Ontario-based VPS hosting?

Posted by SeanFitzpatrick on October 24, 2014 at 7:04pm

Hi all, Any recommendations for good Ontario/Toronto-based hosting providers for Drupal? Apologies if this is a tired question here. I'm working with a group that must host in Canada, and I'm unfamiliar with the options.

We'd be looking for a smallish VPS plan. Current site gets around 40k pageviews/month. Future site will be pretty standard Drupal 7 site, with most of the traffic coming from anonymous users. We'd be looking at a standard LAMP environment but need to have ssh and install git, drush, etc.

Thanks for any recommendations! Cheers!

Sean

Comments

In BC

Posted by sunward on October 24, 2014 at 7:09pm

http://rackforce.com/

using their cloud server for drupal sites.

Rackforce has great reputation, but are servers all in Canada?

Posted by pkiff on October 24, 2014 at 8:53pm

Rackforce has a great reputation for Drupal sites. That's what Pantheon uses for their service, I think, for example. But I don't think their servers are fully and completely located within Canada, are they?

I see they now offer a "Canadian Cloud Enterprise" solution, but from a quick glance, I can't tell exactly what that means. A year ago, when I checked more carefully, their cloud was spread across both Canada and the U.S., and so they could not guarantee that the servers for your data would be physically located only in Canada.

I'm liking ServerBeach that

Posted by adixon on October 24, 2014 at 7:54pm

I'm liking ServerBeach that now has a data centre in Toronto.

They only do dedicated servers, but their parent Peer1 does VPS and I'd assume you can specify the Toronto data centre.

This looks promising: https://www.zunicore.com/

I reviewed Canadian VPS hosts a year ago, here is my list

Posted by pkiff on October 24, 2014 at 8:46pm

I reviewed Canadian-based VPS hosts a year ago, looking for the cheapest, smallest plans available. My criteria included the need for the servers to be based in Canada (and so not subject to the Patriot Act II or other NSA-related snooping, though still subject to the barely regulated snooping of CSEC - the Canadian equivalent of the NSA). Also, I wanted a Xen-based hypervisor, as there have been reports that Xen is a better choice for Drupal on a VPS [2bits].

The list below is not only "Ontario-based". Some have their head offices in Ontario, or at least some of their servers in Ontario, but many of these also have servers or offices in Montreal and/or Vancouver.

Here is my list:

Canadian Web Hosting
http://canadianwebhosting.com/vps/
Netelligent
http://www.netelligent.ca/cloud/
Caneris
http://www.caneris.com/VPS
Atum
http://www.atum.com/vps-hosting/

I ended up choosing Canadian Web Hosting, and am happy with them for the price. Their VPS servers are in Vancouver. They are reasonably responsive and competent, but you get what you pay for. Their customer support staff have a range of skills from beginner (at initial support levels) up to professional (at the 3rd or higher support level). I've had one period of unscheduled outage that lasted about 15-30 minutes, during off-peak hours. I received a month extension when I complained. They responded quickly and professionally to heartbleed and shellshock, patching both in less than 24 hours.

If you send me an email, I can send you the spreadsheet I compiled a year ago that lists key details I used to make the choice.

Phil.

Thanks for the replies so far!

Posted by SeanFitzpatrick on October 24, 2014 at 9:17pm

Hi all, Thanks for the replies so far! Just to clarify, we don't actually need a Toronto datacenter, just Canada (non-US). The client and all the users will be in the Toronto area, so I thought I'd start there.

Pkiff, I'll send you an email to get that spreadsheet. Sounds like a really nice resource. Thanks!

Sean

Sean Fitzpatrick
Proof Studio
@sffitzpatrick

We are a reseller - but we use Blacksun...

Posted by mbehiels on October 25, 2014 at 9:44pm

Virtually ALL of my clients require Canadian hosting for privacy/security reasons and really keep it local :)

Blacksun was my choice over 10 years ago and its still my choice.

They run a good shop and have good people and its in Saskatoon...

Marc Behiels

Blacksun may be great, but their prices are 50% above others

Posted by pkiff on October 26, 2014 at 7:41pm

Blacksun may indeed be great, but just FYI, the listed prices they are charging for introductory VPS offerings are about 50% higher than a number of the others listed in this thread. Of course perhaps it is true that you get what you pay for, but I'm just sayin'. :-)

Yes - Agree with some of the price points

Posted by mbehiels on October 26, 2014 at 9:53pm

But I lease both hardware servers and vps setups on yearly contracts, and the prices I get are well worth it to me and my clients.

Yes - no $9.99 package but the tech support is worth it.

Fullhost

Posted by mesch on October 24, 2014 at 10:39pm

I had a similar requirement a year or two ago as well. Off the top of my head the ones I can recall turning up:

fullhost.com
netelligent.ca
atum.com

FWIW I have read that foreign-located data centres of American-based companies may still be subject to American law, so you may want to ensure the company is Canadian-based as well, not just their datacentre(s).

Drupal Enterprise Hosting in Canada

Posted by JWilliam on November 1, 2014 at 7:27pm

Check out Carbon60 Networks. Canadian based, multiple Tier 3 level data centres, enterprise grade secure managed hosting specializing in supporting Drupal and other CMS apps....for high end sites, enterprise and public sector level security and 99.999 SLA requirements.
www.carbon60.com

Carbon60 price list? For smal VPS?

Posted by pkiff on November 3, 2014 at 2:36pm

Hey JWilliam, I'm sure that carbon60 is great, but I'm not sure it meets the criteria for the original poster:

We'd be looking for a smallish VPS plan

And carbon60 doesn't even supply a basic price list, which makes it hard to compare to others. I can't seem to pull up your user account either - are you just spamming the list here?

Carbon60 price list? For small VPS?

Posted by JWilliam on June 29, 2015 at 3:02pm

Not spamming, but you are correct, they don't cater to smal VPS?
They are geared to higher end requirements for mid-large enterprise or gov't sites.
No price list on their site , they are more like Blackmesh or Pantheon.

Digital Ocean now has a

Posted by cleaver on September 28, 2015 at 3:56pm

Digital Ocean now has a Toronto datacentre, so they are an option. I've used them for a number of projects and personal sites and I've been happy with the experience.

http://cleaver.ca