Posted by drumdance on June 14, 2007 at 3:16pm
I have a client in Boulder and we're having problems with our hosting provider, so we'd like to switch to a new one. We'd like to find a local one that is fluent in Drupal (meaning if we call with tech support questions, they won't ask "What's a Drupal?"). Boulder is preferable, but anywhere on the Front Range is fine, too. Any suggestions?
Comments
Drupal Hosting
If you ever wish to consider outside of the front range (meaning Massachusetts) then my business partner runs a drupal hosting company: http://www.dracosplace.com. Very responsive and experts at Drupal. Inexpensive as well.
Hosting Drupal Sites
We use two different hosts for different purposes but neither are in the front range even though our organization is based in Denver.
We use Bryght up in Vancouver (www.bryght.com) for a private drupal site we use for customer management. The other hosting company we use is Brownrice Internet (brownrice.com) out of Taos. I have two personally developed Drupal sites hosted there and one commercial site. Brownrice only takes new clients through referals, so if you do decide to go with them, mention that Matthew Saunders sent you. Both have reasonable monthly hosting fees and both are Drupal friendly.
Best,
Matthew.
hosts in front range
From local linux groups I know most hosts along the front range and the surprising thing is that there just aren't many (and certainly no big ones). There are a couple, but finding any with Drupal experience would be surprising.
Depending on your budget for this project, I know the guys behind http://aktiom.net which provides VPS service. I haven't used the service and their Drupal knowledge is limited, but they are local providers. Their goal is to provide a customer service and performance better than shared hosting and entry level dedicated servers, but I don't believe they are interested in handling really large loads (e.g. if the site would ever need to migrated to full dedicated or multi-server hosting it's not a good fit).
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Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Not local Denver, but a price-is-right host
I have been using www.1and1.com. They are a big hosting outfit (probably the largest in the world) ... but they do offer cheap and highly functional hosting.
They do not know anything about Drupal, but it works well and fast on their platform and I have been using it for quite some time.
The only thing that you will need to add to their VPS for a Drupal site is the PoorMansCron module.
http://drupal.org/project/poormanscron
Check it out ...
If you need any help, feel free to contact me.
Another "price-is-right" option
I've used "A Small Orange" (http://asmallorange.com), based out of Atlanta. While they don't particularly know Drupal, they're also extremely low cost, and have a nice setup where you can configure your site yourself to run either PHP 4 or 5. Their tech support is very good, too ... even on the $25/year account (yes, that's per year, not per month).
http://opensocialsites.com is at a higher price point, but specializes both in Drupal and CiviCRM.
Industrial-strength host
I just learned that Data393 speaks Drupal. Their services are designed for those who need "industrial strength" service, and are priced accordingly. And they're based right here in the Denver Tech Center.
php colorado thumbs down but they seem generally good
There was one bad review of them recently on the phpcolorado group - something about moving servers without warning - but looking for data393 sucks doesn't turn up a whole lot so they seem like they might be some good folks.
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Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Denver Open Media option?
If you have some ability to contribute to the workload, We're looking to start hosting more sites at Deproduction/Denver OPen Media, especially for nonprofit or noncommercial sites. We paid $40,000 to lay two strands of fibre directly to the Front Range GigaPop, so we have pretty much unlimited bandwidth capacity, and a couple dozen terabytes in a Raid5, but we have little or no support. We don't have WHM or Cpanel or any of the stuff the big boys have, but if oyu're willing to put some elbow-grease in, we might represent a great opportunity.
We're currently hosting about 20 non-profits sites, most of which aren't Drupal sites. Again, a lot of the workload would be on your shoulders, but I wanted to put it out there that this opportunity exists.
Whatever your first issue of concern, media had better be your second, because without change in the media, the chances of progress in your primary area are far less likely. http://denveropenmedia.org