Host experiences and testimonials thread

[TuSlic]

asmallorange, eleven2, servage, penguinhost Which one should i use?

I'm about to open a website for my record label and I'm going to purchase a vbulletin board, eventually the site board will be bringing in big traffic for my hip hop board. Which host would you guys pick?

[almqdad]

Hi TuSlic

go for Servage they are Major Bandwidth Providers click here

[jbalive]

i cannot recommend alivewww sorry

ALIVEWWW.COM

has anyone used alivewww for their hosting. have you had any problems using their services. i have just had a really bad experience with them that is now involving worldpay. just wanted to know if anyone else has used them and what their views were.

pros

the services they offer are good. http://alivewww.com/unixhosting.php but i have had a very bad experience trying to resolve an issue with a new account set up with them, which was set up incorrectly. they have ignored 11 emails including emails from worldpay who process their payments. i'm just glad i didn't use them for one of our clients who wants a commercial package with 20Gb monthly bandwidth. i am now looking at your forum to find a better host provider.

i would love to know about any positive experiences with alivewww

[Neutral Singh]

Hi I am planning to finally change my host... i have some options but i am confused as always... My forum is steadily growing (980 members)... My present host although doing a nice job but the main problem is he is not a reliable one in terms of customer service, NO automatic UPS backups etc, so the chances of database loss is always loomming on my head...

My present hosts general server information is as follows :

General server information:
Operating system Linux
Kernel version 2.4.21-4.0.1.EL
Machine Type i686
Apache version 1.3.33 (Unix)
PERL version 5.8.1
PHP version 4.3.9
MySQL version 4.0.20-standard
cPanel Build 9.9.8-RELEASE 5

Is the above configuration alright ?

I am presently considering the following hosts...

First choice. www.Registerfly.com : Web Pro Plan @ $13.95 pm with 3 GB diskspace, a whopping 125 GB Bandwidth (?? monthly or yearly) and 10 databases with a promise of gr8 customer support. Are they a good webhost ?

1. www.mish-hosting.com : Gold Plan @ $10 pm with 1 GB diskspace, 60 GB Bandwidth monthly and no limit to databases etc. Recommended by San-Deep from www.tech-arena.com (since then shifted to a dedicated server.)

2. www.asmallorange.com : Medium Plan with 1GB Space, 50 GB Transfer and i think no limit to databases... Considering purely based on the recommendations by many in this thread. Their sales open on January 27th !!

3. www.realwebhost.net : Heard gr8 things about them lately. Power Plan @ $14.95 with only 750 MB diskspace, 25GB Bandwidth, 30 databases etc.

4. www.vizaweb.com : Again purely on feedback on this thread. Corporate Plan @ $15.95 with 3GB diskspace, 150 GB Bandwidth (monthly ??) and no limit to databases etc.

I am confused. Based on general experiences what would you recommend. What would have been vBulletin.com choice, had they hosted vbulletin.com on a shared server. Please guide me.

Best Regards

PS: Registerfly.com provided a bandwidth of 125GB is the monthly or yearly . Similarly Vizaweb.com provides bandwidth of 150GB monthly or yearly . Please guide,

[Neutral Singh]

** anybody there ?? **

[kremerov]

F5Hosting.com

I am very new to websites and forums, so when I searched for a webhost the main thing I looked at was support. I emailed three companys, out of the three the only one who sent back a timly and correct response was F5.

In the past I have placed a few support tickets, not because the server company messed up but because I botched the install. Much to my surprise not only did they explain what I did wrong, but they also fixed the problem all on their own.

Ive been with them for a few months now, no down time amazing technical support and no sown time. Five stars.

[Marc Smith]

To me part of the equation is what you're willing to pay. I have a dedicated with ServerMatrix and I've never waited more than a couple of minutes getting them on the phone and e-mail is generally within an hour or two. But I rarely e-mail them. If I have a problem, I want a human to speak with in the datacententer.

That's why my experience with Serverbeach was short. Slow e-mail support and no phone support. NOTE: That was about a year ago so things there could be different by now, but at the time the 'Big Kahuna' was not my idea of 'user friendly'.

[Pipers Dragon]

My host i said to be made for vBulletins, and so far I have no complaints at all! I love it! My host is http://virtuosonetsolutions.net... Anyone heard/used it before?

[Loki12]

Anyone else have any experience with this host?

Yes! I can very much recommend www.penguinhost.net ! My experience with them (been there for a week) has so far been excellent. Super-fast servers, no downtime and quick answers when I log a ticket. I asked for SSH access, and that request was answered within a few minutes. I am happy.

[RockStar]

I'd like to talk about my experience at Micfo International LLC.

http://www.micfo.com

If you're a new vB owner and don't have much traffic (~20 people online), their shared servers are perfect for you. They are Dual Xeon processors and are ultra fast.. for their low price you can't find better.

One of the best things about this company is their customer support. The team over there is great, and replies to my tickets in less than 10 minutes! I even emailed them in the middle of the night once, and I had a reply like 4 mintues later.

When your forum grows, you can upgrade your package to the premium packages, and they put you on better servers, with less people. To them its quality over quantity, and that is really important in my opinion. They also have dedicated servers for those forums that need to go that extra step.

So check em out, I'm really happy to be hosted by them, just thought I'd share: http://www.micfo.com

[turkforum]

Liquiedweb.com is great with installation support and datacenter.

i ve got 2 dual opterons one for mysql and 1 for apache
the instalaltion and transition form 1 based server to the 2nd system with 2 servers were so smooth did not even realize we moved our database to the 2nd server.

Now very very fast loading pages and about 600 users online ( 900 sec) and 1000 users ( 3600sec) .

2 thumbs up.

http://www.liquidweb.com/?RID=turkforum

[asarian]

Hostpro/Interland - http://www.hostpro.com/ - freedom 500 plan

My site on their servers: no longer. I now long since run my own server, at home.

Pros:

1. Excellent uptime.
2. Prompt responses to support tickets.
3. Excellent online users guide.
4. Perfect bandwidth performance.

Cons:

1. They are not very good at honoring (permitted) changes to your setup. I should explain that.

These freedom 500 accounts come with root-access (a FreeBSD jailed environment). Over the years I installed many things, upgraded many libraries, etc. Ever since Interland took over, increasingly often they would start to "mess" with your server; that is, run install scripts for certain upgrades they deemed useful, without your permission; but worse, without consideration of how these changes might affect your server. So, one day I would wake up, and find my crypt libraries 'upgraded' -- and I put that in quotes, as they were actually downgraded! That is, I had long since upgraded them myself, to the latest versions, and then they would come and install a much older series (which was only newer relative to the original server). So, that fine morning my stunnel daemon would not run anymore! Just to name one thing. The same thing went for MySQL. I would dilligently ugrade the MySQL server and client libraries, and statically link stuff against them (like PHP!), only to find them having downgraded everything the next day. I have many more examples, but you get the idea.

Although between the lines some Administrators were actually sympathetic to my complaints, the "brass" could not care less, though. This was for me the immediate and pretty much only reason to leave them. I cannot have someone mess up my server all the time, despite their best intentions.

2. Related to the above, there is something inherently flawed in the the way their freedom 500 plans are set up. They use symlinks to all libraries and shared files, so as to shave off the odd space (and to be able to do easy central upgrading, no doubt). But that effectively renders those root-enabled servers useless. Because, as outlined above, central changing to libs you are symlinked to will tend to seriously break things when you make server customizations. I had much rather lost a few hundred K having the real libraries, instead of the symlinks, and so keep control over them.

3. Expensive.


The upshot of it all is, if you are looking for a stable server with great uptime and bandwidth, and you plan not to really customize your server, then they are a great choice. But if you are looking for root-access to a Virtual Private Server you can tweak to your hearts content, then I believe you are better off elsewhere.

My impression was, though unsubstantiated, that the Interland "brass" really did not want these root-access enabled servers, and that they kinda felt forced to grandfather them from the previous owners, but just as soon would have gotten rid of them.

- Mark

System Administrator Asarian-host.org

---
"If you were supposed to understand it,
we wouldn't call it code." - FedEx

[Protoss]

Looking to move from server1 @

http://www.solidinternet.com/index.php
ultimate package
Pros:

• Reasonable Price

Cons:

• Much the same as the above post.
• Periods of slugishness and freezes.
• SMTP errors
• Sometimes excruciatingly slow in Cpanel
• Server not found etc. etc

Since October of 2004 it has been one excuse after another.

More excuses today. My site has been up and down since 9 p.m (GMT) on Thursday 12th February.
Now checking this thread for an alternative.

Wish me luck .

[JPT62089]

4. www.vizaweb.com : Again purely on feedback on this thread. Corporate Plan @ $15.95 with 3GB diskspace, 150 GB Bandwidth (monthly ??) and no limit to databases etc.

I am confused. Based on general experiences what would you recommend. What would have been vBulletin.com choice, had they hosted vbulletin.com on a shared server. Please guide me.

Best Regards

PS: Registerfly.com provided a bandwidth of 125GB is the monthly or yearly . Similarly Vizaweb.com provides bandwidth of 150GB monthly or yearly . Please guide,

VizaWebs bandwidth is monthly. Dont think that they underprice and offer horrible support. They dont. Their support is awesome

[sross]

My site recently outgrew my semi-dedicated plan over at http://www.realwebhost.com and they were VERY cool about it -as in not pulling a lunarpages and turning me off. So I live overseas in a different time zone, and Realwebhost are on yahoo messenger all the time, I message them to see if anyone is around, and say 'ok, i need a dedicated server', this is at 4:30am in the morning their time! I get an instant response "let me work up a few quotes for you", I get the quotes 15 minutes later and for a dedicated 100% fully managed box they are about $200 cheaper than I expected, so I am beyond stoked. I thought I was going to get a quote out of my reach. I say I'll take it, and 2hrs later I'm up and running on a dedicated box and all has never been better. I've been with them over a year now and they always blow me away.