Hosting recomendation / advice!

Techmonkey · 6th December 2007

I run a fairly successful Free Tech Help forum and have had it hosted on Servage for the last 12 months, however their control panel isnt brilliant and sometimes their customer service is very bad. They seem lately to have been making some big improvements, but overall it slowly and clunky.

Anyway I need some recomendations (and please I don't mean quotes) based on the following:

Linux Hosting
cPanel
5+ per month transfer
2Gb+ Storage should do for now,
2 (or more) MySQL
2+ domain names (not free ones with the account, but so I can point 2+ already owned domains at the hosting)
Preferably UK location
Free domain transfer
10+ E-mail addresses

Not sure what else if anything.

As I stated above the site is a "Free" tech support site so my hosting budget is not great, but I was hoping for around £5/month I could get something reliable.

I know you guys must get this all the time, as I do with Virus related questions on my site, but hosting is just not my forte, I couldnt tell who was good and who was bad.

othellotech · 6th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techmonkey

5+ per month transfer

5+ what ? Mb , Gb or Tb

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techmonkey

2Gb+ Storage should do for now,

nice medium sized forum - how many simultaneous users ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techmonkey

As I stated above the site is a "Free" tech support site so my hosting budget is not great, but I was hoping for around £5/month I could get something reliable.

For 2gb space, 50Gb transfer, UK and reliable, you're *probably* missing a zero off your budget ...

ServWise.com · 6th December 2007

For that price you are asking a bit much even for US based hosting, at minimum you should double your budget. (Or reduce your requirements to meet your budget).

£10 ($20) per month would get you what you want (Maybe even a little more) if you are happy to host your site in the US.

JamesSykes · 6th December 2007

http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html

ServWise.com · 6th December 2007

Probably good to read the small print

* paid 10 years in advance. $10.95/mo monthly, $9.95/mo for 1 year, $8.95/mo for 2 years, $7.95/mo for 3 years, $6.95/mo for 5 years. $49.95 set up fee if you pay monthly.

As for being over sold...hummm

Karl · 6th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by ServWise.com

Probably good to read the small print

* paid 10 years in advance. $10.95/mo monthly, $9.95/mo for 1 year, $8.95/mo for 2 years, $7.95/mo for 3 years, $6.95/mo for 5 years. $49.95 set up fee if you pay monthly.

As for being over sold...hummm

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. You can't really comment on someone overselling when you claim unlimited data transfer on some of your packages

ServWise.com · 6th December 2007

The problem is that these days many users "Look for" unlimited bandwidth plans, they have no idea how much bandwidth a typical site uses and don't want to have the bother to work it out.

We offer both plan types for both types of customer, metered and unmetered. One is levelled by an exact limit and is slightly cheaper and the other isn't.

Our servers are always fast and highly available.

But this debate could rage forever (and already has).

True I am kinda the pot calling the kettle black but my main point still stands about the small print.

JamesSykes · 6th December 2007

Dreamhost are still probably 100 times more successful then you?

I'm not saying they are good but I'm fed up of people slating others without rhyme nor reason.

ServWise.com · 6th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesSykes

Dreamhost are still probably 100 times more successful then you?

I'm quite sure they are, we are a very new hosting company at least as ServWise.com, however I have been in the web development and design business (Inc hosting) for close to a decade and my business partner the same but specialising in network / server security. You have to start somewhere. We are looking for long term organic growth and making sure priority is customer service not making a huge profit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesSykes

I'm not saying they are good but I'm fed up of people slating others without rhyme nor reason.

I wasn't really slating them, I was just pointing out what seemed to me to be quite strict terms to achieve the very low price, something that you hadn't mentioned when you posted the link.

Quote:

Disk Storage at signup 500 GB
Automatically Increases Weekly By: 2 GB
Monthly Bandwidth at signup 5.0 TB
Automatically Increases Weekly By: 40 GB

How is it even possible especially for $6 per month? Thats just silly numbers picked from the air.

JamesSykes · 6th December 2007

Not really. You buy a ton of servers, bandwidth and SAN space then you pile a load of customers on top knowing full well that nobody is going to ever use up the full 500GB.

It's no different to say a broadband connection. If broadband subscriber logged in and started downloading I'm fairly sure shit would start to crumble. It doesnt happen though does it.....

Karl · 6th December 2007

lol, James, that happens all the time, just look at why every ISP either throttles certain protocols beyond all usability or has to throttle every protocol evenly at peak times.

Techmonkey · 6th December 2007

Anyway I don't mean to interrupt the hand bag's session, but after much looking around i have decided to go with tsohost.co.uk

Partially based on information on this site and reviews read elsewhere (i.e. oc**********)

Thanks all for your time!

JamieBeeston · 6th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesSykes

It's no different to say a broadband connection. If broadband subscriber logged in and started downloading I'm fairly sure shit would start to crumble. It doesnt happen though does it.....

Again, I'll take issue with this...

Broadband providers do generally list their contention ratios, and they offer 'up to' services as opposed to 'here is what you are buying'

And broadband networks routinely suffer during peak usage hours, so much so that they cap clients.

ServWise.com · 6th December 2007

Again, I'm not really asking, I'm just pointing out how ridiculous there number are.

There is overselling, OVERSELLING and OVER'THEF'KINTOP'SELLING.. and this one belongs in the latter category.

JamesSykes · 6th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl

lol, James, that happens all the time, just look at why every ISP either throttles certain protocols beyond all usability or has to throttle every protocol evenly at peak times.

I wouldn't say throttling is 'crumbling' as I put it

The point I was trying to make is that silly limits or not there is a bell curve in usage patterns and that's what Dreamhost and other companies are banking on. The fact that 90% of users will lie between two points on a graph. So long as they have enough resources to cater for those users there wont be a problem.