Site5 or Liquidweb? As many of you know, both use Liquidweb's datacenter. So how does that affect hosting?

PROGRESS:
I've been researching here and around the web for a few weeks. I was down to Liquidweb as my final choice, but then I kept reading great things about Site5. So I'd like to describe my situation and concerns between hosts in hopes of some experienced advice. Apologies for posting in two forums, but this is both a Reseller and a VPS question.

MY DETAILS AND REQUIREMENTS:
I'm starting a business only tangentially related to the web (network admin services). I will host sites for my clients at no cost to them on my own reseller or VPS account. There will never be more than a dozen sites on my account - mostly small businesses and a couple of personal sites with lots of pics (>1GB in the next year). The security of my clients' sites, and therefore SSH, is one of the requirements that has kept me from using several otherwise well-regarded hosting companies.

IMPORTANT:
Cost is less important than reliability and support. That said, I don't want to spend unnecessarily, so here's where I'm scratching my head. So I turn to you all and ask for your insights:

OPTION 1:
Liquidweb has a substantial offering in their smaller VPS plan.
- fully managed Virtuozzo VPS with root access
- 20GB disk
- 200GB band
- 256 ram/2048 burstable (15% resource limit)
- CPANEL/WHM
- other package stuff that fits my needs that I won't bore you with here
- great support reviews
- $60 a month

OPTION 2:
Site5 has a beefy plan called the Reseller plan (RS-X Special)
- Shared hosting with SSH access
- 4GB disk
- 60GB band
- CPANEL dev spin-off that may be better than CPANEL
- other package stuff that fits my needs that I won't bore you with here
- great support reviews and self-reported response times of ~15
- $23 a month (month-to-month rate)


My impression is that Liquidweb offers a few more personalized services - built into the added cost, of course.

THE BURNING QUESTION:
If it indeed comes down to support, are both groups just as good? They both sell support as a key ingredient of their packages, and they do it well (then again, crappy hosts do the same - I'm not naive). Is this a coin toss?

LINGERING QUESTIONS:
Part of the reason for my inquiries is that I know Site5 uses the Liquidweb datacenter. This begs the question - If I have a problem with a machine with Site5, and I submit a ticket, are they in turn submitting a ticket with Liquidweb (possibly through some premium service status)? Or, do they have physical access to the machines in the datacenter? This is a hierarchy issue for me as far a support goes. If Site5 adds an additional link in the chain, I'm willing to pay to get around that weakness in the support structure. If, however, they have physical access, perhaps the lower priced option is the smarter move considering my modest storage and bandwidth needs.

Reliability and support remain my focus. Here's hoping this forum can help.


Thanks everyone.
-Joriki

Most likely it is going to depend on the situation. Site5 most likely maintains their own servers and depending on the problem, they probably will try to fix it themselves first before contacting LiquidWeb.

Site5 SSH access is most likely jailed shell so you are not going to be able to change server settings. With a VPS, you are going to be able to since you will have root access. I am sure Site5 does quite a good job on making sure their servers are secure so it is really up to you.

Originally posted by joriki
This begs the question - If I have a problem with a machine with Site5, and I submit a ticket, are they in turn submitting a ticket with Liquidweb (possibly through some premium service status)?Absolutely, positively not! :smash: Site5 employs a full-time (as in, 24/7/365) crew of some of the most talented systems administrators in the industry. We do all of our own development work (we have our own custom Cpanel distribution, our own custom kernel distribution, etc.). We go to Liquidweb for nothing other than physical hardware maintenance. If there is a hardware issue that requires hands-on, on-site work to be done, one of our team members will walk the on-site person through the process (in almost all cases, the person on our end of the phone is better qualified to solve it anyway).

We literally do _everything_ that can be done without actually standing in front of the server.

Or, do they have physical access to the machines in the datacenter? This is a hierarchy issue for me as far a support goes. If Site5 adds an additional link in the chain, I'm willing to pay to get around that weakness in the support structure. If, however, they have physical access, perhaps the lower priced option is the smarter move considering my modest storage and bandwidth needs.Again--the only thing we rely on Liquidweb staff for is remote hands. If an on-site procedure needs to be performed, we will write out detailed instructions (if it is planned in advance), or we will walk them through the process step-by-step over the phone to ensure that the work is performed exactly to our specifications.

Also consider that over half of our servers actually reside in another data center (Network Access). Network Access doesn't even provide web hosting to end users, so there is virtually no way we could be relying on them for support (as you suggested we might be doing with Liquidweb).

I would be willing to bet that our support response times are significantly faster than both of our upstream providers. That's not to say that they're bad, but rather, we're quite fast ;) (check out our forums if you don't believe me). There are essentially no support issues that we have to wait on our upstream provider to address--we are completely vendor independent and could easily switch datacenters without our customers suffering any service degradation or delayed support response times.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Site5 and Liquidweb are completely independent companies. Do not simply presuppose that a transferrence of service quality exists from Site5 to Liquidweb. The fact that you hear good things about Site5 is a reflection of nothing other than our own merit (and of course a lack of egregiously bad uptime on Liquidweb's network's part).

That being said, I wish you the best of luck in your decision. In my opinion, you've narrowed it down to two good choices, so I'm confident that you'll be happy regardless of where you end up! :cool:

Matt

Thanks, Matt. I've sent an inquiry to your sales dept to get a couple of things I've also asked of Liquidweb - contention ratios and a decent sized test file. Since you are in the same datacenter, a speed comparison would assure me that such things are otherwise equivalent between the two of you. I'm leaning towards Site5 at the moment using the logic that I can always transfer if you don't live up to your reviews and my expectations.

I've read on these forums that you might be offering VPS in the future - any ETA on that?

I forgot to ask sales something... If you know it off the top, what kind of memory burst rates do you have on your reseller plan servers?

And if you don't mind answering another pre-sales question...
From the Site5 Reseller TOS:
Because of the potential for system abuse, we ask that our resellers only give shell access to those customers who they feel are trustworthy and can be held appropriately accountable for their actions. Including shell access with each account by default is poor practice, and we request that resellers refrain from doing so.
Since I will be controlling all of the domains under my account, would I have to enable access for myself for each domain, or would my account automatically have SSH access for each domain? If it's the former, Site5 will understand if I ignore the TOS request above, and enable SHH access for myself on each account, yes?

Thanks.

-Joriki

Originally posted by joriki
I'm leaning towards Site5 at the moment using the logic that I can always transfer if you don't live up to your reviews and my expectations. Glad to hear it! Although be advised that it is no easier to transfer between Site5 and Liquidweb than it is between any other two hosts (although we both use Cpanel).

I think the rest of your questions are more or less sales questions and should probably be addressed directly to our sales department. WHT isn't really the right place to send sales questions to a company--I don't want to get tarred and feathered for answering! :D

Participants may not solicit any external source to post on this forum regarding their company, services, or products; or any company, services, or products they are or may be associated with.

Matt

Both companies get outstanding reviews here on WHT, both have 24/7 staffing and both have comparable hosting prices. In my opinion, it's a toss up with who you choose. Site5 is running a few specials now though, you may want to jump on board for that :)

What the heck?! How did my reply go above Incognito's? He clearly posted first, as I read his post before hitting the "reply" button...

*WEIRRRRD!* :nervous:

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
What the heck?! How did my reply go above Incognito's? He clearly posted first, as I read his post before hitting the "reply" button...

*WEIRRRRD!* :nervous:

WHT is a bit off the wall today (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=392940)

:eek: