Host recommendations needed. Let me start by saying, THANKS in advance for your replies.
I own a (very) small US-based business and my website/email hosting has been with LiquidWeb since they acquired my previous host WiredTree.
LiquidWeb ignored a support ticket yesterday and as my yearly payment comes due next week I thought I probably owe it to myself to at least evaluate my options before it renews.
My biggest priority is knowing I have good managed support when I need it. Problem is, having support tickets linger in the cue for a day or so until I call/chat them and ask when it's going to get looked at has been a pretty constant problem since day one. And it's not like I'm inundating them with support tickets either. My website development has been on hold the past couple years due to personal reasons, so this might be the first support ticket I've even opened this year other than asking them to whitelist an IP because their automated process for that doesn't work.
Looks like I'm paying about $2,400/year for a Cloud Dedicated server and $800/year for a second smaller plan (old WiredTree VPS plan).
The main server appears to be 8 core (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1271 v3 @ 3.60GHz) with a 24/900/5 config (I think). I'm not currently taxing the box at all; it's a total overkill in all regards. One downside to LiquidWeb is at the time I moved this server from a VPS to this plan I was kind of forced into a much, much higher plan than I really needed because every option in between had the same limited disk space my VPS had and the only reason I needed to upgrade was that I was pushing disk limits.
As such, being able to scale up or down in the future without having to make huge jumps is also important.
As of right now, the second (VPS) server could easily be absorbed by the first. I actually intended to do that a year ago when my bill came due but then life got in the way and it fell through the cracks.
Both my boxes are managed CentOS/WHM/cPanel with Root access. I did not migrate away from cPanel when the prices went up. If there's something legitimately better than cPanel I'm happy to evaluate it, but until then it's the devil I know.
Prior to WiredTree/LiquidWeb I had 2 VPS plans at ServInt. Originally ServInt was excellent... until they weren't. But even after they outsourced their support overseas, I really still didn't have support issues. I left ServInt because my boxes were aging badly and all signs said the company was in trouble. I will also say my brief experience with WiredTree support before they got bought out was amazing.
Before ServInt I was with Inmotion Hosting (originally shared hosting then a VPS albeit without Root access). I will say I have no desire to work with any host that sells shared plans again.
As far as budget is concerned, I can afford what I'm currently paying. Yes I'd love to be paying less although that's not what's driving this search. If I stay with LiquidWeb, I'll migrate the VPS into the Cloud Dedicated and downsize to $2,400/year. If I'm paying less elsewhere, I expect it's because I downsized the Cloud Dedicated server's specs.
When I left ServInt for WiredTree, recommendations from this site caused me to have a short list of WiredTree, KnownHost, FutureHosting and LiquidWeb. I've seen recent recommendations in other threads for KnownHost and BigScoots, so that's where my current short list begins. Any recommendations are appreciated.
We're looking for a managed dedicated server in NL or DE DC,
We have read much praise in here for Hivelocity but we checked their managed plans and amazed to see that they do not offer any support in cases where FFMPEG or 3rd party scripts are involved.
We need support whenever anything happens where our tech/dev isn't capable enough to solve the issue. As an example of such tech challenge that we would need to have covered by the managed hosting is issues that relate to diagnosing network package losses that are noticed when using a custom Google Cloud Translation API. In such case we wouldn't want to get told 'We can't support you because you're using 3rd party CMS/Software'
We're used to managed dedi hosting in US and have never had any such issues where support aren't taking care of everything. We need to understand who in NL or DE does provide such services?
We do not need support often but when do we we want a sysadmin on the other end who isn't just trying to avoid supporting based on some weird T&C.
Usually over a year we may need 5 hours of support, so during these 5 hours we need just full support and dedication from the support staff as rest of the year the payment for the services has been more of an insurance payment.
I have been hosting my sites on my current hosting company for 7 years. TBH, I am happy with them most of the time.
Since they were sold to another company, the tech support is getting worse. Each time it takes a long time for them to figure out what's going on. They always said the problem is on my side. But it turns out all the issues I complained locate on the server side. I had enough with those offshore tech support.
The second thing is: on my current plan, the server blocked a lot of proxy/Tor access, maybe for anti-spamming or whatever. And host-tacker shows some "HostNotFound" results, which I have not seen it from my friend's sites (we both run the same type of sites). So I lost some traffic as well.
That's why I am thinking to move my sites out.
My site is not big. Currently, I have 2500-3000 unique visits/day, and bandwidth/m is about 700 GB. I am thinking to try a dedicated server plan this time. Then I will have the faster page loading speed, which means better SEO, I guess? Hopefully I can get more traffic and more visits. And I won't get bothered by bad neighbors any more.
I checked a few dedicated plans, can you tell me what these mean? esp WAN uplink and LAN Uplink? Should it be included in total bandwidth?
1,000 Megabit WAN Uplink
1,000 Megabit LAN Uplink
25,000 GB Included Transfer
I read some articles about Dedicated IP vs Shared IP. It seems Dedicated IP is better than Shared IP. But for a small site like mine, do I really need a dedicated server?
I am thinking of mojohost as some friends recommend them. Do they have a coupon or I can negotiate with them for a discount?
Any advises are appreciated.
I have some servers at Hivelocity, since 2017.
No network problems, 100% uptime, excellent hardware and support.
Yesterday, after 2 or 3 years, one of the backup disks on one of my servers, failed.
I opened a ticket asking how to change to a new HDD. To my surprise, the support offered the possibility to clone the disk to try to recover the data. Despite being a backup disk, it would be good to recover, as I had left some old accounts there.
Then they removed the HDD and cloned it in 3 hours, for a new HDD. And it worked! all recovered data. Of course, it will not always be possible to recover, it will depend on the problem that the HDD presents.
And during the whole process, the Hivelocity support team was very active, I scheduled to shut down the server after 7PM (so they can insert the new drive) and minutes before they wrote saying "we are ready to install the new HDD, you just have to shutdown the server". Never, but never, have I seen this type of concern with the customer, in the datacenters where I have been. I'm in this market this 2004, I had servers at The Planet, Layered Tech, Host Dime, LiquidWeb, and so many others that don't even exist anymore.
I've had servers in other companies, which were managed, and I didn't have support like that. My servers at Hivelocity have no management, but they go beyond what was expected, gave me all the support from beginning to end of the process, offered the data recovery service for free and even warned that they will save the old HDD for a week, for any emergency.
Thanks Hivelocity, I only have one thing to ask: keep it up, "this is the way".
Please could I ask you to name a few competitors who are around the level of liquidweb in terms of reliability, infrastructure, hardware&network support, and big enough to not disappear or have a 17 day outage
My vision goes something like this
IBM SoftLayer
Rackspace
.
.
Liquidweb
.
.
.
.
HiVelocity
ReliableSite
Webnx
.
OVH
Whether my vision is fair is another thing, but I'm looking for candidates just below rackspace and above the webnx kind of level, i.e. in liquidweb ballpark just so I can add them to a list and research them further
Ive been a customer of KnownHost for over 5 years. As my sites have been growing Ive used several of their different managed VPS and dedicated servers throughout the years. This has given me great insight both into their hardware performance and the customer support for the managed services they provide.
As most website owners know there are the occasional days which are nothing but headaches. Slow loading and watching as traffic drops. Its not fun at the moment but its part of the game. The most recent event was today and that gave me this reminder to take some time out of my day to write this review.
KnownHost is one of the best hosting providers out there which truly look after their customers. Today, as many times previously, they went far and beyond to resolve the issues with my dedicated server and helped boost the performance on my site significantly.
As someone who is not a developer it is truly a great feeling to know that a response from KnownHosts support staff is never but a few minutes away. This might sound too much like a 90s TV commercial, but I cant praise them enough! 5 years and they are still as good as back then (or maybe even better actually).
I highly recommend KnownHost to anyone who is looking for a trustworthy hosting provider with many years of experience in the space and who always puts their customers first.
Thank you KnownHost for being awesome! I will keep on recommending you.
Hi,
I am looking for a dedicated offshore server (DMCA ignored) for my client for an escort website.
I am looking for a provide above all with quick support and server management included. Ideal if support is based in Europe and they can speak English.
Server configuration 32GB RAM, 250GB SSD or (HDD will do), 1GBps port, 1TB Bandwidth, root access, Cpanel + WHM, CPU better than (Intel Xeon E3-1275v2 @3.80GHz (4 core))
Budget USD $300
Regards
Harry
After 2 weeks working forth and back with Liquidwebs staff to secure our servers we have to give up.
The situation is that frustrating that we need to find a different hosting center for a managed dedicated server.
I was wondering if anyone know of companies reliable for a small ecommerce website?
If you can't suggest any here then maybe you can hint me what to look for?
We want the server to be located in Europe and has to be managed but with Plesk or cPanel.
Welp, so there were some CPU load issues yesterday and I asked for help. While I was sleeping, someone from Liquidweb thought it will be a good idea (without my permissions) to uninstall mod_pagespeed and reinstall something else.
Of course, the version I had before was not the same that they have reinstalled or something else went wrong and my sites are all have been broken ever since. Did they even bother to check if the mod pagespeed was functioning like it was supposed to? Of course not. The CPU load is still here except now I also have broken cache, images not loading, and a support reply of something along the lines of "nah, we can't install the version you want as we don't support it".
Thanks, guys.
I'm a small business owner and developer since 2003. We have a few dedicated servers, each one with a different host. One of these hosts was sold and the new owner wants us to use a new server in a new location. We are considering switching to another host. This server runs some important client web sites, our own site, and web apps we're developing.
What we're looking for:
- unmanaged bare metal dedicated server, Intel Xeon 4c/8t minimum, 6 or 8 core preferred
- 16GB RAM, 32GB RAM preferred
- 1TB (or 960GB) SSD, 2 x SSD software RAID preferred
- FreeBSD 11 or 12 (our other servers are FreeBSD 11.4)
- $140/month or less (we're paying $130/month now for the current server, no SSD, 16GB)
- US data center, east coast preferred
Obviously we want a decent data center and good customer support but we also want a company who is going to be around for the next 10 years and isn't likely to be bought up by some Wall Street investment firm who doesn't care about the customers of the smaller hosting firms they're purchasing.
Hosts I'm researching:
- Vultr
- OVHcloud (the US branch)
- Linode
- Hivelocity
So far, OVH seems to have the exact hardware, price point, and data center but their billing system worries me.
If you have any experience with these hosts, good or bad, please share. If you work for one of these hosts, I'm open to offers.
thanks,
Robert
Not sure if this is the right category.. I want to know what makes a server speedy. My issue is, I tried about 6 servers the last 6 months.
Reseller Hostmantis (5$ a month)
VPS cloudcone 10 core 16 GB ram (50$) a month + cpanel (15$) + litespeed (30$) a month
VPS from a dutch guy, 8 core, 16GB ram, directadmin (70 a month)
Cloudcone VPS: 10 cores, 60GB ram, Cpanel + litespeed = like 70 a month).
Wpprovider (claims to have to fastest dutch hosting): 25,- a month.
Neostrada magento hosting (6 core, 8GB ram, cpanel = 20,- a month)
Believe it or not, but the freaking 5$ per month SHARED (!!!!) RESELLER (!!!!!) is the fastest of them all. And I really don't understand how that is possible. Is there anybody who can explain to me what makes a server fast? First I thought it was litespeed, so i bought a litespeed license for by VPS'ses. Then I thought it was the lack of RAM, so i went to Contabo with 60 freaking GB of ram WITH litespeed. And even that is slower if I 1:1 compare it with a 100% duplicated site on that Hostmantis reseller package...
Then a guy from Asia who tried to improve the pagespeed for a webshop copied the site to his dedicated server and the results were INSANELY fast. I asked him his config and he said:
2 X Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650
32 Cores
64 GB ram
2 X SSD Drive
He said he didn't had Litespeed, only Memcache installed.
Is there anybody who can tell me what makes a server fast? Is it the RAM? the CPU? The managing? The location? The LITEspeed/Memcached/Redis? And when does it make sense to get a Dedicated server instead of a VPS?
About me: As side job I build websites. Most of them very easy, 3 page wordpress sites with no visitors. I host about 60. They don't really care about speed, cause they are happy if there are There are some bigger clients (3 with a woocommerce webshop, 1 with a magento webshop) for which speed IS important.
What I would like is
THE FASTEST Server possible for my amount
At least 500GB SSD storage
Managed
Backups remotely (and something like JEtbackup)
Softacalous
Cpanel + WHM (100 accounts)
Budget: Under like 180$ for all (if that is anyway possible).