Post: #1

For those of you who have websites... what services do you use for your servers?

I´ve been using hostgator (baby plan and business plan) for a long time and I´m extremely happy with it. Never had any problem and their performance is exceptional.

However that was for unimportant websites.

Now I´m planing my first startup and I want to find the best hosting for its website.

Nothing wrong with Hostgator.. but it´s hosted in the USA, and I don´t want a foreign government to have access to my traffic information or know about which client purchased what. The business is totally legal, but there is no reason why anyone except from me and my co-founders should have access to that kind of data.

And maybe I´m being paranoid, but I don´t like the idea of a random dude being able to shut my website down without any legal procedure. I know a couple of guys who had this issue with american based servers, although they deserved it.

The business is not even based in the USA, my target are European countries.

That´s why I´m planing to host my website in Iceland, complete privacy. Anyone has experiences with this issue? Any thoughts? Am I overthinking this?


Funny fact: I just noticed this forum is hosted in a hostgator server.

Post: #2

I use amazon web services (a much much steeper learning curve but is the real deal).

Post: #3

I use a dedicated server from Beyondhosting. They're overpriced, but have fast redirect speeds and high quality servers. My servers are extreme overkill if you're just running blogs, and they're overpriced, but I need super fast redirect speeds and as little downtime as possible. Shared hosting just sucks for this type of stuff. I suppose shared servers are okay if you're just running blogs and small websites. Beyondhosting has starter VPS servers for pretty cheap, if you want something better than shared hosting.

The problem with offshore hosting is that it's slow as fuck and you're likely to lose a bunch of clicks thanks to this.

Post: #4

Bluehost, but they are in the US.

Post: #5

(09-17-2013 04:05 PM)Odiseus Wrote:  Nothing wrong with Hostgator.. but it´s hosted in the USA, and I don´t want a foreign government to have access to my traffic information or know about which client purchased what. The business is totally legal, but there is no reason why anyone except from me and my co-founders should have access to that kind of data.

And maybe I´m being paranoid, but I don´t like the idea of a random dude being able to shut my website down without any legal procedure. I know a couple of guys who had this issue with american based servers, although they deserved it.

I'd say spend more time focusing on how to making money, and less time worrying about the US government -- they've got better things to do, assuming your site is legal to begin with.

The benefits of hosting in the US are it's a competitive market with good infrastructure, so it's usually cheaper than any other location and typically more reliable (more redundant network feeds).

For example, you mentioned Iceland for hosting, so I'm guessing you're thinking of the Thor datacenter (which I think is Advania now). Well they have only 3 cables connecting Iceland to the internet so there's your bottleneck. Meanwhile here's a typical US datacenter with 15 provider connections.

Anyway, for a business, you'd want cloud or virtual/dedicated hosting, not shared hosting. As another poster mentioned, Amazon Web Services isn't bad, and they have a location in Ireland which is good if your target market is Europe. Personally, I also like SoftLayer.

In the end, spend no more than an hour thinking about this, pick one of the big providers, and then focus on building your business. You can always move providers later.

Post: #6

godaddy

Post: #7

Does godaddy host porn sites etc or do those websites need to use "specialist " hosters?

Post: #8

Hey guys, hostgator and bluehost used to be great 'independent' hosting companies, but now I would be weary of them because they have both been bought out by the company EIG. The world class hostgator customer service is now non existent, I heard that bluehost is still better in that department. Personally I have started moving my sites over to vidahost.

Post: #9

(09-17-2013 04:05 PM)Odiseus Wrote:  For those of you who have websites... what services do you use for your servers?

I´ve been using hostgator (baby plan and business plan) for a long time and I´m extremely happy with it. Never had any problem and their performance is exceptional.

However that was for unimportant websites.

Now I´m planing my first startup and I want to find the best hosting for its website.

Is your startup planning to run any serious internet/web-based applications? Are you expecting to hire software developers? If so, you should get recommendations from them. Serving massive data files or consuming lots of bandwidth? Run the numbers and figure out whether you can actually make money with the plan.

If you're not planning on developing software or running high-performance applications, going with a VPS or Cloud provider (amazon, Linode, Digital Ocean) can involve additional headaches that shared hosting providers often solve for you. Patching and upgrades is a notable one.

Post: #10

I use a mix of hosts now for our web presence because its grown more complex as our needs have.

1 is a local web host that hosts our main static site, the second is a eCommerce platform provider which hosts the store which is linked to the main static site, then on top of that we use wordpress for our blog which is also linked to the main static site.

and then we plugged the whole lot into Cloud Flare because we needed 100% uptimes are were getting ddosed, cloudflare fixed that shit for peanuts!

Post: #11

I use http://he.net. Solid guys, great support. I've been hosting websites with them for over 10 years.

Post: #12

Bluehost for sites in the US. But their outtage over the summer was really unnerving and clients were pissed. Customer service though has been really good.

Post: #13

Taking into account that sometimes a web hosting service changes (I mean, it gets worse), I visit Web Hosting Talk Forum for suggestions.

Post: #14

Has anyone had experience with Steadfast?

http://www.steadfast.net

I'm looking for a semi-managed host to get a dedicated server.

Post: #15

(09-19-2013 10:31 AM)Roosh Wrote:  Has anyone had experience with Steadfast?

http://www.steadfast.net

I'm looking for a semi-managed host to get a dedicated server.

I haven't used them, but I've met the founder (Karl) and gone out drinking with some of his employees at a conference. They know their stuff technically. They'd probably be a good choice.

Post: #16

I have an account with Site5 and Hostgator. Both have been reliable so far, but Site5 has a more intuitive control panel and extra features for developers including SSH even for shared hosting. It's also cheaper than Hostgator. You can pay $80/year for the hosting one domain. Hostgator is ~$120/year. I happen to have some coupons for free hosting for 6mos for Site5, PM me if interested (No, I'm not an affiliate, I just picked up a bunch of coupons at a tech event)

Post: #17

Digital Ocean has the best prices for cloud servers now. $10/month 1GB of RAM, 30GB SSD. About 1/3rd of the price of on demand EC2 & Rackspace cloud instances and faster because of the SSDs. Add a zero for each GB increment.

You may be able to get better prices for a colo on hardware you bought, but that's a pain in the ass.

Hardware & bandwidth prices continually drop, if you've been using a host over a long term and they aren't automatically dropping your prices you are way over paying for your machines.

Post: #18

My research has led me to these hosts, which seem to be reputable with good prices and customer service:

http://www.servint.net/
https://hivelocity.net/
https://www.wiredtree.com/
http://knownhost.com/
https://www.liquidweb.com/

Post: #19

(09-22-2013 07:39 AM)Roosh Wrote:  My research has led me to these hosts, which seem to be reputable with good prices and customer service:

http://www.servint.net/
https://hivelocity.net/
https://www.wiredtree.com/
http://knownhost.com/
https://www.liquidweb.com/

All solid companies with a good rep, but always do some research on http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ to see how each company currently handles customers with issues.

Digital Ocean as babelfish669 mentioned is a relatively new startup, but looks promising so far and you can get phpBB up and running on your instance within 10-15 minutes. Not sure about myBB, but it shouldn't be much more difficult.

Post: #20

Yeah you have to be able to run from the linux command prompt for digital ocean. The SSDs can be a size limitation too, I don't know what this forum is at.

Hivelocity and Liquidweb have a good reputation, I would go with either of those for non-cloud.

Digital Ocean's pricing is just retarded, I went from spending $4,000 a month on ec2+rackspace cloud down to around $1,000 just by moving everything over. That's the magic of being able to buy all brand new hardware today when your competitor paid the same for something 1/4th as good 3 years ago.

Post: #21

(09-22-2013 07:39 AM)Roosh Wrote:  My research has led me to these hosts, which seem to be reputable with good prices and customer service:

http://www.servint.net/
https://hivelocity.net/
https://www.wiredtree.com/
http://knownhost.com/
https://www.liquidweb.com/

liquidweb is as good as it gets from my experience. Highly recommended.

Post: #22

Can someone break down the differences between hosting in the US, EU, and Canada?

Post: #23

I'm with bluehost now. Just talked to their customer service for some issues, followed by >1hr of online chat support. Good customer service.

Problem is, I am on their most basic hosting. One of my sites recently started getting a lot of traffic from news sites. "A lot" is relative, but in this case its less than 10,000 hits per day but I am consistently getting thousands of visitors per day. It is really slowing down. The load time is very slow and the administrating the wordpress features is also very slow.

There is a lot of site speed optimization that needs to be done, but I was wondering if I should just upgrade, and if so, to which account.

Post: #24

(12-09-2013 06:52 PM)Enigma Wrote:  Can someone break down the differences between hosting in the US, EU, and Canada?

From what perspective? Speed? Value for money? Regulatory?

Post: #25

(12-09-2013 08:03 PM)stranger Wrote:  Problem is, I am on their most basic hosting. One of my sites recently started getting a lot of traffic from news sites. "A lot" is relative, but in this case its less than 10,000 hits per day but I am consistently getting thousands of visitors per day. It is really slowing down. The load time is very slow and the administrating the wordpress features is also very slow.

There is a lot of site speed optimization that needs to be done, but I was wondering if I should just upgrade, and if so, to which account.

If you're getting thousands of visitors per day, but only 10,000 hits per day, then each visitor is only looking at a couple pages per visit at most. Caching may work in that case. Try CloudFlare since it's free and easy to set up (and turn off).