Best host for us?

[SVdym]

Hi guys,
I know the partner site has great resources for hosting solutions, but I can read the specs over and over and nothing will compare to a good recommendation or deal for a service.

I'm coming from a partner host now, who is charging me $300+ for a VPS with smaller bandwidth, and storage.

I'd like to move to a host with the following (non-techy) items:

• 30+ GB storage
• unmetered or very very large bandwidth
• migration assistance... we're on a miva 4 platform, with 5.5 upgrades already purchased... we need our SSL, and our DNS straightened out with minimal down time
• backup & confidence that our files can be restored when requested
• we have over 10 domains and are growing, but only 1 main miva
• I'd like a CPanel style Control panel to manage the rest of my site's back end needs (mySQL, Forms, Subdomains, etc)
• Support: 2 hour response time, and a varying knowledge of hosting, basic mySQL, forms, DNS, and Miva preferred @ no extra costs
• Bonus materials:

Stream Audio / Video Ruby on Rails (RoR) PHP4 or 5
MySQL4 or 5

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Best host for us?

Keep in mind that unmetered bandwidth is typically not going to be found at a host who's good with merchant, unless they're gambling with their customers' usage as one site getting enough Miva Merchant requests could overload a given server on its own, let alone with others.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Best host for us?

also bear in mind that MOST sites never exceed the limits that good hosts put in their packages...they are only there for the exceptions. Unless you are running file sharing applications, **** or spam sites, most plan limits are fine even for relatively busy hosts.

[d_host]

Re: Best host for us?

If you ever check how hosting companies define "unmetered bandwidth" you will notice that they typically cap the switch ports to 10Mbps or 100Mbps, and price the hosting plan accordingly. In other words, you can have "all you can eat" bandwidth, but you will be really locked to 10Mbps. This is plenty fast for most sites, but if your site is indeed very busy - it may easily need a lot more bandwidth than during its peek hours. If you are locked at 10Mbps and your traffic needs are higher, your site will simply become unbearably slow to browse. Having "unmetered bandwidth" in this case is just doing more harm than good.

Notice also that when you pick "unmetered bandwidth" and jump from 10Mbps to 100Mbps cap, the pricing usually goes up by couple thousand dollars per month, to cover the price of such bandwidth that the hosting company has to pay for.

It gets even worse if you'd like unmetered GigE port - but very, very few hosting companies even offer that option. The price for that, unmetered, could easily be $30K/month on the low end of the spectrum, and more if you want Tier-1 bandwidth providers.

In other words, do not expect "unmetered bandwidth" to be less than $300/month - it's not a realistic expectation. I'd like to drive my car "unlimited miles" on one tank of gas, too, but I know that's not going to happen...

[d_host]

Re: Best host for us?

BTW... other than the unlimited bandwidth bit... we can take care of all your other needs without problems. For $300/month you can even get a dedicated managed server with us, though if you need a "lot" of bandwidth the pricing may need to be increased accordingly. Contact us off the forums and give us an idea as to how much bandwidth you really need, or use, per month, and we'll see what we can do.

[SunCam]

Re: Best host for us?

You have responses from the two hosts that we considered when we switched. We selected Hostasaurus but it was a close call. I have never had to wait more than a few minutes for a support response and if you follow this forum you will quickly learn that David and Remik are leaders in providing unselfish free advice and leadership to any and all Miva merchants regardless of who hosts their store.

If you ever need a consultant for custom programming I can also recommend Bruce.

[SVdym]

Re: Best host for us?

Ok. So looking past the unmetered bandwidth... even if there is a cap at 100, then, if you had to choose with a budget of about $100 a month, would you still recommend a VPS, or start with a host that will help me upgrade if and or when we might ever decide to go above and beyond with our site?


Thanks! I really appreciate your help, I'm used to having a team make these decisions for what is developed, but for sites that are extremely complex... so to come to this site I was amazed at how easy Miva's been to maintain and work with...

[Madeira]

Re: Best host for us?

I'll add my 2 cents since we're also looking for a new hosting company.
I've just contacted both Hostasaurus and dotCOM host to get more information from each company.
After filling out the online form for prospective clients at dotCOM host (twice) I'm getting a page not found error.
Hmmm......

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Best host for us?

I can speak about both dotCOMhost and Hostasaurus on this. While there are a couple other hosts of similar quality there are no hosts better than these two.

So even if you found a broken link on their site I personally wouldn't base my decision on that.

[chmatt]

Re: Best host for us?

I'd like to say we are of similar quality as well, and we do have packages that should meet your needs. I don't think any of the partner hosts offer unlimited bandwidth (and as others have said, those that offer unlimited generally refer to it as "unmetered") we'd be unable to maintain a reasonable level of service if we did.

You may also want to check with your current host, sometimes packages change and they may be able to make adjustments to better accommodate you if you are generally happy with their service.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Best host for us?

While there are a couple other hosts of similar quality there are no hosts better than these two.

Matt was being modest, they certainly are of similar quality and were precisely who I was thinking of when I made my post.

[d_host]

Re: Best host for us?

I'll add my 2 cents since we're also looking for a new hosting company.
I've just contacted both Hostasaurus and dotCOM host to get more information from each company.
After filling out the online form for prospective clients at dotCOM host (twice) I'm getting a page not found error.
Hmmm......

Madeira,

My apologies. We do indeed appear to have an issue with an old, outdated "contact us" form. I'll have that fixed today.

In the meantime, you can always contact us via phone or Live Chat options on our web site. Our phone is posted online, and it's also in my signature below.

My apologies for any inconvenience.

[d_host]

Re: Best host for us?

Madeira - just wanted to let you know we corrected our "contact us" form. Thank you for bringing it up to our attention.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Best host for us?

Ok. So looking past the unmetered bandwidth... even if there is a cap at 100, then, if you had to choose with a budget of about $100 a month, would you still recommend a VPS, or start with a host that will help me upgrade if and or when we might ever decide to go above and beyond with our site?

Typically the only time a VPS would be beneficial would be if you need that level of control, i.e. the power of a dedicated server but at a lower cost. There is always overhead to a VPS configuration that there would not be on a shared server so as long as the host offers fast shared hosting and the features you require are available in the shared hosting option, quite often that will be the better choice.

[chmatt]

Re: Best host for us?

I always recommend start small and work your way up. There's not a lot of reason to pay for capacity you aren't using, and every host here (us included) will grow with you. We can upgrade shared accounts to dedicated without any downtime.