Dear group,

I am glad that I am able to find this forum to gather an initial list of good, reputable web hosts . I spent this past week gathering user reviews from this forum, Google groups, webhostmagazine, epinions, etc. -- basically, any review site that seems professional and unbiased. A virtual, i.e. non-dedicated, service seems good enough and economically sensible for my site to start with. The site is going to be an active, real-time user forums (a few thousand to tens of thousands at most)-- similar to webhostingtalk.com. Thus, DB quota, daily backup, a few FTP accounts, ssh/telnet accessible, a few pop accounts/mailing lists, Tier 1 provider, good up-time guarantee, traffic/log statistics, good remote management, PHP, Java (nice to have but not essential) and subdomains are all good criteria I evaluate potential hosts.

With such context, here is a list of good hosts that seem to fit my criteria well. Perhaps this list will help any newbies; to experienced users, next to some hosts I add some questions -- perhaps you can help answer as I can't find answers to them.... Really appreciate it.

Good, reputable hosts that received consistent, reasonably good reviews and fit my aforementioned criteria (? please feel free to offer comments) listed in no particular order:

1) www.myacen.com (?): Can a good host have broken content on its website? I can't even successfully email my question through its "Support" link on the site. Some of its content are incomplete or broken.... Does anyone know what's up with this host? Is it really recommended? If not because of good, reasonable user reviews on several threads here, such defects on the site will turn me away already.

2) www.futurequest.com
3) www.pair.com
4) www.venturesonline.com
5) www.akashik.net
6) www.f5hosting.com
7) www.hostingmatters.com
8) www.focalhosting.com
9) www.rackspace.com (highly recommended for managed hosting; expensive for virtual hosting)
10) www.remarkablehosting.com : I love its consistent, simple interface yet with detailed explanations. Its plans are rich. However, a search on this host turns up no result in this site and few on others. Does anyone know whether this is a good, reliable host?

That's about it. There are other hosts with so-so, mixed or negative reviews, for example, verio, infinology, apollohosting, featureprice and burlee. I did not pursue sites mentioned but whose reviews are not yet found by me....

Welcome any comments on my research so far!

Thanks,
Philip

Originally posted by tsailipu


1) www.myacen.com (?): Can a good host have broken content on its website? I can't even successfully email my question through its "Support" link on the site. Some of its content are incomplete or broken.... Does anyone know what's up with this host? Is it really recommended? If not because of good, reasonable user reviews on several threads here, such defects on the site will turn me away already.



Hi Philip,

Our site is set to relaunch on the 10th of august. I agree that some pages need completing, and the site will be in full on the relaunch :).

Maybe you would care to add site5 to the list? =) I think they've been one of the most consistent so far.

Only constructive criticism Myacen but don't you think that a presentable web site should have been a prime consideration in light of Tsailipus' comments.;)

Originally posted by xharine
Maybe you would care to add site5 to the list? =) I think they've been one of the most consistent so far.

Thanks xharine!
I will do some research on this host and post my comment on the thread later!

Philip

I would run a search on the forum for a few hosting companies; because different hosting companies specialise in different things. For example we specialise in multiple domain hosting, MCHost, SplashHost, Voxtreme etc. specialise in reseller hosting, Ventures Online mainly specialise in shared hosting. Just thought I would point that out ;)

Originally posted by tsailipu
1) www.myacen.com (?): Can a good host have broken content on its website? I can't even successfully email my question through its "Support" link on the site. Some of its content are incomplete or broken.... Does anyone know what's up with this host? Is it really recommended? If not because of good, reasonable user reviews on several threads here, such defects on the site will turn me away already.

The website generally has a large reflection over the host, however I don't think that the website should have anything to do with the quality of the hosting :)

Originally posted by rochen
I would run a search on the forum for a few hosting companies; because different hosting companies specialise in different things. For example we specialise in multiple domain hosting, MCHost, SplashHost, Voxtreme etc. specialise in reseller hosting, Ventures Online mainly specialise in shared hosting. Just thought I would point that out ;)

I see; thanks for helping the categorization! MCHost and Voctreme, for example, are on my mentioned-by-others-on-the-net-yet-to-be-fully-researched-by-me list. (I got many of my initial list from review threads including the "top 5" thread on this site or mentioned in related threads when I was researching on some hosts). As mentioned in my original thread, I was evaluating sites that can host a real-time, active user forums. So I did not spend much time in looking into many hosts of other types.... (I did spend some time research on managed hosting/dedicated services. Rackspace turns out to have consistently good reviews, whereas dellhost and verio, for example, fare less well.)

Given my type of research, I certainly do not (nor do users on this site, I believe) have the full bandwidth to research on every good site.... Sometime these next two days I will post the ones that I considered and researched yet with mixed or subpar reviews, and ones that I didn't hear enough to research upon yet. This list is only a result of my (one person's) on-and-off two-week research efforts, which will end soon as I need to submit a proposal to my organization soon (an educational organization, so my research has no commercial incentive :-) ). I thought posting my research result here will help newcomers as this forum has helped my efforts much. Glad that this has generated further, good discussions!

Thanks,
Philip

Originally posted by rochen


The website generally has a large reflection over the host, however I don't think that the website should have anything to do with the quality of the hosting :)

I agree. A simple, clear, consistent, detailed, fast-loading, and _working_ -- thus effective -- website, though, does indicate the quality of the host, at the very least its support quality. :-)

I also disagree that a fancy, colorful website reflects the quality of the host. Think about the Google interface paradigm. Also, you may have noticed that I include remarkablehosting in my list though I did not yet hear many reviews about it here (I learned of it in a thread in GoogleGroup) -- its interface, particularly the "Hosting" section, is among the less fancy ones (as in few graphics and mostly text-based) yet it met my aforementioned criteria of an effective website. :-)

Thanks!
Philip

www.site5.com , www.pair.com - two high quality orgs. The first smaller, the second larger.

Mike

FutureQuest.net

Pure quality. I used them in the past and loved every second of it.

Originally posted by tsailipu
. . . . . . . I spent this past week gathering user reviews from this forum, Google groups, webhostmagazine, epinions, etc. . . . . . . . . . Welcome any comments on my research so far!
. . . . . . . .There are many great hosts that are, simply, not talked about much. So, although I applaud your attempts at compiling a list of "most recommended" hosts. I don't believe you could use that as a basis for calling them the "most reputable."

Originally posted by SoftWareRevue
There are many great hosts that are, simply, not talked about much. So, although I applaud your attempts at compiling a list of "most recommended" hosts. I don't believe you could use that as a basis for calling them the "most reputable."

I agree. I do not attempt to make a list of "most" reputable, or recommended; only "good, reputable" ones _already reviewed by others_ are in my scope of discussion. The list is meant only as a helper, an initial list of good ones to look into for future newcomers that have _similar_ criteria as mine. It will be foolish and an ill attempt to start a "most" or comprehensive review. :-)

It will be great to hear about "great hosts that are, simply, not talked about much" as I believe this is what a user forum like this is for!

Thanks,
Philip

You cant go wrong with remarkablehosting. We have used them for a while now, and they are very good. If you carefully look at the reviews/comments on wht, I dont think you will find anything negative about these folks which is quite amazing.
Marlon

tsailipu,

That list is great, I honestly dont think you can go wrong with any of those companies.

How does myacen.com can be the best if they baned cgi cripts like ikonboard-ubb etc?

You spent a lot of time to optimize your cgi-forum and then its just baned. Lol.

A lot of hosts ban things like ikonboard, ubb etc. including ourselves. It is better in the long run, as they are very resource intensive and cause the server loads to spike. I don't see why banning those sorts of scripts makes them bad, that is a senseable thing to do.

Yes, it's not as if they ban them to make people's lives miserable. If you're looking for someone to be upset with over that, be upset at the people who coded the apps. The hosts are just looking out for the rest of their customers.

Its not dificult to change the name of the forum script but bans like these reveal relationship between the customer and hostcompany.
Imho.

I never join company who ban what they like.
Server overloading is the problem for a hosting provider not for me(exclude if my script gets stuck in a loop or for security reason).

I think it is stupid to ban forums, because a lot of sites rely on them. By banning them, you eliminate customers.

ozlobin I don´t want to sound rude.

But did you ever saw how a popular site using UBB or Ikonboard can affect the server load? Do you expect that a host only host 3 sites using UBB per server?

Take in mind that are hosted in a shared enviroment, where you have to share resources with at least 100 other customers per server.

Jedito
If your server is weak you have to buy a new hardware not to ban customer forums or whatever.

You can ban all of the cgi-scripts and have thousands and thousands of customers on just one weak server. But is it a good business?

ozlobin,

Clearly you have no clue.

A complex CGI script can bring a server to its knees, no matter how powerful the machine is. If you are stuck on Ikonboard, then perhaps when they release the PHP version, not run in a CGI environment, you can then have your way with it.

CGI = higher load on the server. Complex CGI = un-managable load on a server and a shared web hosting provider is quite correct in banning such things.

Your lack of knowledge in this area leads you to conclude that your provider is being unfair somehow, yet in fact it is you who is being quite unfair.

Learn a few things, do some research first, before launching out an attack that has no merit.

Just in case I need to make this more clear to you, consider the following excerpt from a post I made a while ago:

(note these benchmark results are on a fairly 'big' box - note that only 12 CGI requests per second can be handled on it. Put a few busy CGI-based forums on a box and you can easily bring it to its knees)

--
Example - Apache Benchmark against three targets that all return the same content.

index.html - raw html, no other processing happening

demo.cgi - a Python CGI script that churns through 5500 lines of Python code (Quixote, a web application framework built in Python)

demo.lrp - the same code as in the prior example, but this time run as a long running web process in a manner similar to mod_php or mod_perl or PHP (I am intentionally over-simplifying the differences for this discussion) etc.

Results:


ab -n 2000 -c 8
requests/second transfer rate
index.html 2877 4487.94
demo.cgi 12 18.24
demo.lrp 835 1248.12

Impact on the box:
index.html - Running the test against straight html is very quick as you'd expect. It runs so fast that its difficult to gauge the effect on the machine except that its clear there is lots more capacity sitting in reserve. Load might be around .40 - .50 / 60-75% idle.

demo.cgi - Load average on the box peaked at over 8.50 and the CPU's were 0% idle (mostly user)

demo.lrp - Load about .30 - .50, CPU idle 35%, very approximately

Conclusions - of course CGI is a performance pig. What do you expect when you are loading a 5MB interpreter for every page hit! But that doesn't make Perl or Python 'bad', it makes CGI 'bad' or at least inappropriate for any large scale application that will see some traffic.

With some stats, its easy to see why more than a passing knowledge of web applications is required. But most of your users (and a surprising number of web hosters themselves) are completely clueless about web application infrastructure.

Very well written there, mwatkins. :)

Originally posted by ozlobin
How does myacen.com can be the best if they baned cgi cripts like ikonboard-ubb etc?

You spent a lot of time to optimize your cgi-forum and then its just baned. Lol.

You really have no idea :rolleyes:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64209

Lol guys go to
ikonboard forums (based on ikonboard.cgi ;)
forum.ixbt.com (based on ubb)
or whatever and you'l see.
Millions clicks per day and everething fine!


What scripts / forums do you ban and why? Ban them all I say!! Ban them all. Just serve plain old static html pages.

Originally posted by ozlobin
Lol guys go to
ikonboard forums (based on ikonboard.cgi ;)
forum.ixbt.com (based on ubb)
or whatever and you'l see.
Millions clicks per day and everething fine!




I don't think any of them are running on a shared hosting enviroment ;)


If they are :cartman:

ozlobin - do you really think we all just ban these kind of scripts just for the sake of it? Because we feel like banning those specific ones? Of course not! :rolleyes:

Myacen - Yes, I believe those sites are running on a dedicated machine ;)

The thing about a shared hosting environment is you have to respect the well being of the other user's sties with which you are sharing space. If you can't accept that, maybe you should look into dedicated hosting, even then I would advise against using Ikonboard and similar scripts ;)

Lol if they run well on the dedicated machines whats mean everything fine with the sripts. Wrong with your server weakness.
This contradicts with what your said before.

Sure if you have millions clicks per day when doesnt matter what forum do you use - you have to buy a dedicated server. ;) At least no one ban scripts or whatever they like.
But hosting like this still can shut down your dedicated server because of you use too much bandwidth or whatever :D

Originally posted by ozlobin
Lol if they run well on the dedicated machines whats mean everything fine with the sripts. Wrong with your server weakness.
This contradicts with what your said before.

It doesn't contradict what was said, however something like phpBB2/vB would run far better, whether on a dedicated or a shared account ;) - see mwatkins post above for the explanation as to why :)

I don't really see where you are trying to take this, we (the hosts) are saying one thing and you are persistently trying to find ways to argue with us.... :rolleyes:

I think all kinds of hosting providers can stay alive, even those who ban scripts ;)
Just worry how they can be the best.

ozlobin,

Being a simple webmaster of a hobby site, I had to make a choice and dropped a YaBB board (cgi based) because it was banned by my host and MANY hosts for that matter.

Being I need a quality host, I had to make a choice which I did. I switched to Vbulletin and haven't looked back over a year ago.

Curtis H.
with my host im assure no unexpected bans can happen ever.
Im not a profi webmaster but I can change everything i want in
cgi-perl forums.
and I dont want to buy any php forum script and I do not use warez also. So ...

Originally posted by ozlobin
Lol if they run well on the dedicated machines whats mean everything fine with the sripts. Wrong with your server weakness.
This contradicts with what your said before.


Just wanted to throw in my $.02 as well. We like the other hosts listed above ban the scripts as well as they are very resource intensive. It is not because our servers are weak as you so eloquently stated before, but these scripts often times take more than their fair share of the memory and cpu usage and that is a proven fact. You have to understand that this is a shared hosting environment where the hosting provider needs to maintain the integrity of the server. The reason why it will run well on a dedicated machine is exactly that, there is one site (maybe a couple more) on that whole server.

-Steven

2insiderhosting

Same as I said. If your server overloading you have to :

1. Buy better server-hardware (or more?)
2. Cut number of your customers
3. Ban heavy scripts

So different hosts make different decisions. Number 3 is most cheaper decision but not most reputable.

Originally posted by ozlobin
2insiderhosting

Same as I said. If your server overloading you have to :

1. Buy better server-hardware (or more?)
2. Cut number of your customers
3. Ban heavy scripts

So different hosts make different decisions. Number 3 is most cheaper decision but not most reputable.

Ozlobin,
First of all we don't overload our servers, where you got that idea from I don't know. We also limit the number of accounts that are on the server, we ban scripts because they are server intensive. I don't think that you are understanding a fundamental concept however, and that is when sites take more than their allocated resources, that is not fair in a SHARED hosting environment. I think that you need to think about that and try to comprehend the logic behind it.

-Steven

2insiderhosting
im tired man. if you think your service is good that's your right.
if someone still brings you money thats their problem not mine.

I told you thousand times.
If dedicated server can handle ikonboard.cgi and your shared hosting not, then you_must_improve_your_hardware. (period)

Because dedicated servers are not just for cgi-scripts and forums, dedicated servers are for real BIG projects, not for everyone who doesnt want static html pages.

Originally posted by ozlobin
Lol if they run well on the dedicated machines whats mean everything fine with the sripts. Wrong with your server weakness.
This contradicts with what your said before.
ozlobin,

A dedicated high performance machine can pump out something like 12 moderately complex CGI driven requests per second. Period.

The example I provided was run on a completely dedicated machine that had no other load. The machine is a dual CPU 1.26GHz Intel Tualatin PIII based box with high performance 15K RPM SCSI hard drives * 3 and 2 GB of RAM. This configuration is more beefy than a lot (most probably) of the shared hosting machines out there.

The actual number depends of course on what the script is doing. In fact, the example I provided did not even make a database connection. Add a database connection, and some simple queries, and you can expect that 12 requests per second to drop by 1/2.

If a board has a peak busy period of 12 hours per day, during those 43,200 seconds the machine can not generate more than 259,200 complex CGI application based requests -- and all the while the script would be completely maxing out the machine during that period.

This is why any complex CGI script will be frowned upon by any sensible shared hosting provider - if the site is at all popular, it will hog machine cycles and impact every other user on the box.

There are alternatives. One is employing the use of mod_perl, which Ikonboard appears to support. This will dramatically increase the performance and also reduce the hit on the box.

But not every web hoster runs mod_perl on their boxes or allows run of the mill users to deploy applications based on it.

Regardless of how adamant you are that your assumptions are correct, they most certainly are not.

We are a very reputable company with many satisfied clients, so I don't need to justify anything to you. Maybe you need to be told another time because something is not penetrating. Dedicated servers can handle ikonboard because the whole dedicated server is allocated for that one site, so it doesn't matter how many resources that site takes up as it is on its own server. With a SHARED hosting environment, there are other sites on the server, and a script like ikonboard with many concurrent users can take its toll, that is what I am saying and I can't fathom why you cannot comprehend that.

-Steven

A dedicated server can handle it cause there is no other sites on it. Shared there is. We don't like lagging the resources for clients. So if you want a ikonboard so bad go buy you a dedicated.

mwatkins
use of mod_perl, which Ikonboard appears to support
if you offer MySql i dont think somebody wants to use DBM.

Im not sure that Im right but i believe my eyes.
A lot of reputable host do not ban scripts and still offer good servises.
May be they have Xeons-Athlons-Sparcs or may be something else. I dont care about hosting problems. I have plenty of my own problems.

Originally posted by ozlobin
[BA lot of reputable host do not ban scripts and still offer good servises.[/B]I'll bite...

Are we still talking about CGI Scripts like Ikonboard and if so, who are these "good hosts" that you are referring to who do not ban these types of scripts on their virtual servers? Just curious.

Curtis H.
who do not ban these types of scripts
you can find them even on the first page of this topic.

Originally posted by ozlobin
mwatkins
use of mod_perl, which Ikonboard appears to support
if you offer MySql i dont think somebody wants to use DBM.

Huh? What does this have to do with the price of gas in Knoxville?


Im not sure that Im right but i believe my eyes.
A lot of reputable host do not ban scripts and still offer good servises.
May be they have Xeons-Athlons-Sparcs or may be something else. I dont care about hosting problems. I have plenty of my own problems.
The problem is simple, perhaps that's why you don't understand:

- site X runs Ikonboard or some similar thing, as straight CGI
- hoster y allows it, since they are "small"
- small site X grows to be medium site X with 50 users, sometimes peaking at 100 active users at any given point. Suddenly Hoster Y's machine is pegged with a load average of > 4 constantly > 6 or more at peak times.
- hoster Y informs site X that they will have to move to a semi or full dedicated account due to their usage of the machine
- site X whines on WHT and anywhere he can because of the 'unfair treatment'

Whereas Hoster Z is smart and doesn't allow Ikonboard and other straight CGI in the firstplace.

Problem solved.

Don't like it? Shop around until you find a hoster that is foolish enough to allow complex CGI applications to run without any restrictions. Unless your site is destined to have very few users, you'll be switching plans, or more likely hosts, before long.

Betya a nickel.

Definately run a search for reviews on your web-hsot before you join. Google works the best if you are looking for reviews of your company.

____________
Jared C
Host-Grid.com

Children, Children!

Why do you have to argue over every little thread ? Cant we just chat in peace and let every man to his (foolish) opinion? :)

Or is it just me who is the fool? :confused:

What arguement? Where?

LOL

sorry to bring this back up...

but when I started reading the thread I was with ozlobin...but by the end I pretty much got the idea what was the problem and I can completely understand why hosts would want to ban resource extensive scripts...

my question is which boards CAN be used either using PHP or CGI which will be least server extensive and yet get the job done like the ikon boards...

thanks

Well... I HAVE to post here.

I am a system administrator and, in my free time, am webmaster of a site which uses Ikonboard and has been using in on a shared environment for over a year WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS...

You guys are defending a decision you, or your companies had to take for some reason, but all you will achieve by banning such popular and well working scripts is losing customers - nothing more. This is just not proffesional.

Upgrade your machines and stop writing nonsence posts like these I just read. If your shared machines "drop to their knees" by such scripts, then they are overloaded. If you don't know how to make it work, or are not prepared to meet the additional cost for a really good and meaningful service, then maybe you may have to make living doing something other than web hosting.

Web hosts can easily do that if you don't mind paying $100 a month for a basic account. Start sending us customers like that and I'll be more than happy to place only four sites on a server.

Perhaps you should read the posts by mwatkins a little more closely as far as why these applications are not good for shared hosting no matter how good of a server you have. A host has to break even someplace and if they've got a customer paying $10 a month for an account that is eating up all the system resources it's not good for their other customers. It doesn't matter whether you have 15 customers on a box or 100. That one site is still using all the system resources.

You have to way weigh cost vs benefit. It's not cost effective for a host to pay a couple of thousand for a box, more for bandwidth, more for facilities, more for staffing, more for utility bills and only be able to put a couple of sites on a server just so a user can use resource hogging scripts. If someone wants to do that, they need to consider a dedicated server.

Those scripts are far from "well working". Perhaps from a user standpoint you may like them, but for anyone running the system that is supporting it, it is a nightmare.

Perhaps I can give you an example that more people can relate to. AOL is popular and works well (if you can connect or don't get a busy signal), but install it on your computer and see how much it is hogging your resources. Compare that to running a regular internet connection and then see how much the amount of processing needed drops.

Now, compare CGI to AOL and other scripts to a straight internet connection. They both "work", but one is hogging all your resources. Try running 10 instances of AOL at one time on your computer even if you have a P4 2.7 Ghz with 1 GB of DDR. I can bet that the results aren't going to be pretty.

Why did you bring this back up it is from August, should have just made a new thread

He was bored and he wanted us to save us time by not having us rehash out all the same responses all over again? ;)

Ahh yes now I understand:)

this thread seems to have run away form its original intent.

For good reliable hosting with great support in a shared environment, my top 2 are the same as they where a year ago.
Site5 and Ventures Online. I resell VO space myself, and love both companies.

Originally posted by geko
Well... I HAVE to post here.

If this is your second post, what dinosaur did you dig up with your first? :rolleyes:

I pretty sure Telnet is history or not availible on most newer servers. And if they offer SSH, look out because good uptimes are not going to be there.

Well... I HAVE to post here

If you HAVE to post, at least you HAVE to know of what are you talking about.

Let me try to explain again what has been already explained on this thread.
On a shared enviroment X number of sites share the server resources. If you use a forum like Ikonboard, who leech more resources than the normal that affect to the other users on the server, so, now explain me, why we have to give preferences to people who use resources intensive script and jeopardize the server stability?
The other guy told that we (the hosts) must upgrade the server HW and put less account per server, well, if he don't know it, we do this for money, and if we put 3 sites using ikonboard per server, and nothing else, wont be very profitable.

Whereas Hoster Z is smart and doesn't allow Ikonboard and other straight CGI in the firstplace. No problem, just don't hide it deep in the ToS or not mention it at all that you can't run these type of scripts. Put it on the Front Page of your hosting site so customers know upfront.