Posted by Natalie Pacholl on January 8, 2008 at 10:05pm
Hi all,
I'm looking into Drupal for my organization's website, and could use your advice:
- Recommendations for a reliable, affordable, responsive hosting company
- The name of a reliable, affordable, responsive Drupal programmer that could customize Drupal to meet our needs.
Let me know if you have any suggestions!
Comments
Stephouse Networks
Hello Natalie
I use and recommend Stephouse Networks - local, good community values, latest stuff and host lots of the latest DRUPAL. php sql stuff (unlike my other local host who is 1-2 releases behind on each).
The owner - Tyler Booth's site is in drupal.
Their number is 503.548.2000 you can mention I recommended them if you want.
Best
Zaph
Listen to Andy Partridge for a better life.
...and if you read, buy a book from a local bookseller
Listen to Andy Partridge for a better life.
...and if you read, buy a book
Depends on your needs...
The downside to Stephouse is that their servers seem to be slow (about half the speed of every server I've ever been on), and you don't get any access to a control panel or anything like that (so no setting up your own e-mails or anything).
I was frustrated working with them because I had to wait for them to do things that I can do myself in about 15 seconds (such as create an e-mail address).
But the client I was working with wanted to use them because of them being local and good community values.
Jenni Simonis
Gresham, OR
Jenni Simonis
http://www.forwardsupport.com
Local Hosting
We've had some pretty good luck with Network Redux, which is a local Portland company that hosts their servers here in pdx. Pricing is ok, there are cheaper options out there but the service has been very good and the fact they're local is a plus for many clients.
Another cool option is Think Host. They're headquartered locally, but I'm not positive where their servers are actually running. But one cool thing is that they're a green hosting company, so they're powered with renewable energy. It's been a nice option for some companies that are trying to be as 'green' as possible. There's still a lot of discussion on the net about how feasible and affordable truly green hosting is, but these guys seem to be doing as well as anybody.
Blue Host is one company that's just insanely cheap for the amount of space on the basic plans, but they're not local. I've heard good things though from many other drupalers.
Jason
hosting
I use Mediatemple for one of my sites. It seems to work well. They even have a 'one-button" Drupal load for your domain, but it was 4.7 so I didn't use it. I assume they will update that soon, if they haven't already.
Dean
Myself and my girlfriend use
Myself and my girlfriend use Dreamhost and Mediatemple. One nice thing I've heard about Dreamhost is free hosting for non-profits. That could influence one's decision.
Grant
Sala kahle,
Grant
I've actually pulled a
I've actually pulled a couple clients off MediaTemple due to sub-par performance.
WRT hosting in general, I tend to advise people to look at the cost if your site is down. If you can afford unpredictable outages, then you can probably save money on hosting expenses. When you sign up for budget hosting, you are essentially that company's lowest priority -- with that said, there are plenty of situations where shared hosting will meet your needs perfectly well.
If, however, you have more complex needs, are willing to pay slightly more to minimize downtime, and/or don't want to deal with the lowest tier of tech support, I often recommend getting a VPS -- they are more expensive, but you generally are at a higher tier of customer support, and you will also have higher priority than the shared hosting clients.
Hosting is a classic example of getting exactly what you pay for.
As to a recommendation, I have had a good experience with Electric Embers -- from their home page:
They are reasonably priced, and, from my experience, offer good service.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
I'll second Bill's
I'll second Bill's recommendations and add another. I've had trouble hosting Drupal based sites on Dreamhost. There are issues with their database implementation that can make Drupal run very slowly for the end user. Also, I have had them disable tables in my Drupal DB, without warning, causing my site to break rather badly. Apparently I had a query that was tying up the DB server for a long time, but instead of contacting me first to ask I change it, they immediately disabled it, and left me to wake up and find a very broken web site.
I quickly moved to a VPS after that. A basic VPS from most providers should more than meet your needs, and not run more than around $200 USD /year. It's not really that much for something that you could actually run several sites from, and provides much more reliability and control.
As for basic VPS providers, there are many, but I recommend http://www.slicehost.com.
Can't say a single bad thing about Dreamhost
They have always provided reliable service and excellent customer service.