Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Shared hosting for a large site

[mikelbyl]

Hi everyone, I hope you can help.

I'm part of a group of people evaluating hosting options to migrate a large site. From everything I have read and from my interaction with the developer of the most important software we'll be using for the site, any one of a number of shared hosting solutions should work. The difficulty is in navigating the hidden problems and making a choice between many different options.

The most important application we have is a large existing Motet site that will be migrated. I've searched here and note that not many have experience with this software, but it is a set of compiled CGIs that work together to form a large web forum system. The software was originally designed for the servers of 10 years ago, and the developer has confirmed for me that its memory needs are modest.

We currently use about 6.5 Gb of disk space and our bandwidth usage is a modest (by today's hosting standards) of about 40Gb of transfer a month. The server we use will have to offer shell access and apparently Motet can run on most varieties of Unix or Linux. The server must be physically located in the US.

Given those requirements almost every hosting company out there seems OK. What I am most concerned about it price but also uptime. We have thousands of users every day from around the world, and consistent downtime will be noticed.

My research so far has led me to the following notes:

Dreamhost - OK price, OK packages, but questionable reliability etc.
Lunarpages - OK price OK packages available but reading the fine print I notice that they don't allocate the full advertised disk space immediately - this takes intervention from the company's support people.
Site5 - Super cheap price, OK packages available, but is the price too good to be true? Very appealing mix of new web technologies available to use as a future development platform.
Verio - OK all around - seem to be more of a business-oriented host - does that mean better reliability?

Please, if anyone could help point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

[ScottJ]

I think you need to be looking more for a VPS or a semi-dedicated plan. Your site seems pretty large and busy to be hosting on a normal shared server.

[AvailNetworks]

Business hosting might be your way to go. I know there are a few companies out there that target business professionals and their needs. Alot of businesses do not want to deal with the typical hassles of a dedicated server and don't want the sometimes unreliability and pickiness that some shared hosts offer. Check around for business hosting and/or semi-dedicated server plans. Make sure you also talk with your potential places about your needs and what your plans are present and future, that way everyone is clear of what to expect and everyone is happy

[mripguru]

Originally Posted by AvailNetworks

Business hosting might be your way to go. I know there are a few companies out there that target business professionals and their needs. Alot of businesses do not want to deal with the typical hassles of a dedicated server and don't want the sometimes unreliability and pickiness that some shared hosts offer. Check around for business hosting and/or semi-dedicated server plans. Make sure you also talk with your potential places about your needs and what your plans are present and future, that way everyone is clear of what to expect and everyone is happy

I agree - you might want to look at CartikaHosting.com. Andrew and crew are great at what they do. I couldn't be happier

[ewebzone]

Perhaps a semi-dedicated hosting plan would be perfect for your site.

Alex

[osphere]

"The server we use will have to offer shell access" I think you're looking for a VPS. There are some one's for $30 dollars, or more, depending the specs

[AvailNetworks]

you can get shell with shared hosting as long as the host permits it

[dvduval]

I'm hosting www.dance-forums.com on site5 (for a little over 30 days).
I consulted with 3 different employees at site5 that felt their servers could handle it. Everything has been great so far.

As you can see, there are 250,000+ posts, and we hit 75+ users online frequently (15-20 of those registered users)

[cmpolis]

I would suggest getting a cheap dedicated server or VPS if your site is very CPU intensive, which it looks like it might be.

[PremiumHost]

If your site requires a significant CPU/memory usage, don't go with DreamHost
I tried their service a few weeks ago when there's a big thread about their latest promotion.
The website is a community with about 5000 registered users using Vbulletin
After 3 days, DreamHost sent a polite email and temporarily suspended the website. The reason is PHP uses too much CPU lol
They asked me to optimise Vbulletin, otherwise they will terminate the account.
So move it back to our servers.
The fact is they don't have load balancing servers.
And the dns stuff is quite tricky.

[mikelbyl]

This is actually the issue - the site is not that CPU intensive - as I said, it was designed originally to run on the servers of 10 years ago.

That's what makes the decision difficult. The software is extremely efficient and extremely fast, and handles extraordinary numbers of posts very well. Fact is this is a non-profit without much money but with a long history. So we can't over-pay - at the same time we can't be under-served.

Thanks for all the advice though - lots to consider, and many more threads in here to look through.

Does anyone know anything about Yahoo Small Business Hosting? Their rates are competitive with most of the companies I see discussed here, and I can't imagine their infrastructure wouldn't be as good or better.

[PremiumHost]

Your first post mentions about uptime priority.
I think you should not go with Yahoo.
It will take at least 24 hours to get a response.
The same issue for most big companies out there.
Noone can guaratee there will be no incidents forever.
The best thing is submit a sales ticket to test the response time ;-)

[Dormouse]

If you search here, I don't think you'll find much support for Yahoo hosting.

It seems to be that you are in an ideal position (except for the amount of money you'd want to spend). You have low CPU usage needs & only moderate needs for space & bandwidth. You also have a lot of experience of your software & your site.

Most reasonable budget hosts would meet your needs, though you would have to anticipate receiving budget levels of support/reliability etc over the long-term. (A lot of people have hery good experiences over a short period [months] & quite a lot have good experiences over a long period, but over an extremely long period it averages out & budget hosts have less resources per client than non-budget hosts.; this should not put you off, but your expectations must be reasonable).

There is no way of predicting how good a budget host will be over the extremely long term. It is a fast moving market and things will change.

The big issue for you is migration & setting your site up again quickly. I would suggest that you select at least 2 of the better budget hosts, start accounts with them & cancel the ones you don't wish to maintain within the money back period. You will double the amount of support available to you during migration (some of the support will need to be site specific, but some may be relevant to both) and get an idea of which host better suits your needs at the moment. Your DNS will point to one host only, but you can switch this between the hosts (assuming you maintain a separate domain registrar) to get an idea of site speed etc for users; the experience of setting the site up will be true for both hosts whether or not the DNS point to them.

Keep a full record of all the issues & solutions so that you (or future site admins) are fully prepared in case you need to migrate again in the future.

Dreamhost have a 97 day money back guarantee & can be extraordinarily cheap for the 1st year (with coupon code MAXIMUM it is about $23; the code 777 sppears to be even sheaper at about $10) although the normal annual costs are a little higher than most budget hosts. Most of the complaints have been about the speed of CPU/mysql heavy sites initial loading & this should not affect you. Other people just object because they offer so much for so little [but so do all the budget hosts really].

Site5 have a 60 day moneyback guarantee.

Hostgator have a 30 day money back guarantee. So do Lunarpages.

[Rorax]

Originally Posted by mikelbyl

Hi everyone, I hope you can help.

I'm part of a group of people evaluating hosting options to migrate a large site. From everything I have read and from my interaction with the developer of the most important software we'll be using for the site, any one of a number of shared hosting solutions should work. The difficulty is in navigating the hidden problems and making a choice between many different options.

The most important application we have is a large existing Motet site that will be migrated. I've searched here and note that not many have experience with this software, but it is a set of compiled CGIs that work together to form a large web forum system. The software was originally designed for the servers of 10 years ago, and the developer has confirmed for me that its memory needs are modest.

We currently use about 6.5 Gb of disk space and our bandwidth usage is a modest (by today's hosting standards) of about 40Gb of transfer a month. The server we use will have to offer shell access and apparently Motet can run on most varieties of Unix or Linux. The server must be physically located in the US.

Given those requirements almost every hosting company out there seems OK. What I am most concerned about it price but also uptime. We have thousands of users every day from around the world, and consistent downtime will be noticed.

My research so far has led me to the following notes:

Dreamhost - OK price, OK packages, but questionable reliability etc.
Lunarpages - OK price OK packages available but reading the fine print I notice that they don't allocate the full advertised disk space immediately - this takes intervention from the company's support people.
Site5 - Super cheap price, OK packages available, but is the price too good to be true? Very appealing mix of new web technologies available to use as a future development platform.
Verio - OK all around - seem to be more of a business-oriented host - does that mean better reliability?

Please, if anyone could help point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

I can highly recommend you to use www.hostingzoom.com , HostingZoom has been more than fine for me for months now - in terms of support and reliability.

Their web hosting offers are quite generousas well.

[anon-e-mouse]

Originally Posted by mripguru

I agree - you might want to look at CartikaHosting.com. Andrew and crew are great at what they do. I couldn't be happier

What site/s do you have with them? We know the ones at site5, but we need to know this too.