.org user profile
Drupal Micro-blogging: http://twitter.com/matt2000
MediaTemple is pretty
MediaTemple is pretty powerful for their grid service. I was able to SSH into my grid service and install a few php modules (like apc upload progress). My previous shared host didn't allow me to do this and wouldn't install it for me.
It's a trade-off. Do you want to manage a LAMP stack (keeping it updated and secure) or allow a host to manage the back-end while you focus on the front-end?
They all have their issues
... and your milage may vary. Just sayin, I have never had a problem with them, and if the church has trouble paying $20/month then the options are limited.
You could also check out the community opinions posted in the reviews section of the geeksandgod site:
http://geeksandgod.com/reviews
Select - Hosting from the drop down Review Type box.
We've used Dreamhosts's free
We've used Dreamhosts's free service for years and have nothing but praise for it. In fact, I'm seriously considering moving my personal accounts over to their shared servers and paying for it.
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
MediaTemple has been treating
MediaTemple has been treating me well. Their innovative technology prevents the bad neighbor syndrome which plagues shared hosting environments.
Their basic plan is normally $20 a month, but they have a special promotion that makes it $95 a year.
http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/thehostingcard/special.php
They seem to be highly recommended around the drupal community and they host sites for Adobe, Sony, Jquery, Starbucks, and Warner Brother...so these guys mean business!
I used MediaTemple in the past
I used MediaTemple in the past but my website was hardly every online because of their downtime or very slow moving from page to page. Their tech support would always say it is fixed now but soon after experienced the same problems. I abandon them to find another.
Thanks to Everyone
I really appreciate the feedback and suggestions...
I use mediaserve.com They
I use mediaserve.com
They have some exceptional features if you want to stream video from your own site, not a third party provider.
You can stream sermons, etc.
Their price is competitive and the support is excellent.
Dreamhost for non-profits
I'm moving a couple of non-profits to Dreamhost. I know several people running personal and commercial sites there and haven't had any real issues. Free is pretty compelling. For really basic Drupal sites, they have a 1-click install. For more involved sites, they provide sufficient information to get it installed and connected to the database server.
I may eventually (after our current contract is up) move our church website there as well.
Doug
YMMV: Hosting companies I have tried recently
While your mileage may vary, I have had recent experience with several hosting companies. Just some to check out:
Hostmonster - My current favorite. Works very well with Drupal and has a full CPanel implementation.
Lunarpages - Works fair with Drupal though it has some slowness sometimes that does not appear with Hostmonster.
GoDaddy - Horrible performance with Dupal, no CRON on their cheaper plans and their email is a joke (lots of accounts but with very little space).
1and1 - Some performance problems and No CRON unless you want to pay more for it.
Dave
+1 for hostmonster
+1 for hostmonster
I think you should really
I think you should really determine what you want to do with your site and lay out some specs you know will be required.
Some hosts will not make allowances for larger downloads, some will not allow screencasts from their servers, etc.
Never pay a year in advance, that is a ticket for disaster. The reason people want that upfront money is they are undercapitalized. I do the mediaserve hosting and pay each month with a direct charge against my CC. They send me an invoice on the first and charge the card on the 10th that is how a good well funded business will work.
I can ask for just about anything that is half reasonable and the will allow it. I use a reseller account, because I am always building sites with different requirements. I have a specified memory and bandwidth requirement. I can run any number of sites as long as the maximum for all sites doesn't exceed the package. They do not oversell, if I sold hosting I would not be allowed either. This way the sites always render on a timely basis regardless of traffic.
delete please
the above comment is obviously SPAM!
If you want drush don't use greengeeks.com
If you want drush with your shared hosting then don't use greengeeks.com as they once supported drush with shared hosting and now they don't but they will give it back if I upgrade to VPS. http://bit.ly/jMdyp8
Yes, definitely don't use GreenGeeks!
Yes, definitely don't use Greengeeks.com since they've decided to stop offering the #1 most frequently mentioned at DrupalCon utility for Drupal. You know, the one that easily turns complex hour-long manual procedures like updating core plus modules into a 10-second no-brainer.
What seriously chaffs me is that due to some oversight they left my drush permissions turned on until sometime in the last few weeks. Now it's off. No notification, no nothing. If they're not going to communicate something as significant as that one wonders what else they'll neglect to mention?
It's particularly disappointing because they're very enthusiastic about being the official host for the Drupal for Dummies book, and have a whole raft of Drupal-related award badges on their site.
I do not want to start paying $35/month for VPS hosting just so I can have a very small sandbox for prototyping Drupal sites for even smaller (often volunteer-effort) clients.
David Innes
eleven2.com
I have been using eleven2.com for a while now and so their hosting works great with Drupal and Drush. I use the $10 plan for one of my sites. Since greengeeks.com stopped using Drush on their shared environment I moved my clients from them. The standard is now if supporting Drupal on a shared environment Drush must work. Agreed?
Drush 5.4 on GreenGeeks shared hosting works fine
I have Drush 5.4 running fine in my shared-hosted environment provided by GreenGeeks. There is no system-wide drush in the server, but you can install Drush in your home directory. Of course, it must be properly configured (read examples.drush.ini carefully). Initially, I also got a Drush error about Console_Table, but the error message was pretty much self-explaining (download manually and install in drush/lib).
Maybe they've changed something in recent months, or maybe not all their shared servers are born equal, but my Drush experience with GreenGeeks so far is definitely positive.
Greengeeks just sucks
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!!!
hosting and cost
I've always thought when it comes to Drupal hosting, you get what you pay for. I am an alliance member of Advantage Labs (Advantagelabs.com), a Drupal managed host. My church is not wealthy, however, when I added up what they were paying for their hosting plans -- web, separate church calendar site, separate newsletter site, etc., the $35/month that I am able to provide them because of my alliance membership at Advantage Labs was affordable. The fact that they do not have problems, security issues, etc. as well as backup support in my absence, is a big plus.
We have a very technically progressive minister and he has developed all kinds of uses for the web site -- which is another plus.
So you may want to rethink your hosting costs and what they are really receiving for their money.
maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com
Midphase
I just have to throw midphase into the ring. I have had them for about 3 years now and they have been very good. The one problem I did have was exceeding my cpu limits because I had a bad script. Even so they gave me 2 warnings. After the third they locked the server while taring up my data. I chalked this up to learning and it hasn't happened since. I use the business acct and by requesting shell access was able to install drush. While I believe it is true that you get what you pay for with shared hosting, In my opinion you get a good return with midphase. It would be worth checking out too.
Lansing Michigan Drupal Web Design and Development
no back end worries
The reason why I suggested www.AdvantageLabs.com is that I don't have to worry about the backend -- in fact, as an alliance member they provide a managed build for me to start with which makes my life sooooo much easier. I am more a front end person than a backend. I can configure modules, do some php, etc., but having a place to start from is really a plus for me.
[www.emkayandco.com|a minnesota web designer]
maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com
omega8
I highly recommend Omega8.cc Aegir hosting. It's incredible, they also have OpenChurch and CiviCRM/Drupal Distros available. All platforms including Vanilla Drupal instances have one click installs, backups, and migration. Servers are tuned for Drupal performance.