Hosting questions

[Dan - Glendale Designs]

Re: Hosting questions

Rosathia,

Excellent example! This has been my experience with the mentioned host as well. While I have received a lot of complaints from my clients about the low tech looking sites of WolfPaw and Hostasaurs (hint, hint) their service is hands down the best you will find. I can rely on Hostasaurus to back up my MIVA Merchant client sites with quality service 24/7. (true 24/7 supporty, not that "our MIVA expert is not in right now" kind of support)

Bottom line, bandwidth and disk space mean nothing when your hosting company cannot support MIVA Merchant or your site is down completely.

[nordicwolf]

Re: Hosting questions

Thank you for the testimonial Nordic! It's nice to know we're doing a good job. :)

As far as a hosting controller, we do offer shared and dedicated packages with the Plesk control panel if you are interested. Just e-mail matt /at/ cybrhost.net or PM me if I can provide any further info on that.

Matt Whitted
Hosting Manager

I learn something new every day. cool !

[Red Flare]

Re: Hosting questions

[COLOR=black]
How difficult is it to Migrate a MM5 site to a new host?

Its completely painless. I had to go through with it, and I didn't even know my site migrated.
Stick to hosts on this board, you can't go wrong.:D

[Kirk Weick]

Re: Hosting questions

Does anyone have experience or feedback on Apollo Hosting or OLM? Those are the two I've been looking at since my host does not support MIVA. tia

I would NOT recommend Apollo for a MIVA store. They really lack knowledge on MIva even though they are listed as a Premier host. They had problems with the initial install. Several times they told me "it was a Miva problem" when in fact it was an installation problem. Their install uses mivaSQL which I found out later is inferior to mySQL install. They were slow on upgrade requests.

Overall they cost me many hours of wasted time and frustration. I made a seemless move to Hostasaurus, which they totally handled. Now I get fast, knowledgeable response to any issues and upgrade requests.

Save yourself the frustration and pick one of the hosts recommended on this forum!

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Hosting questions

Not to mention their prices are pretty rough in comparrison. The main three everyone talks about are Cybrhost, WolfPaw, and Hostasaurus. None of them really rub me the right way AND all of their prices are higher featuring less bandwith and transfer per month..

There's a good reason for this; ecommerce sites, particularly Miva Merchant sites, consume far more resources to service a request than regular websites. X-Cart sites, since that was also mentioned in this thread, consume less resources than Merchant but even X-Cart can vary in performance dramatically just by some simple tuning of MySQL.

Just as an example; server X has a processor running at 3 GHz and can easily handle 800 customers running static sites that just serve pages, video, etc. because those result in virtually no load on the server. Chances are, 97% of those 800 customers aren't going to serve more than 2 GB of traffic per month, but some might serve 200 GB. Additionally, if that server dies, chances are not a large percentage of those 800 will notice that it has gone down if I can get it recovered within 60 to 120 minutes. Then let's say that I can get cheap bandwidth from two tier 2 providers instead of more expensive bandwidth from high end carriers. Backups? I can throw a third hard drive in the box with the first two to back customer data up to nightly and now I can offer restores going back one or two days.

As a mega host, using the above data, I could offer a plan for $10/month with 200 GB of traffic, 1 GB of disk space and put it on a server that probably costs $1000 to build from consumer-grade parts and make a killing because most of the customers won't use anywhere close to their plan, the server didn't cost much, the bandwidth is cheap and I'm not backing it up beyond that extra hard drive. I can even offer a 100% uptime guarantee where you get a day free (typical) if your site is down at all because when it does go down and only 40 of the 800 notice, I only have to pay out $40 in credits while making $8000/month gross off that box.

Hosts that specialize in ecommerce hosting cannot afford to gamble like that; we have to use high end servers, high end bandwidth, keep the sites running, back the sites up reliably and ensure the server loads never approach an amount where customers would be impacted. That results in much higher costs and far fewer customers per server which results in higher pricing.

You have to look at it from the perspective of what will it cost you to have people leave your site because it's slow or to have them unable to check out of your store whether it's due to the server being down, something got messed up and you're waiting on a restore, a setting change was made and you're waiting on support to help, etc. Chances are that unless you have the most minimal of sales, you'll easily come out ahead by spending a little more on hosting. As far as nickel and diming, at least for us, we base all of our pricing on the associated cost of providing the service in question, so it may look that way. Many large hosts take the opposite path and provide huge numbers of bundled bells and whistles up front with the assumption that most customers won't use it which will keep them from actually incurring the cost associated with providing that unused service while they also offer little to no support of all these extras which means much of what is offered ends up unusable or frustrating to use at the very least; we chose the opposite direction so that we could provide a very consistent environment, pay for what you need, not for what you don't and get the support and speed you want.

[Leanne]

Re: Hosting questions

You have to look at it from the perspective of what will it cost you to have people leave your site because it's slow or to have them unable to check out of your store ...

We started off on a less than stellar host, and moved to Hostasaurus after repeatedly banging our heads against the wall trying to get any kind of support from our old host. The difference in our site's performance was amazing, and directly reflected in our conversion rate. The month after our move, we had the same number of site visitors, and double the number of orders. Double. Need I say more? ;)

[Pamela Hazelton]

Re: Hosting questions

I understand what you're saying.. I just don't get why MIVA would need so much support? Honestly X-Cart is a mess but I still haven't had a single ticket issued.. The prices from Apollo to say Dotcomhost are only 5$ different.. Dotcomhost has a few extra fees here and there but overall with the cheaper annual PCI fee and the SSL break they make for a nice deal. I just don't like the lack of bandwith, storage, and the nickle and diming many MIVA hosts seem to practice.

To point a few things out. It's not that MIVA Merchant SHOULD require more support on a server, but you have to consider a few things:

As with any language, the server needs to be configured ideally to run the scripts you need. That means hosts offering MIVA Merchant need to know, at the very least, how to configure the server optimally to run MivaScript. I've seen servers that couldn't ideally handle robust PHP scripts ideally either. Thus, hosts need to have knowledge about any scripting that opt to offer or claim to support.

The issues of charges for bandwidth and storage are actually simple. And there are a few reasons why you'll find the prices higher with a dedicated MIVA Merchant host opposed to "big dogs."

• Volume - The more seasoned and experienced MIVA hosts are smaller companies - they're not publicly traded and they offer far fewer overall services to less people.
  
• Time - Most big hosts save immense amount of time (which is money) issuing stock replies and playing the blame game.
  
• Ala Carte - opposed to large hosts who get "extras" for peanuts (and lots of their extras are actually freebies anyone can get), dedicated MIVA hosts tend to focus more on the needs of business, and thus offer better solutions, though they may cost more.

As for the bandwidth - it costs money. Unfortunately, the smaller fish can't get it at the same price as the bigger fish AND when you host primarily ecommerce, it's more likely than not that the majority of customers will reach their allotted amount, opposed to bigger guys that don't worry because if you use 20GB, there are 300 sites using less than .5 GB.

The best way I can explain it is this - if you walk into Wal-Mart you can get a really cheap DVD player with a few common features. It's not expandable, and the staff there can't tell you anything about it. But, hey, it's $39. In a year, you go back to buy another one to replace it.

I, on the other hand, go to a dedicated, local store where all the guys KNOW the product, and I spent $249 on a name brand. The guys? I can call them and they know the player so well that for minor issues they'll even look at it (for free) and tell me what I need to do to fix it. This player lasts me 10 years.

When it comes to hosting you have to consider - if the site crashes at midnight, would you rather it be down for 8 hours until the "expert" comes to work, only to tell you it's not their problem, sending you in circle of "at blame" people to call, or do you want someone who knows MIVA Merchant, can troubleshoot it right then - OR has a direct line with a developer to do just that - and be up and running in no time? It's your call. But when you factor monthly fees and potential of lost sales, it's easy to figure out which is the better value.

BTW - Right now I'm watching the news on my Sony Triniton I bought in 1990 - it runs about 12 hours a day. Right below it is a VCR from 1993, and the local shop cleaned the heads for me every six months (for free) then taught me how to do it.

[d_host]

Re: Hosting questions

The prices from Apollo to say Dotcomhost are only 5$ different.. Dotcomhost has a few extra fees here and there but overall with the cheaper annual PCI fee and the SSL break they make for a nice deal. I just don't like the lack of bandwith, storage, and the nickle and diming many MIVA hosts seem to practice.

Justin,

Please contact us off-line and I'm sure we'll be able to create a custom hosting package for you that meets your needs - at prices that are mutually agreeable. While we can't offer "unlimited bandwidth" or "unlimited disk space" (there's no such thing - everything has a finite limit if you think about it), we will work with you to provide you with reasonable limits that we can deliver within our SLAs and capabilities.

We don't claim to be the cheapest game in town - and we sure know we aren't - but if uptime, store performance, service and support is important to you, then I think it's going to be pretty hard to beat what we have to offer.

On topic of why different companies charge different prices for the "same" service or product, or what some people like to call "you get what you pay for".... think about it this way. If you only comparison shopped for cars based on the fact that they all have 4 wheels, wouldn't you agree that they should all cost the same? By that token - you can buy a brand new Kia or a Hyundayi for $10K, so why are there other manufacturers selling their cars, with the 'same' 4 wheels for $60K or $120K or $200K? There is a pretty significant difference between these cars, even though the "basics" appear to be the same. Sure, the idea is that both can get you from point A to point B, under ideal conditions, but if anything breaks - are you going to be stuck on the side of the freeway on your way to work, or will the dealership dispatch their own tow track and drop off a loaner vehicle so you can get on with your life? I firmly subscribe to choosing the later option myself. Sure it costs more, but my time is also worth a lot of money - and sitting on the side of a freeway is wasted time - and I'm not making money myself while sitting there. If your store is down for 8 or 12 or 24 hours (or 2 weeks as one of our recently moved in clients lived through with their old host) - how much money and goodwill are you losing by not making sales, losing search engine rankings, losing potential clients that will never come to your site again, etc, etc, etc. There's a lot of intangibles you won't see a firm dollar figure for, but believe me, all these things do add up and your visitors - potential customers - once they get a bad experience with you, chances are they won't come back. How much do you spend on customer acquisition? If you can't keep those people online once they get to your store - it's money down the drain... Saving $5 on hosting, while wasting $1000 on advertising to get new customers because your store is down for 12 hours is pretty foolish, in many people's opinion... and I hope you'd agree with that assessment.

[anjrhubb]

Re: Hosting questions

Hello,

I have a similar question/issue. I have MM4 and left my hosting company (hostway) mostly due to pricing. When I called my new company to ask if they offer Miva Shopping cart, the salesperson told me they didn't but I would be able to keep Miva if I wanted to. After hearing that, I jumped the gun and switched and now my shopping cart is not working. I installed Empresa on the server but was just told by a Miva tech today that there is more to just installing Empresa on the server and my current hosting company has no clue of how to help me. Worst part is, I've already paid them for 1 year. Does anyone have any advice on what I can do without spending too much money?

[Dan - Glendale Designs]

Re: Hosting questions

Switch to a reputable Miva Merchant host such as Hostasaurus. Cheap hosting does not equal good Miva Merchant hosting/support. If you continue down that path, you are going to continue to have issues... bottom line.

[d_host]

Re: Hosting questions

[...]I called my new company to ask if they offer Miva Shopping cart, the salesperson told me they didn't but I would be able to keep Miva if I wanted to. After hearing that, I jumped the gun and switched and now my shopping cart is not working. I installed Empresa on the server but was just told by a Miva tech today that there is more to just installing Empresa on the server and my current hosting company has no clue of how to help me. Worst part is, I've already paid them for 1 year. Does anyone have any advice on what I can do without spending too much money?

I guess it would be a rhetorical question at this point to ask why you switched to a hosting company knowing that they do not support Miva Merchant, and even pre-paid for a full year of hosting? :-] That just doesn't make sense at so many levels..... Why not host the site with a company that SUPPORTS Miva Merchant, and does not require yearly prepayments? If you are paying month-to-month, at least you can cancel and move on quickly if you do experience problems the host cannot resolve, rather than throwing 12 months worth of pre-payments...

[roy]

Re: Hosting questions

Just to add a vote for Hostasaurus. Also for anyone looking for a UK based host, I cannot praise 1stEasy http://www.1steasy.com/ enough. Great support and reliable service.

[stryker43]

Re: Hosting questions

I've been with Apollo since 2004 and they were once very good but they are now horrible. The support is very sluggish and they have created several problems on their end that has resulted in my store being down for days.

They also had several incidents of being hacked and initially blamed it on the client having weak FTP usernames and passwords (which was proved otherwise) only to find out later it was again on their end.

Their new group of after hour tech support people are brainless.

Avoid Apollo Hosting. I switched several sites away from them!