Small Scale Web Designer Looking for Top Quality VPS or Dedicated Hosting

mmoore · 6th January 2009

I currently run about 50 brochure type Web sites, total bandwidth for all sites combined is less than 1Gb per month.

I also provide email facilities (POP3) to some of my customers, most of them are using Web mail - their usage rate is low but I don't have any actual figures.

I'm looking to double the number of customers during 2009 and will probably top the 1Gb bandwidth per month, but not go above 2Gb.

I'm looking for RELIABLE hosting - probably Linux/Unix, either VPS or Dedicated, that will run this configuration WELL and has some kind of automatic failover, but that won't break the bank. I'm currently paying £300 per year and am willing to increase the amount I pay, but not to £600 per year. I'd be comfortable with £450. If you think I'm mad and it just can't be done for that price please let me know. My prime non-technical requirements are RELIABILITY and QUALITY and I accept that these things need to be paid for just as much as the hardware.

Since I'm looking to avoid the problems of shared hosting I would need at least one IP address that is all mine, preferably two or three. An SSL certificate for one site is also a plus but not a hard requirement. If you have some recommended software with easy install/management for supporting Sun ONE (for ASP) and mail servers, etc, etc, that's also a plus.

I want to complete the move of all the sites by the end of May, so if you can offer me something to play around with for cheap (or free) during January (and maybe February! - this is a part-time hobby for me!) while I just make sure that I can get the configuration right and that I'm happy with the whole idea then that would be a definite plus point. Otherwise a month-by-month basis moving to annual payment end of May.

If you think you have a product that can meet these requirements please let me know.

Mike

dazmanultra · 6th January 2009

Hi Mike, I know you asked for VPS or dedicated hosting, but if you don't need entirely full control over the hosting environment, then perhaps I can interest you in our newly launched clustered, load-balanced ("cloud") hosting platform?

It offers immense scalability and redundancy, but without the cost of other setups.

Our standard clustered hosting package at £9.99 a month allows you to host up to 100 websites across Windows and Linux, and you can even host a website in one of the 'Hybrid' modes - that means that ASP pages get served by the Windows cluster, and PHP et al gets served by Linux. This can be turned on/off/configured on a per-site basis.

We can give sites individual IP addresses, however as always these are subject to RIPE guidelines (so you'd typically need an SSL certificate for each site that you wanted on its own IP).

The cluster is redundantly load-balanced (so if a server fails it doesn't cause downtime) and there is replication with the back-end storage as well as backups every 15 minutes - the system was built with reliability in mind.

As mentioned this platform may or may not be of interest to you, if you have any questions or queries please don't hesitate to give us a call or send us an email.

You can find out a little more about the platform here:
Load Balanced Clustered Web Hosting from Tsohost

mmoore · 6th January 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by dazmanultra

Hi Mike, I know you asked for VPS or dedicated hosting, but if you don't need entirely full control over the hosting environment, then perhaps I can interest you in...

This is quite good. So I might as well open this up to reseller hosting as well...

My only concern here is that I would like as seamless a migration for my users as possible. For example, they are used to using the atmail Web mail package and I really wouldn't want to change this unnecessarily. I'd also need to know about other software (e.g. awstats, how mailing lists are handled, etc) and whether or not I could install such things if they weren't already available.

dazmanultra · 6th January 2009

I wouldn't have thought there would be any problem installing the @mail webmail client yourself (you'd just add a new website, e.g. webmail.yourdomain.com and install as you would with any other webmail script, which tend to be essentially web based IMAP clients). I'm not sure about how you'd migrate the data (e.g. if a customer has an address book and various other settings configured in the current webmail)

AWstats is provided as standard on our hosting accounts - but with regards to mailing lists it depends what mailing list software you're using.

As said though, you may well prefer to have entire control over your hosting environment in which case a VDS/dedicated may well be better suited. It might be worth looking at the utility computing/grid providers that offer Virtual Servers provisioned on a "cloud" platform, which tend to be hosted on highly redundant hardware (check before you buy).

domtaylor · 6th January 2009

It sounds like you've just suffered with bad shared hosting rather than shared hosting itself being the problem - unless you need specific control over your server environment I'd expect our Reseller hosting should suit you well.

As such I can recommend our Reseller 50 package which includes 10Gb disk space, 100Gb bandwidth, a full control panel for yourself and your clients, and the ability to use whichever Webmail program you prefer, and various other standard hosting features (PHP 5, MySQL 5). I can also provide an SSL certificate free of charge.

We also provide a free WHMCS license will all Reseller 50/100 orders which may be useful for you to manage your clients as you grow.

We can also aid in the transfer of your sites and set you up with a trial to see what you think of the cPanel/WHM system.

Please see our site for full details here and feel free to e-mail me on taylor@vidahost.com if you have any questions

othellotech · 6th January 2009

Hi Mike

We've been running high-availability quality reseller systems on Dual-OS (ASP/ASP.net/MS-SQL on Win2k/Win2k3, LAMP on CentOS) through our HSphere cluster for almost 10 years - very stable/reliable platform, giving you one account, but the ability to host each site on the technology platform that site requires, each with or without individual control panels.

This setup also includes @mail appliance based webmail on one of our generic/unbranded domains which can be used by all of your clients with the familiar look+feel they've come to expect.

Prices from £500/year.

Alternatively if cost is an issue a standard Linux CPanel Reseller account and individual Windows accounts as needed will be cheaper, and you'd be suprised at the massive performance increase in ASP pages on IIS over the old SunOne/Cobalt ASP interpreter

Fixed IP's and an SSL certificates available as needed.

Feel free to email/PM/call with any questions ... Contact details for Othello Technology Systems Ltd - - from Othello::Contact Us

danfoster · 7th January 2009

Hi Mike,

Take a look at our UltraCloud Virtual Servers at virtual dedicated servers | virtual dedicated hosting | virtual dedicated servers, they start from £35.00 per month, but you can play with specification and pricing online.

Because of the centralised storage, failover capability and redundant hardware, we are able to offer a very high SLA (99.99%) on the "virtual hardware" of your virtual server.

Thanks,
Daniel